Re:I think I am screwing up EMDR - its that possible?

Without commenting on your specific case I will make some general comments.

The subject here is how to modulate -- or "titrate" the intensity of pain.

For some people, they have sufficient strength but the pain is just too great. For other people, they don't have sufficient strength to begin with, usually because of early traumas and betrayals, so any about of pain is too great.

So....the solutions are to 1) increase the strength or 2) decrease the pain.

1) About increasing strength. RDI and safe place and other ego strengthening methods are intended to help add what the person would need to have enough strength to tolerate the pain. Sometimes, we can add things imaginally, such as a Kevlor space suit or a sword or a stun gun. Sometimes we can add things by bringing adult resources closer to a child part of self so the pain is manageable -- so an older part of self holds a child part and gives it strength.

Jack Watkins, the father of ego state therapy, talks about the therapist resonating with the client in order to provide strength -- so he'd say to the client during the part of the most pain, "what are we seeing now?" and "what are we going to do to the (perpetrator)?" That way, the therapists strength and the client's strength are additive,n and the client ends up with enough strength.

EMDR practitioners tend to stand back more than Dr Watkins does, but there are variations in how to support a client so they feel contained and strengthened.

2) About decreasing the pain. The hypnosis literature and the dissociation literature is full of information about affect titration --- or fractionated abreactions --- in which just a mini piece of the pain is processed at a time. So...a person may take volume 1 of 4 volumes series about a trauma and process it (imaginally I mean its in volumes, not in real life). Or there can be a rheostat, and the patient and therapist practice ahead of time to turn the intensity down as many notches as needed. Once this skill is in place, the client can do this during the processing to adjust the pain level.

There are plenty of other methods, but these are a few.

Finally, therapists should always have screened for a dissociative disorder, because affective overwhelm is exactly what we try to avoid with EMDR for dissociative individuals. It kicks up all the trust, attachment and abandonment issues as well as just the enormity of pain to be processed. Fractionated abreaction is where it is at for dissociatives.

Not saying you are dissociative -- I don't know. These are general comments.

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