Re:EMDR & Meditation - attn: Lindsay

Sandra has given a much better answer than I could have in regards to the images experienced during an EMDR session. I'll add my experiences to help you out, hopefully! If I start a session with a target image, one that represents the issue I am working on - could be an event that happened to me - I quickly lose that image once EMDR processing starts. Sometimes it returns during the processing session, on its' own, and other times I just get other images. These images really are difficult to label/describe. Some I recognize and some I don't. Sometimes they make no sense at all - like I might get an image of a squirrel in a tree (I haven't actually gotten that image during any emdr sessions). Often I just don't get any images and I experience feelings, sensations and body movements.

The target image, the one emdr starts with is one that is familiar to me. One that often comes to mind, one I remember. Some of the other images that come up may be familiar ones but not ones that I normally have on a day to day basis etc. Then, some, just seem to be images that I've never had.

As Sandra noted the client is not working at bringing these images to mind. They just float in and out of the brain on their own it seems. They aren't necessarily focused on or even noted. I can have a number of images go through my mind before my therapist will stop at an appropriate time and ask me whatever question is asked at that time. It might be that at that moment I am experienceing a particular image, feeling, sensation in a vivid way and the focus is then on that particular, at the moment, experience as emdr processing is continued.

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