Re:PSTD

Hi, I've been sort of lurking. :)

I was just "fired" by my EMDR therapist... I didn't fit into her pigeonholes at all. After a year of treatment, she "decided" I was too much in crisis, I didn't fit into her travel/teaching schedule, required too much between session contact, etc.

It has made me rethink everything, including EMDR. I spent a year doing "prep work" to do EMDR, trusting that EMDR was some sort of magic that would work, eventually... but, in the end, all that's happened is that I've been labeled by my therapist as too needy.

I suspect EMDR can be great for trauma... my trauma is pretty idiosyncratic as well... but I do believe, as has been said, that studies concentrate on selected populations (researcher selected) so there is not much info on how any technique, including EMDR will work on someone like me, with MY problems and beliefs and flaws.

My therapist does research, on EMDR... she told me early on that she would not be using me for her research. I never asked why but I always assumed it was because the level of my trauma and consequent dissociation meant I didn't "fit" into her research pool. How does one do accurate research if the researchers select out clients with the worst or most unusual histories? Doesn't this just add to the "worst" clients being further stigmatized as untreatable... since our progress and concerns do not even make it "into" the research -- it is as if our difficulties -- as if we -- do not even "exist".

I think these are important questions -- for EMDR and any other technique that purports to be capable of treating trauma.

My therapist, by the way, is highly trained, and very well known. She didn't use EMDR badly... she didn't use it at all... but she gave up on me. I would have preferred she had used EMDR very badly... that would hurt less. Sometimes I wonder if therapists realize the technique is ALWAYS secondary to the trust and rapport between client and clinician...

Replies:

Re:PSTD, by Sandra Paulsen Inobe PhD, 07/23/03 Re:PSTD, by ellen, 07/24/03

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