Re:what can I expect?

Thanks for your post. I think I have a better idea about what you are concerned about.

EMDR (and other forms of psychotherapy) move more slowly with cases of complex (multiple) traumas. I take it from what you said that this (having multiple traumas) is true for you, so yes, I think that slow movement is very common.

When a person has experienced multiple traumas, it is common to find that they are linked (share parts in common) and so EMDR therapy does not "finish" with one event until the other events have also been worked on. It is therefore rather common to find that working on one trauma will reduce the distress on that trauma, but not eliminate the distress completely. It is also fairly common to finish a session with the distress level down (say from a self rating of 9 to a rating of 2) only to have some of the distress return between sessions (say to a 4). The next session would typically begin with a check on how you were doing with the event just processed (using the example above, it would now be a 4) and then work on that event again (this rather than starting immediately with a new trauma. Remember, that the numbers above are only examples and may not reflect the numbers that would be true for you.

The short version of all of this. Yes, EMDR can be a slow process and is more likely to be slow in situations where there is multiple trauma in the history. This does not reflect a personal defect or failure on your part but rather the way our minds deal with the difficulties created by multiple traumas.

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