EMDR FORUM ARCHIVE, 2000
Re:emdr
John (EMDR Client) · 09/06/03 at 2:34 PM ET
I know that when I started, I wish that I had been better prepared for the processing that would occur between sessions. (Memories, body aches and pains, floods of emotion, nightmares etc) Not all at the same time I would add. I did however, many times feel pushed to close to what I could stand in terms of my endurance threshold. I am dealing with multiple traumatic incidents and abuse from my childhood. I say that because I think that people using EMDR on one or a couple of incidents may not have such a dramatic processing experience. From what I've read anyway. So, I would imagine that an EMDR experience is likely to vary considerably from one person to another. My therapist see's himself as a facilitator and puts his faith in the concept that a person's brain, heart and soul know how to heal once an environment can be created that makes it safe enough to do so. I have been amazed on several occasions that while doing EMDR, often many and sometimes seemingly unrelated pieces of a puzzle would present and by the end of it, everything would fit together and make sense. It has been my own insides that have accomplished that, not my therapist, though I know I couldn't have done it without his help. So in the same way our outsides can heal provided certain conditions are present. Apparently so can our insides. I do wish that I had had a better support system in place during this. Unfortunately many people are likely to give you an eye-role, a sigh, or some other sign of indifference if you tell them what your doing. Many people become uncomfortable in the face of discussions pertaining to therapy, abuse, trauma, etc. Don't make your way harder by surrounding yourself with non-supporters just to avoid being alone. Alone is tough, but it can be done if it needs to be. EMDR for me has been an incredibly lonely experience, but as I heal, I find that there is enough strength and resilience within me to handle whatever has come up. Even when that has meant going it alone. With the few people around me, the discussions are not usually very in-depth. I find that as I try to describe my EMDR experiences or more often the difficulties I'm having enduring the processing aspects, that I'm more often than not, likely to get a "deer in the headlights" look from most of them. There seems to be very few that can handle these conversations for more than a few minutes or anything much beyond superficial descriptions. Hopefully you have someone near you that can be more supportive than this, but if you don't, maybe these comments will prepare you for that. The last thing that I wish I had been better prepared for is the time frame. I started last December and have averaged 2 sessions per week for most of that time since then. Unquestionably this is the result of the childhood trauma and the resulting belief systems of those experiences. It has been as if everything that I once believed about myself, people, life, God, love etc. has turned out to be wrong, untrue or lies. I feel as if my belief system has been (necessarily) blown in a million pieces and is now in the process of being replaced with one based on fact and consequently more likely to work. I will concede that this has been very painful coming to accept and let go of a system that hasn't worked. In the last two weeks, something has began hitting me hard. I have had much difficulty sleeping (unusual for me), feeling overwhelmed, major body aches and pains, busy dreams (not nightmares, just floods of things that make no sense), have been eating like a starving person, and an exhaustion and feeling like I'm trying to carry a ton of lead bricks with me wherever I go. I don't want to do what I normally do and I find it difficult to even get out of bed let alone do anything like my usual exercise routine. Consequently this became the latest target area for EMDR. This last week I had two sessions back to back for a total of 7.5 hours (much longer than the usual, 1.5 hr sessions). These took place at my request, as I'm beyond impatient with this stuff. This was the first time that I found an EMDR target so difficult. There was much resistance and even as we went on, the pains in my body, especially my stomach became intense. Suddenly an experience that happened when I was 17 surfaced. The one person on earth that I had some sort of love connection with was destroyed at that time. It was then that my heart had shut down and closed off and has been that way since. I didn’t realize what happened inside me at the time. I remember feeling lost, frightened beyond belief, in incredible emotional pain and stress, alone and remember that I did not sleep a wink for just over a week. It would seem that all these years later, I’m 42 now, that I am re-experiencing what happened back then. When we got to the end of the EMDR session, I felt that I could do no more, but not quite resolved either. I could see that since that time when I was 17, I have been looking for a nurturing mother figure to deal with that hole that has always run smack through the center of me. If I’m accurate, this may well be the starting place of all the addictions I’ve wrestled with during my life. It’s like a place of love starvation. This hole was not started with this incident but it certainly was the “deathblow” as far as its depth. As I sat there after the session, I could somehow sense that I do not need another person to fill up this hole in me. In fact I should more accurately call it a closed off heart. Not open to giving or receiving. It seemed clear that the resolution of this injury of the heart rests with me. I am not missing something that I should have and I don’t need someone to love me in order to heal it after all. Since the session, I am in a fair bit of pain still, not sleeping very well, and really not quite sure what happened. I’m not sure if this obviously huge thing got straightened out or not. I sure hope so. I think that I have been on the lookout for the right loving and nurturing woman for so long and believed somewhere at my depths that this was what was truly needed that now that I know differently it is still hard to let it go. That’s all the news that’s fit to print. I hope this helps you in some way and answers some of your questions. I wish you all the best with your EMDR process. One last thing that I would say to you in case you may doubt as I was at the beginning. Just let yourself go with it. Though EMDR seems ridiculously simple if not downright too good to be true, I have been amazed at how this has opened the lid up on things that nothing else has come even close too. I am not finished so I can’t claim the ability to leap tall buildings or anything like that yet, but I certainly understand why my life has been so difficult, painful and filled with every kind of failure. I also predict that 42 years old notwithstanding, the best years of my life, by far, lye just ahead. Wishing you the best. - John
I was surprised how quickly and effectively we moved through later life trauma's and again how slow, complex and painful the earlier life stuff has been. It is no understatement when I say that working through the complexities of my childhood experiences has been like going through hell. Since I have been living in it so long, I don’t mind a temporary increase in pain if it means resolution eventually. Problem is the only way to find out is to go the distance and hope like crazy.
Probably 6 of those hours were just talking and telling him about the floods of things that have been going on before we began to target aspects of what has been going on.
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