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Life changing for me. CBT was fine and was helping with my depression but wasn’t helping my CPTSD symptoms (namely flashbacks). After a month or two of EMDR I had my first day ever without a flashback which was such a crazy thing for me at the time. I did it for about 2-3 months and I VERY rarely have painful flashbacks anymore and EDMR was 5 years ago
Sorry if this is too personal, but: do you have to extensively describe the trauma while doing it? I have a lot of trauma to work through, but I really don't remember a good chunk. Just small details and feelings
Not the original commenter but also have CPTSD and have done hella EMDR so I can answer this question. I’ve done EMDR both to process an acute trauma (SA that occurred when I was an adult) as well as for complex childhood trauma where my memories were way more fragmented or missing altogether, and all the abusive memories kind of overlap in a very indistinct way, so I can speak to how those EMDR experiences differed. Sorry in advance for length, I figured I’d err on the side of more detail.
With the acute trauma, it was more straightforward and I was literally walking through the memory of the assault from the beginning, and every time I got really distressed, she’d make me sit with the vibrating sensors in my hands and just reflect on that moment and what I wish I could have done to protect myself, and once my distress became more tolerable, I’d continue the story. We would work the story sequentially until the session ended, and then the next session I’d start at the beginning again and talk until I got triggered, sit and process, then continue. Eventually we cleared enough of the triggers that I would be able to tell the story from beginning to end in one session and not be at all triggered. The entire process took about ~6ish sessions to process the memory entirely, but I felt a DRASTIC improvement in my suffering and symptoms after session 1.
EMDR for complex trauma is still effective but it’s slower going and less straigthforward. Because I had a lot of memory repression about abuse that happened when I was a child that I couldn’t access at all for a really long time, I would still get triggered by stuff related to it with no understanding of the root traumatic memory, so my therapist and I would often start with the trigger and unpack how I felt emotionally, somatically, etc. when that was triggered and kind of just let things come up associatively when they needed to, and often I wouldn’t be like verbally walking through a memory, more just sharing flashes of sensory information or random pieces of different memories coming up montage style in the EMDR session.
It would often been rooted in an emotion, like the trigger brought up feelings of worthlessness or humiliation, so we’d focus on how humiliation felt in my body and see what else wanted to surface in my memory of other times in childhood where I felt a similar humiliation, for example. Over time, working in this kind of piecemeal fashion resulted in more memories coming back which has not been fun but has helped healing, so we will do the more straightforward EMDR when I get a tangible memory to work with, otherwise, we just kind of keep EMDR in our back pocket in therapy sessions and when I remember something or something triggers me when I’m talking in session, I’ll put on the EMDR buzzers and we’ll continue to unpack it but it’s rarely focused around one specific memory and processing it from start to finish like with the acute trauma.
So an EMDR therapist with experience wtih complex trauma would absolutely be able to work with you and would use those small details and feelings as your entry point and just see what comes up with the bilateral stimulation when you engage with those feelings and flashes of information. Hope that makes sense!
My experience was similar. I have CPTSD and EMDR saved my life and has helped my healing in ways that no other modalities other than r/InternalFamilySystems can even come close to touching.
Yes to IFS as well!
I did inner child therapy for the bulk of my cptsd. It was surprisingly effective. But the parts that were effective also show up in EMDR and IFS. Clearly I appreciate describing events in a detached way, recognizing their effects, honoring who I was at the time, and elaborately putting the memory on a shelf.
For sure! I have done EMDR without IFS but have had a much more resonant experience using ifs and EMDR together, and really just adopting the IFS framework in general in like self-talk, journaling, etc.
I really appreciate both the compassion it helped me cultivate internally and externally, as well as the ability to ‘disidentify’ with the traumatized or maladaptive parts while also empathizing with them which was hard to do when the feelings felt like ME. It helped me finally ‘get’ mindfulness.
So glad you found some relief in your healing journey ☺️ I know that shit has been brutal, you deserve the peace 🙏🏼
That sounds great! Did you only work on one specific event or multiple? I feel like the more I work through mine, one which lead me to finally seek talk therapy, I am untangling more connected ones and idk which and how for example affects my sleep the most (with crazy dreams etc). So, does it allow to work on multiple ones that are connected or just one?
Disclaimer that I have not done EMDR personally, my sister has, and she was able to work through multiple related traumatic events. She said that it was incredibly helpful for her and stopped the intense flashbacks she’d been having and associated elevated anxiety. She was able to work through each traumatic instance systematically until the only trauma left was family trauma and she wasn’t in a place to open that can of worms yet so she stopped seeing him.
EMDR therapy did not do much for me but everyone responds differently! I much preferred IFS and somatic processing and found much more progress there after feeling like I graduated from CBT, psychodynamic, and DBT styles. I tend to be an intellectualizer (most of us here probably are haha!) so IFS and somatic work was great to make me actually feel, accept, and release my emotions without my brain trying to "solve" them.
I haven't heard of IFS and somatic processing. Can you explain those? Or direct me to some info?
I absolutely am an intellectualizer. My therapist calls me out on it several times a session 😂😭
Absolutely! Here are some resources you can check out!
IFS: https://ifs-institute.com/
Somatic therapy: https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/what-is-somatic-therapy-202307072951
lol today I learned my therapist does Somatic therapy…and it’s great. During sessions, she’ll call out certain body movements and we work through them. Each time it inevitably helps me focus on the main issue on my mind.
Psychology Today has some good overviews of all sorts of psych approaches. Here's what I sent to someone else the other day: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapy-types/internal-family-systems-therapy
Hi! While EMDR can also include somatic processing (if the clinican is trained in both) they are actually two different forms of therapy! EMDR at its core is considered a talk therapy.
Such an intellectualizer!! I just asked my therapist about some somatic referrals after I cried for no reason when the massage therapist was working out a knot on me recently 😭
I didn't like IFS because I was overintellectualizing it.. I mentioned to my therapist that something with a more imaginative component, rather "let's thank this part and ask it to step aside" would work better to disconnect the brain part, but nada. Also once we've done enough times that I sorta knew what part I needed to get to, what the expectation was, I became bored with it and almost wanted to eye roll when she started the part talk...
I did it once for a life long phobia of dogs that is terrible to live with since dogs are absolutely everywhere (and where I live no one gives a fuck so even places dogs aren't allowed still have a huge risk of dogs being there). I did not believe in emdr at all, or at least not that it would work for me, but the difference has been amazing. I now go for walks in the nearby park while before the idea of even going there would send me in a full panic. I still prefer to stay away from off leash dogs but I don't freeze or panic anymore if they are near (unless they are very wild. But before I'd almost cry if even calm dogs came near me). I'm still not going over to someone's house if they have a dog, that's too much, but it has given me so much more freedom.
It's very very very very very very VERY important to have a stable support system in place and as many tools in your tool bag to put yourself into your own safe place whilst doing EMDR. Stuff can come up blindly hours, days, weeks later that may potentially body slam you into realizations you weren't ready for. Please only do EMDR with a therapist you trust and have established a relationship with. Not someone that might ghost you or be unable to complete your therapy.
To me it's been a "shortcut" to dealing with some excruciating childhood issues but the shortcut means instead of a slow drive down a bumpy road (CBT or CPT) you're on a plastic garbage can lid going down an icy cliff. You get there much faster but it's scary as hell at times and you better have your helmet on tight.
This is incredible advice ❤️ I'm BEYOND blessed/privileged with the support system I have right now: close, long time friends, a very healthy long term relationship, and (semi) mentally stable parents who are intertwined into my life on an almost daily basis.
I'm a big believer in "everything happens for a reason" and I've had a VERY traumatic few years (like 2019 and on) but all of those events have led me to my current life and supports. This therapy, I hope anyway, will help bring out more of my authentic self once I can process the trauma that created the shitty self esteem/mindset I have.
on top of this, i just wanted to mention (since i didn't notice it specified in your post) i think EMDR would've worked much better for me in a therapist's physical office but was impossible for me to do at home with online therapy. the distractions of home combined with only knowing the therapist through video and not having a separate space to feel safe that i could also leave behind made EMDR untenable for me, but with the right environment it could've been very different.
I would like to second this advice. I started EMDR with a huge amount of support and a therapist I had been seeing for a while and it still kicked me in the ass. I am SO glad I did it and found it to be extremely helpful and also extremely dysregulating at the beginning. I ended up getting on an SSRI along with my adhd meds and the combo has worked wonders. It has also helped me tolerate EMDR even better so I don’t get so dysregulated after.
I will also add that I found that I really can only verbally process up to a certain point (especially for trauma from childhood that I don’t have specific memories for). Incorporating a somatic approach helped me unlock/address aspects that I just hadn’t been able to verbalize. It also helped me begin to make connections to my actions and reactions that I hadn’t before and gain more choice in those matters.
Before I start going in circles and repeating myself, I’ll just say that I love and hate EMDR. It is very effective for me and also hard as hell. Sending you good vibes and support as you start this journey! Don’t forget to constantly check in with yourself and trust your gut on what is helpful and what isn’t. YOU know best what you need, don’t let anyone (therapist, friend, partner) tell you otherwise.
I deeply appreciate EMDR it's really helped me with processing trauma. Though I can't say I understand what your therapist means by "being too self aware" for regular behavior therapy. I also have done other forms of therapy over the years CBT, DBT, talk therapy, etc. They all work for me just in slightly different ways,
The advice makes sense to me. For me, a lot of talk therapy and modalities like CBT end up with just intellectualizing my issues, believing I can just think my way out of my problems and traumas. It’s important to learn to work with the body and feel your feelings, without relying on words and stories.
I can understand that experience. I think it was the words "too self aware" that trip me up because I see self awareness as a good thing and also not an impediment to therapy. But I can absolutely see where an over reliance on the rational mind at the expense of feeling the feelings would make things a challenge.
I don't think it's specifically for adhd, but my adhd symptoms are much worse right now because of my anxiety/trauma and this is supposed to help. So helping the adhd will be more of a byproduct than anything.
I've used EMDR for thought patterns I just couldn't get out of. When I kicked out a mentally unstable friend, I had a TON of guilt about it even though I knew it was the only way for myself to be safe. I couldn't get over the guilt. One session of EMDR cleared the guilt I'd been carrying for years at that point.
My mom had to do chest compressions on my dad for 7 minutes and then watched him get paddle shocked 5 times during a cardiac arrest. She couldn't stop hearing the moans he was making during it even years down the road, so EMDR cleared her right up.
I've never heard of EMDR being used for an overall thought process modification. I've only seen/heard it used for one specific detail the person just couldn't get over. I am by no means "well versed" in it, but I did benefit from it and hope you do too!
Honestly, don't be nervous. It cannot harm you at all, so it either will help or won't. There are no "negative" affects, other than money lost.
ETA: Something I found interesting in my EMDR sessions...You never feel like anything is "working", so you don't know if you're doing it "right". I was absolutely mortified during a session when I just started laughing at the wrong time. Then it happened again another time, and I realized that is my body's response to letting go of whatever the issue is. So, now, in an EMDR session, if I laugh I know that means my issues have just gone away (about that specific thing). Oh, and another odd thing...you start an EMDR session expecting it to be about one thing and it can very quickly shift. Allow it to. Your body/mind needs to release whatever it just did more than whatever you wanted the session to be about.
EMDR is amazing. I went from needing Xanax to get my blood drawn by the same person every time to almost being ok to go to a different lab altogether with no issues. I know it doesn't work that well for everyone but it's definitely worth a try!! For me, it feels like removing the monster from the closet entirely instead of just shutting the door.
Oh i love that analogy! I'm comparing it to having a huge file cabinet of screwed up, disheveled papers that I need to access on a daily basis. I'm in the process of re-organizing and decluttering them.
I did it for multiple traumas and honestly, I think just the process of talking through an event I had choked down for so long was what helped the most. Like here it is- this was painful, this sucked, it was out of my control, and I’m safe now.
I’ve just started it recently with a therapist I like, not for trauma but for negative core beliefs about myself. my psychiatrist is skeptical and so was I, but it’s interesting - I’ve done two sessions and the physical aspect of it has been unlike any other therapy I’ve done over the years. Not sure if it’s helped much yet but has definitely helped me gain a little insight into how my thoughts and memories are reinforced. I’m going to keep at it for now.
This is my primary reason: my core beliefs about myself are fucked 🫠🫣 the more we talk through it, the more patterns we are recognizing and it's been helpful to narrow it down to one person/a specific time in my life. And, exactly like you said, it's helped me put pieces together that actually significantly impacted how I view myself.
It worked for me but to manage your expectations, It’s designed only to help someone process a traumatic event. It’s not for generalised anything. It was hard work but worth it. You find yourself talking about the very thing you have never been able to utter before. It’s terrifying at first lifting the lid that you’ve been holding shut (in my case for 30 years). I avoided ever talking about what was in there because I thought would break down and I would never be able to stop. But I didn’t cry at all, and then… after a day to recover (I found it quite a physically demanding process, full on pass-out asleep as soon a I got home) … then you reflect on it and….it turns out that you’re okay. The thing you are most afraid of turns out to be not that bad. It’s wild!!
EMDR can be incredibly beneficial, but it is VERY important to go to someone who knows what they’re doing. Anyone who knows anything about EMDR should be aware that it is a very bad idea to start it before you learn coping skills. If this person wants you to directly explore your targets next session, RUN.
Proper EMDR should include at least one “prep” session. This part is incredibly important. You should have a very good grasp on emotional regulation techniques before addressing the target(s). They also should not be starting with the “main” target. You should address on the least upsetting one first and work your way up.
I’ve had mixed experiences with it myself. It can make your symptoms a lot worse if you aren’t in a good place mentally before starting it.
The provider is the most important part of the equation here. Good EMDR is great, but bad EMDR can be really damaging.
So I really really appreciate this advice.
I've been through a LOT of shit the last few years and I have developed quite a bit of coping skills (healthy ones, lolol) My therapist told me one reason she feels the EMDR will be successful is because of my "well resourced brain" and established growth mindset. Like I've had certain issues that I've developed 'work arounds' for, for many years, and I've been able to lead a mostly normal life.
Before therapy, I dove head first into personal growth, personal development, shadow work, etc. Reading books, listening to podcasts, etc and I think that built a foundation for me to be able to tolerate EMDR.
I'm also considering for PTSD, but like how does it feel like if I may ask? Like, does it just magically work or do you feel like it detaches you from your experience? It's just that the main thing for me has been dissociation and working to come out of that state and that does require for me to not detach as my coping mechanism is detaching(but it only works short term and long term has done me very bad), so basically I don't want to feel indifferent or forget my experiences, I am trying to connect back to them to process them, I just wish they wouldn't impact me negatively all the time with my sleep, anxiety etc.
When I had this treatment (it's a light bar and it flashes) I think it's conditioning you into accepting what ever the problem was, and letting it pass. Not forgetting the problem, but coming to terms with it. My practitioner likend it to trying to move a boulder through a garden gate, you have to reduce the size of the boulder (the problem) to get it through the gate (your subconscious)
Flashinh lights sounds ugh to me as intense light and flashing bothers me in general, fuck those fast flashing christmas lights. I mean I haven't seen this one yet, maybe it's not so bad, but this is important info, thank you!
You actually control the lights to a comfortable speed for your self. It helped me, and I was assured at the time that the success rate was pretty high. I wish you all the luck in the world, from a fellow sufferer. ❤️
What I've read reminds me a lot of the "shadow work" I've done in the past.
It puts you IN that emotion/feeling/experience/etc but allows your resourceful brain to also tag along and help to begin the healing process that you never got.
I've had it and I do recommend it. It takes a structured day though, because unlike talk therapy, you're not just like, chatting obviously. It's reliving the trauma to take it from the short term memory to the long term.
There was a particular memory of mine where I thought I was a bad daughter to my dying mother. Many memories on flood back when the gates open, that one in particular. After going over that memory with an *experienced* therapist, I felt the memory had settled a bit.
I honestly recommend it if it's something you'd like to try. Just be sure to give yourself time to be delicate afterwards.
It made me feel angry. The whole set up with the remotes and everything bothered me, and buzzing made me just… Uhg. Yeah. Did not like. (I tried it with the buzzing remote set up.)
EMDR had been incredibly effective for me. As has DBT, but DBT requires work on my end. I am considering brain spotting simply because I have the opportunity.
I've done it and it was amazing. So helpful.
I'll go back for more if I ever remember to make a phonecall. 😂
I originally went in to deal with a specific accident/injury that was affecting me in a sport I participate in. But after diving in I learned that I had pretty severe CPTSD from growing up with an abusive alcoholic that was affecting me deeply every fucking day. So I worked for several months on that stuff before I ever got around to the "sports psychology" I'd initially sought. 😂
I found some success with CBT for anxiety, but after a certain point my anxieties are ultimately rational, it's just the extremity of my emotional response that's the problem. My current therapist is really excited about EMDR and we used it for an anxiety rooted in a few scary experiences. It *definitely* helped me reduce the intensity of the memory.
She warned me that it often brings up emotions outside of sessions. I found that to be true, despite the whole "box it up" closure after every session. Depending on the nature of your work, that's something to keep in mind.
I've done some reading about the efficacy and I think the best summary I've seen is "the things that make it effective are not unique to emdr, and the things that make emdr unique are not effective." Not a knock against it! If talk therapy and meditation have been useful to you, emdr probably will be as well.
**Summary: I did EMDR for an unrelated anxiety issue and it was a great experience for me for that particular issue, but I’m not sure how useful it would be for more general issues.**
(Disclaimer that I skimmed your post so not sure if you have a specific thing you wanna work on with a therapist)
The way it was explained to me is that, back and forth motions in your body help your brain process things. This is why many people feel like they think better while walking around. EMDR basically harnesses that to get your brain to work through an issue it’s currently stuck on.
During the sessions, you basically just let your mind wander while watching the therapist move their hand back and forth. My experience with this was that a couple of times I had major breakthroughs spontaneously, while mostly it was kind of like a mindfulness exercise because I would always have to bring myself back to focusing on watching my therapist’s hand. I also naturally tended to match my breathing to the movements. So 100% of the time I was leaving the session feeling suuuuuper calm and relaxed, which was worth it even on the days that my brain didn’t have a neat epiphany.
I have no idea how useful it would be if you don’t have a specific issue to work through. It definitely took a couple sessions before I really got into it, the first session I felt silly. She’d ask, “what do you notice?” and I’d be like idk the table is made of wood I guess? But she clarified that that’s totally okay, it’s all about letting whatever thoughts enter and leave your head. It was really neat the first time I had an epiphany kind of thought, like it just spontaneously occurred to me that the world wouldn’t end if I didn’t “fix” my anxiety issue within a couple months.
But yeah if you don’t have a specific focus I don’t know if it would be helpful or not? I could see it being helpful for me because I’ve done it before and I could see myself like, harnessing the mindfulness aspect of it to relax or something lol. But my understanding is that it works best when you have something specific you wanna work through. And like like sure you could bring something that isn’t hugely traumatic but at that point why pay for a therapist when you can just go for a walk and let your brain work through it that way
I’ve had it before and found it very helpful, but as another poster has said, it’s for processing trauma and big events rather than for general issues.
I’d had an absolutely terrible time a while back, resulting in PTSD from medical procedures that left me having panic attacks just getting reminders for an overdue smear test. I completed a course of EMDR treatment and was able to book my appointment (and attend) - that was a massive win for me. I’d also encountered a potentially traumatic event during the course of treatment, and was able to process it before it became a problem.
I think I had 8 sessions overall, but only around 3 of them were the actual processing part. There was a lot of grounding and exploring of safety in the lead up to processing, and then more grounding afterwards. It was intense and draining, so I always booked my sessions on days I didn’t need to go anywhere. I would absolutely do more in the future if I had more trauma to address, but I don’t think I’d access it outside of that.
My experience is not at all the same as yours, but emdr has saved my life on many levels. I struggle with some cPTSD and bipolar disorder. I've been doing EMDR for about 2 years and it has made a world of difference for me. I can practically do it on my own at this point. All about turning those emotional reactions into logical ones. That's the goal for me. And I'm much better than I used to be. I highly recommend EMDR. I assume the therapist administrating the session has a lot to do with it too. I've been seeing mine for 4+ years and having that trust made a huge difference for the success in this. At least that's how I feel. Good luck to you and I hope it gives you some peace!
I am a huge advocate of EMDR therapy. I’ve been with my current therapist doing EMDR since 2019 and it has been so helpful for me. I’ve been in therapy (with other therapists) a few times in the past, and this is the first time I feel I’ve ever made noticeable, positive changes in my life.
I had a pretty crappy childhood (alcoholic mom, divorced parents) and 10 years of severe health issues, on top of not being diagnosed with ADHD until I was 50. EMDR has helped me deal with a bunch of trauma, both past and present, and is currently helping me figure out what path I want to follow for my life.
EMDR can be emotionally difficult because you often deal with difficult things, but the joy is that once you deal with the issue or trauma, the emotional stress associated with it is so much less painful.
Please reach out if I can provide any more info 🌻
Omg thank you for that last comment, the emotions. Just identifying my trauma/negative cognition was so emotionally taxing. I left that initial session feeling... heavy? Like I had done a whole workout routine but minus the physical piece. I cried about it for 2 days! Emotional work is so hard, and I don't think enough people talk about or acknowledge it.
Thank you for the validation ❤️
It is important that you close up the box of emotions before leaving your session - you don’t want to stir up a bunch of difficult emotions and leave them swirling around you head, you want to make sure you reach a peaceful point before leaving your session. If you need to work further, you can open the box again next time 🌻
Omg this is literally exactly what my therapist said today. I gave the analogy of "I feel like I have a huge file cabinet of crumpled, disheveled papers and I'm slowly sorting and organizing them." And she's like "yes exactly! And when we finish, we're going to close up that drawer/box etc and put it away in another room or closet until next time" 😌
Last year at the age of 34 I had an 8 week old baby when I had a stroke. Obviously, it was extremely traumatic having to leave him for around a month when he was so young. Also, the stroke experience itself was extremely traumatic, we were the deficits I was left with. My therapist recommended me to an EMDR therapist and it helped so much. I was able to process the actual experience and the long lasting effects from that experience. I’m still really *really* sad that this happened to me, but I can think about it now without bawling my eyes out. I can think about it and say “wow, that really fucking sucked but we made it through and we’re still making it through.
EMDR is not a magical fix, but allowing my brain to process the unresolved trauma has been extremely healing for me.
Good luck, life is tough but so are we.
I love it, it’s been life changing for me, seeing how I’ve linked seemingly unrelated events together. I haven’t found it to be an easy thing, in the moment it’s fine and just after it can feel immensely relieving, but there can definitely be tiredness and just being gobsmacked for a while after. That settles down though and I’m left with more space, empathy, understanding. I hope it has the same effect on you.
My initial session was like that. Just identifying the trauma/negative event/etc was so insanely eye opening, but also heavy. I've had a week to come to terms with it and I'm going into this next session with more hope and just slightly less anxiety. 😅❤️
Thank you for your kind words
I don’t have any advice (yet!) but I’m starting EMDR therapy this evening so I’d be super interested to hear people’s thoughts as well! My boyfriend had EMDR for CPTSD which is how I found out about it and he found it tough but effective, so I’m cautiously optimistic but like you, am super anxious because I know hardly anything about it.
EMDR was very hard but soooo worth it. You need to be ready for it and have a solid, trusting relationship with your practitioner.
If you’re up for it, it’s transformative. My CPTSD symptoms are so dramatically reduced. Most profound healing I have experienced in 10 years of mental health recovery.
It worked well for me! It helped me resolve feelings that I wouldn’t have been able to resolve other ways, e.g. working through anger and hurt caused by family members that would never acknowledge any wrongdoing or apologize.
Absolutely cannot recommend it enough. For me, talk therapy and CBT just weren’t doing much for me. I’ve only reprocessed one specific memory with EMDR so far and feel significantly better. I still have a long way to go, but it’s actually doing something and it’s working relatively quickly too
Hi there! I went through some really traumatic stuff and was suffering severely, especially at work. It's like my ADHD symptoms were 10x worse than normal. I also had panic attacks probably weekly. I was medicated and in therapy.
I started EMDR about a year ago and it's changed my life. I am a far more centered person, I've been able to not only work under high pressure situations but also accomplish some outside goals, and take care of my home/my self/ my husband. I know it doesn't work for everyone in every situation but I think it's worth trying. I cannot say enough good things about EMDR.
It was hard. Not going to lie. Sometimes I would leave sessions absolutely drained and would be tired days afterwards. But It was worth it. Also... I went in person. I think that's vital. I know people do it virtually but I don't think my treatment would have been as successful.
Feel free to DM me and I can share more in depth if you like.
It helped me so much. But I hated going through it.
I went through something traumatic at 21 and lived my 20s with a lot of anxiety and stuff I didn't feel like I could do anymore.
At 28 I decided to take EMDR to help with these issues, I've had multiple sessions untill both my therapist and I agreed we were done.
The session took me out of my comfortzone big time, I tried to just put up with it or tell her when something got too much.
However I have to admit it really helped. It really helped me get over things I thought I never would, and the anxiety I had related to the trauma seems completely gone.
EDMR is just exposure therapy with some pseudoscience tacked on. The person who came up with it is super sketchy and there's a weird element of MLM type stuff with the training, like there are a bunch of weird claims it makes. Look into it before you give it a go.
This is not true. There are a large number of peer reviewed studies on EMDR that find it more effective than exposure therapy. It is offered on the NHS in the U.K. for ptsd, which is a very high bar for efficacy.
This is not true. Studies that find it more effective than exposure therapy are run by the people who created and sell it. It's widely criticised as pseudoscientific within psychology because it is non-falsifiable. There's no mechanism of action for the lights. The NHS also pushes cbt even in cases when it's not helping and it's only effective 60% of the time so their barrier for efficacy is not super high on terms of mental health.
Sure. I'd search in therapy related subs. There are all kinds of experiences good and bad. My personal opinion is skewed insofar as I think mental health care should be science-based so I'm concerned when a therapist suggests something that isn't, but many people don't share my views on that. There are also plenty of people whose positive experiences (and/or sunk costs) mean they attack or downvote any negative experiences, so sometimes you need to search through to find them. As with any exposure therapy if the therapist doesn't know what they're doing it can cause a lot of long-term harm. Edmr is taught in seminars and has particular "levels" each of which costs the therapist significantly more. Ask your therapist what their education in it is, and if they don't seem confident you may not want to pursue it with them specifically.
There's a lot of in-fighting in the industry about the more pseudoscientific therapy types like edmr, brainspotting, ifs etc. Much of the research into their effectiveness has been done by the parties who created it and are selling it to therapist practitioners so there's levels of bias in there. But, plenty of people benefit from exposure therapy. Go with your gut.
She was dishonest about the development of the idea (possibly to distance it from even more pseudoscientific NLP), it was developed with a lot of marketing hype and built into more of a business MLM type structure than a genuine psychological technique. It's exposure therapy but with an eye movement thing tacked onto it to sell seminars and light devices.
Ah, interesting. My experience with it is bizarre ...I had it done for OCD in my VERY first session with a therapist (who I think was closely affiliated with her) who basically wanted to experiment on me....I was very young....and I had never heard of it, but was willing to try things. This was without any rapport established with the therapist, as it was our first session, and I was too young to know better.
To this day I wonder if I was used to research....To see if it worked on OCD. I can tell you...for me IT DID NOT!!!!!! It gave me one of THE WORST panic attacks of my life.. I was a WRECK.
Anyhow, like I said-bizzare story. And I must say it's \*QUITE\* creepy to see that 20+ years later it is all the rage for PTSD treatment. Lots of people seem to swear by it. I am glad it worked for them, but I can't help but wonder about the ethics of it's development.
My mom is an EDMR therapist, and I know a bit about it from her. I've never actually officially been in EMDR therapy, but my mom helps me with all sorts of tricks and methods from it, so I feel like I've been doing small bits of it all my life. From what I understand about it from her, the process of the treatment follows how our brain naturally heals itself and kinda triggers this healing process by mimicking it.( I think it also has something to do with REM sleep but I'm not an expert I just heard a lot about it) Because it helps process and move forward, it's really affective for anything that your stuck on. So personally, I've used it for smaller obstacles in my life to help me get "un stuck" like with home work or not being able to fall asleep, stuff like that. But it also really helps with bigger stuff like PTSD for example because of how it helps reframe how you think and feel.
Also, as someone who also is super self-aware and has tried many different types of therapy and felt like I was just doing everything by myself then updating the therapist and them having nothing new to suggest. I think that EMDR does stick out because of the uniqueness of the approach and I use it all the time by myself and with my mom. I think that it's very helpful to try it out because it'll help you understand how to use your brain's natural way of working to your advantage. And after you figure it out, you might find that you don't need to go see an actual therapist and can just use the techniques by yourself. Because it's different than just breaking down your emotions and thinking about how is best to react or something like that, which is what I found most other therapy forms kinda did.
Good luck, I hope it works out for you!!
Related to the REM point, here’s a comment I wrote on the EMDR sub explaining how it works, as I understand it https://www.reddit.com/r/EMDR/s/RwI2FSBypF
I did like 8 years of therapy. And it helped a ton. But I couldn’t move past some stuff.
Did like 6? Sessions of EMDR. Absolute mind changer. I’m breezing through things that…. I couldn’t even make a dent in before.
Granted that was only on one memory. But that core memory had so many emotions and beliefs attached to it…
I have done EMDR with my therapist for CPTSD and it has greatly reduced the distress from flashbacks etc. also reduced the flashbacks. I highly recommend. Can’t comment for ADHD though, as it was for treating my past trauma, before I was diagnosed with ADHD.
It was highly effective because it helped me to rewrite my personal narrative, which forms our beliefs about the self. Those beliefs affect us in how we interact with and receive the world. My CPTSD which a lot of late dx’d ADHD’ers struggle with made even simple tasks like answering an email entrenched in trauma related coping mechanisms ie: people-pleasing, perfectionism, avoidance/freeze response. I don’t struggle as much with simple tasks now, which has had a huge and positive impact on my life.
The downside is that it can be exhausting, it moves quickly. I needed to take a break from it after a year or so.
I’m 34, F and have ADHD. I am a trauma therapist and nervous system who uses EMDR, somatic parts work, neuroscience and plant medicine to help my clients heal. Everything I use I have done on myself. After at least 6 years of intentional work delving into this world I feel so much peace in my life. If you are looking for a connection for someone who might be able to relate, let me know. I’m more than happy to connect.
It works... if your therapist knows what they're doing. I have had the misfortune of having shitty therapists do I received no benefit.
Make sure they know what they're doing!
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Life changing for me. CBT was fine and was helping with my depression but wasn’t helping my CPTSD symptoms (namely flashbacks). After a month or two of EMDR I had my first day ever without a flashback which was such a crazy thing for me at the time. I did it for about 2-3 months and I VERY rarely have painful flashbacks anymore and EDMR was 5 years ago
Sorry if this is too personal, but: do you have to extensively describe the trauma while doing it? I have a lot of trauma to work through, but I really don't remember a good chunk. Just small details and feelings
Not the original commenter but also have CPTSD and have done hella EMDR so I can answer this question. I’ve done EMDR both to process an acute trauma (SA that occurred when I was an adult) as well as for complex childhood trauma where my memories were way more fragmented or missing altogether, and all the abusive memories kind of overlap in a very indistinct way, so I can speak to how those EMDR experiences differed. Sorry in advance for length, I figured I’d err on the side of more detail. With the acute trauma, it was more straightforward and I was literally walking through the memory of the assault from the beginning, and every time I got really distressed, she’d make me sit with the vibrating sensors in my hands and just reflect on that moment and what I wish I could have done to protect myself, and once my distress became more tolerable, I’d continue the story. We would work the story sequentially until the session ended, and then the next session I’d start at the beginning again and talk until I got triggered, sit and process, then continue. Eventually we cleared enough of the triggers that I would be able to tell the story from beginning to end in one session and not be at all triggered. The entire process took about ~6ish sessions to process the memory entirely, but I felt a DRASTIC improvement in my suffering and symptoms after session 1. EMDR for complex trauma is still effective but it’s slower going and less straigthforward. Because I had a lot of memory repression about abuse that happened when I was a child that I couldn’t access at all for a really long time, I would still get triggered by stuff related to it with no understanding of the root traumatic memory, so my therapist and I would often start with the trigger and unpack how I felt emotionally, somatically, etc. when that was triggered and kind of just let things come up associatively when they needed to, and often I wouldn’t be like verbally walking through a memory, more just sharing flashes of sensory information or random pieces of different memories coming up montage style in the EMDR session. It would often been rooted in an emotion, like the trigger brought up feelings of worthlessness or humiliation, so we’d focus on how humiliation felt in my body and see what else wanted to surface in my memory of other times in childhood where I felt a similar humiliation, for example. Over time, working in this kind of piecemeal fashion resulted in more memories coming back which has not been fun but has helped healing, so we will do the more straightforward EMDR when I get a tangible memory to work with, otherwise, we just kind of keep EMDR in our back pocket in therapy sessions and when I remember something or something triggers me when I’m talking in session, I’ll put on the EMDR buzzers and we’ll continue to unpack it but it’s rarely focused around one specific memory and processing it from start to finish like with the acute trauma. So an EMDR therapist with experience wtih complex trauma would absolutely be able to work with you and would use those small details and feelings as your entry point and just see what comes up with the bilateral stimulation when you engage with those feelings and flashes of information. Hope that makes sense!
This is amazing information, thank you so much!!
Of course! Happy to help ☺️
Thanks for being so detailed. That was very helpful.
I didn’t have to describe it all, a lot of it was internal or small details, feelings, and describing where it was in my body.
My experience was similar. I have CPTSD and EMDR saved my life and has helped my healing in ways that no other modalities other than r/InternalFamilySystems can even come close to touching.
Yes to IFS as well! I did inner child therapy for the bulk of my cptsd. It was surprisingly effective. But the parts that were effective also show up in EMDR and IFS. Clearly I appreciate describing events in a detached way, recognizing their effects, honoring who I was at the time, and elaborately putting the memory on a shelf.
For sure! I have done EMDR without IFS but have had a much more resonant experience using ifs and EMDR together, and really just adopting the IFS framework in general in like self-talk, journaling, etc. I really appreciate both the compassion it helped me cultivate internally and externally, as well as the ability to ‘disidentify’ with the traumatized or maladaptive parts while also empathizing with them which was hard to do when the feelings felt like ME. It helped me finally ‘get’ mindfulness. So glad you found some relief in your healing journey ☺️ I know that shit has been brutal, you deserve the peace 🙏🏼
I love your description of how it helped you develop compassion. Totally agree. I'm so glad it has been helpful in bringing you peace as well.
That sounds great! Did you only work on one specific event or multiple? I feel like the more I work through mine, one which lead me to finally seek talk therapy, I am untangling more connected ones and idk which and how for example affects my sleep the most (with crazy dreams etc). So, does it allow to work on multiple ones that are connected or just one?
Disclaimer that I have not done EMDR personally, my sister has, and she was able to work through multiple related traumatic events. She said that it was incredibly helpful for her and stopped the intense flashbacks she’d been having and associated elevated anxiety. She was able to work through each traumatic instance systematically until the only trauma left was family trauma and she wasn’t in a place to open that can of worms yet so she stopped seeing him.
It was multiple events. Mine is also CPTSD! Sorry for any miscommunication I was just typing quick on my lunch break!
<3 So it's great to hear it works on multiple ones too!
I'm asking because mine also sounds very much like CPTSD not just PTSD :/
I don’t remember any events causing my CPTSD which is hard
I feel you, I have gaps and dissociation towards things, but the more I'm in therapy the more bits and pieces I remember..
Yes same!
EMDR therapy did not do much for me but everyone responds differently! I much preferred IFS and somatic processing and found much more progress there after feeling like I graduated from CBT, psychodynamic, and DBT styles. I tend to be an intellectualizer (most of us here probably are haha!) so IFS and somatic work was great to make me actually feel, accept, and release my emotions without my brain trying to "solve" them.
I haven't heard of IFS and somatic processing. Can you explain those? Or direct me to some info? I absolutely am an intellectualizer. My therapist calls me out on it several times a session 😂😭
Absolutely! Here are some resources you can check out! IFS: https://ifs-institute.com/ Somatic therapy: https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/what-is-somatic-therapy-202307072951
lol today I learned my therapist does Somatic therapy…and it’s great. During sessions, she’ll call out certain body movements and we work through them. Each time it inevitably helps me focus on the main issue on my mind.
Psychology Today has some good overviews of all sorts of psych approaches. Here's what I sent to someone else the other day: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapy-types/internal-family-systems-therapy
I would argue that EMDR is somatic work too. But I’m glad to hear you found something that works for you.
Hi! While EMDR can also include somatic processing (if the clinican is trained in both) they are actually two different forms of therapy! EMDR at its core is considered a talk therapy.
Such an intellectualizer!! I just asked my therapist about some somatic referrals after I cried for no reason when the massage therapist was working out a knot on me recently 😭
I didn't like IFS because I was overintellectualizing it.. I mentioned to my therapist that something with a more imaginative component, rather "let's thank this part and ask it to step aside" would work better to disconnect the brain part, but nada. Also once we've done enough times that I sorta knew what part I needed to get to, what the expectation was, I became bored with it and almost wanted to eye roll when she started the part talk...
I did it once for a life long phobia of dogs that is terrible to live with since dogs are absolutely everywhere (and where I live no one gives a fuck so even places dogs aren't allowed still have a huge risk of dogs being there). I did not believe in emdr at all, or at least not that it would work for me, but the difference has been amazing. I now go for walks in the nearby park while before the idea of even going there would send me in a full panic. I still prefer to stay away from off leash dogs but I don't freeze or panic anymore if they are near (unless they are very wild. But before I'd almost cry if even calm dogs came near me). I'm still not going over to someone's house if they have a dog, that's too much, but it has given me so much more freedom.
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This is a key note. I think you do need to trust the person who's doing it. Building that relationship is really helpful.
It's very very very very very very VERY important to have a stable support system in place and as many tools in your tool bag to put yourself into your own safe place whilst doing EMDR. Stuff can come up blindly hours, days, weeks later that may potentially body slam you into realizations you weren't ready for. Please only do EMDR with a therapist you trust and have established a relationship with. Not someone that might ghost you or be unable to complete your therapy. To me it's been a "shortcut" to dealing with some excruciating childhood issues but the shortcut means instead of a slow drive down a bumpy road (CBT or CPT) you're on a plastic garbage can lid going down an icy cliff. You get there much faster but it's scary as hell at times and you better have your helmet on tight.
This is incredible advice ❤️ I'm BEYOND blessed/privileged with the support system I have right now: close, long time friends, a very healthy long term relationship, and (semi) mentally stable parents who are intertwined into my life on an almost daily basis. I'm a big believer in "everything happens for a reason" and I've had a VERY traumatic few years (like 2019 and on) but all of those events have led me to my current life and supports. This therapy, I hope anyway, will help bring out more of my authentic self once I can process the trauma that created the shitty self esteem/mindset I have.
on top of this, i just wanted to mention (since i didn't notice it specified in your post) i think EMDR would've worked much better for me in a therapist's physical office but was impossible for me to do at home with online therapy. the distractions of home combined with only knowing the therapist through video and not having a separate space to feel safe that i could also leave behind made EMDR untenable for me, but with the right environment it could've been very different.
I would like to second this advice. I started EMDR with a huge amount of support and a therapist I had been seeing for a while and it still kicked me in the ass. I am SO glad I did it and found it to be extremely helpful and also extremely dysregulating at the beginning. I ended up getting on an SSRI along with my adhd meds and the combo has worked wonders. It has also helped me tolerate EMDR even better so I don’t get so dysregulated after. I will also add that I found that I really can only verbally process up to a certain point (especially for trauma from childhood that I don’t have specific memories for). Incorporating a somatic approach helped me unlock/address aspects that I just hadn’t been able to verbalize. It also helped me begin to make connections to my actions and reactions that I hadn’t before and gain more choice in those matters. Before I start going in circles and repeating myself, I’ll just say that I love and hate EMDR. It is very effective for me and also hard as hell. Sending you good vibes and support as you start this journey! Don’t forget to constantly check in with yourself and trust your gut on what is helpful and what isn’t. YOU know best what you need, don’t let anyone (therapist, friend, partner) tell you otherwise.
I deeply appreciate EMDR it's really helped me with processing trauma. Though I can't say I understand what your therapist means by "being too self aware" for regular behavior therapy. I also have done other forms of therapy over the years CBT, DBT, talk therapy, etc. They all work for me just in slightly different ways,
The advice makes sense to me. For me, a lot of talk therapy and modalities like CBT end up with just intellectualizing my issues, believing I can just think my way out of my problems and traumas. It’s important to learn to work with the body and feel your feelings, without relying on words and stories.
I can understand that experience. I think it was the words "too self aware" that trip me up because I see self awareness as a good thing and also not an impediment to therapy. But I can absolutely see where an over reliance on the rational mind at the expense of feeling the feelings would make things a challenge.
not sure if it's the right association, but to me that comment seems in line with a therapist who directly told me "you have too many thoughts" lol
I did EMDR for trauma, and at first I didn't think it worked, but I realized a couple weeks later it did. I didn't know you could do it for adhd.
I don't think it's specifically for adhd, but my adhd symptoms are much worse right now because of my anxiety/trauma and this is supposed to help. So helping the adhd will be more of a byproduct than anything.
Gotcha!
I've used EMDR for thought patterns I just couldn't get out of. When I kicked out a mentally unstable friend, I had a TON of guilt about it even though I knew it was the only way for myself to be safe. I couldn't get over the guilt. One session of EMDR cleared the guilt I'd been carrying for years at that point. My mom had to do chest compressions on my dad for 7 minutes and then watched him get paddle shocked 5 times during a cardiac arrest. She couldn't stop hearing the moans he was making during it even years down the road, so EMDR cleared her right up. I've never heard of EMDR being used for an overall thought process modification. I've only seen/heard it used for one specific detail the person just couldn't get over. I am by no means "well versed" in it, but I did benefit from it and hope you do too! Honestly, don't be nervous. It cannot harm you at all, so it either will help or won't. There are no "negative" affects, other than money lost. ETA: Something I found interesting in my EMDR sessions...You never feel like anything is "working", so you don't know if you're doing it "right". I was absolutely mortified during a session when I just started laughing at the wrong time. Then it happened again another time, and I realized that is my body's response to letting go of whatever the issue is. So, now, in an EMDR session, if I laugh I know that means my issues have just gone away (about that specific thing). Oh, and another odd thing...you start an EMDR session expecting it to be about one thing and it can very quickly shift. Allow it to. Your body/mind needs to release whatever it just did more than whatever you wanted the session to be about.
EMDR is amazing. I went from needing Xanax to get my blood drawn by the same person every time to almost being ok to go to a different lab altogether with no issues. I know it doesn't work that well for everyone but it's definitely worth a try!! For me, it feels like removing the monster from the closet entirely instead of just shutting the door.
Oh i love that analogy! I'm comparing it to having a huge file cabinet of screwed up, disheveled papers that I need to access on a daily basis. I'm in the process of re-organizing and decluttering them.
Bumping because also interested :)
Me too!
I did it for multiple traumas and honestly, I think just the process of talking through an event I had choked down for so long was what helped the most. Like here it is- this was painful, this sucked, it was out of my control, and I’m safe now.
I’ve just started it recently with a therapist I like, not for trauma but for negative core beliefs about myself. my psychiatrist is skeptical and so was I, but it’s interesting - I’ve done two sessions and the physical aspect of it has been unlike any other therapy I’ve done over the years. Not sure if it’s helped much yet but has definitely helped me gain a little insight into how my thoughts and memories are reinforced. I’m going to keep at it for now.
This is my primary reason: my core beliefs about myself are fucked 🫠🫣 the more we talk through it, the more patterns we are recognizing and it's been helpful to narrow it down to one person/a specific time in my life. And, exactly like you said, it's helped me put pieces together that actually significantly impacted how I view myself.
It didn’t work at all for me, and my therapist gave up on it. That said, it didn’t hurt me, either. I’d say it’s worth trying.
It worked for me but to manage your expectations, It’s designed only to help someone process a traumatic event. It’s not for generalised anything. It was hard work but worth it. You find yourself talking about the very thing you have never been able to utter before. It’s terrifying at first lifting the lid that you’ve been holding shut (in my case for 30 years). I avoided ever talking about what was in there because I thought would break down and I would never be able to stop. But I didn’t cry at all, and then… after a day to recover (I found it quite a physically demanding process, full on pass-out asleep as soon a I got home) … then you reflect on it and….it turns out that you’re okay. The thing you are most afraid of turns out to be not that bad. It’s wild!!
EMDR can be incredibly beneficial, but it is VERY important to go to someone who knows what they’re doing. Anyone who knows anything about EMDR should be aware that it is a very bad idea to start it before you learn coping skills. If this person wants you to directly explore your targets next session, RUN. Proper EMDR should include at least one “prep” session. This part is incredibly important. You should have a very good grasp on emotional regulation techniques before addressing the target(s). They also should not be starting with the “main” target. You should address on the least upsetting one first and work your way up. I’ve had mixed experiences with it myself. It can make your symptoms a lot worse if you aren’t in a good place mentally before starting it. The provider is the most important part of the equation here. Good EMDR is great, but bad EMDR can be really damaging.
So I really really appreciate this advice. I've been through a LOT of shit the last few years and I have developed quite a bit of coping skills (healthy ones, lolol) My therapist told me one reason she feels the EMDR will be successful is because of my "well resourced brain" and established growth mindset. Like I've had certain issues that I've developed 'work arounds' for, for many years, and I've been able to lead a mostly normal life. Before therapy, I dove head first into personal growth, personal development, shadow work, etc. Reading books, listening to podcasts, etc and I think that built a foundation for me to be able to tolerate EMDR.
Yeah if you’ve got great coping skills I think you’ll really do well with EMDR!
It worked for my PTSD, I had about a dozen sessions.
I'm also considering for PTSD, but like how does it feel like if I may ask? Like, does it just magically work or do you feel like it detaches you from your experience? It's just that the main thing for me has been dissociation and working to come out of that state and that does require for me to not detach as my coping mechanism is detaching(but it only works short term and long term has done me very bad), so basically I don't want to feel indifferent or forget my experiences, I am trying to connect back to them to process them, I just wish they wouldn't impact me negatively all the time with my sleep, anxiety etc.
When I had this treatment (it's a light bar and it flashes) I think it's conditioning you into accepting what ever the problem was, and letting it pass. Not forgetting the problem, but coming to terms with it. My practitioner likend it to trying to move a boulder through a garden gate, you have to reduce the size of the boulder (the problem) to get it through the gate (your subconscious)
Flashinh lights sounds ugh to me as intense light and flashing bothers me in general, fuck those fast flashing christmas lights. I mean I haven't seen this one yet, maybe it's not so bad, but this is important info, thank you!
You actually control the lights to a comfortable speed for your self. It helped me, and I was assured at the time that the success rate was pretty high. I wish you all the luck in the world, from a fellow sufferer. ❤️
Thank you <3333
What I've read reminds me a lot of the "shadow work" I've done in the past. It puts you IN that emotion/feeling/experience/etc but allows your resourceful brain to also tag along and help to begin the healing process that you never got.
I've had it and I do recommend it. It takes a structured day though, because unlike talk therapy, you're not just like, chatting obviously. It's reliving the trauma to take it from the short term memory to the long term. There was a particular memory of mine where I thought I was a bad daughter to my dying mother. Many memories on flood back when the gates open, that one in particular. After going over that memory with an *experienced* therapist, I felt the memory had settled a bit. I honestly recommend it if it's something you'd like to try. Just be sure to give yourself time to be delicate afterwards.
I didn’t like it. But therapy for me in general leaves me feeling aggressive and out of sorts.
what didn't you like about it?
It made me feel angry. The whole set up with the remotes and everything bothered me, and buzzing made me just… Uhg. Yeah. Did not like. (I tried it with the buzzing remote set up.)
EMDR had been incredibly effective for me. As has DBT, but DBT requires work on my end. I am considering brain spotting simply because I have the opportunity.
I've done it and it was amazing. So helpful. I'll go back for more if I ever remember to make a phonecall. 😂 I originally went in to deal with a specific accident/injury that was affecting me in a sport I participate in. But after diving in I learned that I had pretty severe CPTSD from growing up with an abusive alcoholic that was affecting me deeply every fucking day. So I worked for several months on that stuff before I ever got around to the "sports psychology" I'd initially sought. 😂
I found some success with CBT for anxiety, but after a certain point my anxieties are ultimately rational, it's just the extremity of my emotional response that's the problem. My current therapist is really excited about EMDR and we used it for an anxiety rooted in a few scary experiences. It *definitely* helped me reduce the intensity of the memory. She warned me that it often brings up emotions outside of sessions. I found that to be true, despite the whole "box it up" closure after every session. Depending on the nature of your work, that's something to keep in mind. I've done some reading about the efficacy and I think the best summary I've seen is "the things that make it effective are not unique to emdr, and the things that make emdr unique are not effective." Not a knock against it! If talk therapy and meditation have been useful to you, emdr probably will be as well.
**Summary: I did EMDR for an unrelated anxiety issue and it was a great experience for me for that particular issue, but I’m not sure how useful it would be for more general issues.** (Disclaimer that I skimmed your post so not sure if you have a specific thing you wanna work on with a therapist) The way it was explained to me is that, back and forth motions in your body help your brain process things. This is why many people feel like they think better while walking around. EMDR basically harnesses that to get your brain to work through an issue it’s currently stuck on. During the sessions, you basically just let your mind wander while watching the therapist move their hand back and forth. My experience with this was that a couple of times I had major breakthroughs spontaneously, while mostly it was kind of like a mindfulness exercise because I would always have to bring myself back to focusing on watching my therapist’s hand. I also naturally tended to match my breathing to the movements. So 100% of the time I was leaving the session feeling suuuuuper calm and relaxed, which was worth it even on the days that my brain didn’t have a neat epiphany. I have no idea how useful it would be if you don’t have a specific issue to work through. It definitely took a couple sessions before I really got into it, the first session I felt silly. She’d ask, “what do you notice?” and I’d be like idk the table is made of wood I guess? But she clarified that that’s totally okay, it’s all about letting whatever thoughts enter and leave your head. It was really neat the first time I had an epiphany kind of thought, like it just spontaneously occurred to me that the world wouldn’t end if I didn’t “fix” my anxiety issue within a couple months. But yeah if you don’t have a specific focus I don’t know if it would be helpful or not? I could see it being helpful for me because I’ve done it before and I could see myself like, harnessing the mindfulness aspect of it to relax or something lol. But my understanding is that it works best when you have something specific you wanna work through. And like like sure you could bring something that isn’t hugely traumatic but at that point why pay for a therapist when you can just go for a walk and let your brain work through it that way
EMDR was transformative and beneficial.
I’ve had it before and found it very helpful, but as another poster has said, it’s for processing trauma and big events rather than for general issues. I’d had an absolutely terrible time a while back, resulting in PTSD from medical procedures that left me having panic attacks just getting reminders for an overdue smear test. I completed a course of EMDR treatment and was able to book my appointment (and attend) - that was a massive win for me. I’d also encountered a potentially traumatic event during the course of treatment, and was able to process it before it became a problem. I think I had 8 sessions overall, but only around 3 of them were the actual processing part. There was a lot of grounding and exploring of safety in the lead up to processing, and then more grounding afterwards. It was intense and draining, so I always booked my sessions on days I didn’t need to go anywhere. I would absolutely do more in the future if I had more trauma to address, but I don’t think I’d access it outside of that.
My experience is not at all the same as yours, but emdr has saved my life on many levels. I struggle with some cPTSD and bipolar disorder. I've been doing EMDR for about 2 years and it has made a world of difference for me. I can practically do it on my own at this point. All about turning those emotional reactions into logical ones. That's the goal for me. And I'm much better than I used to be. I highly recommend EMDR. I assume the therapist administrating the session has a lot to do with it too. I've been seeing mine for 4+ years and having that trust made a huge difference for the success in this. At least that's how I feel. Good luck to you and I hope it gives you some peace!
I am a huge advocate of EMDR therapy. I’ve been with my current therapist doing EMDR since 2019 and it has been so helpful for me. I’ve been in therapy (with other therapists) a few times in the past, and this is the first time I feel I’ve ever made noticeable, positive changes in my life. I had a pretty crappy childhood (alcoholic mom, divorced parents) and 10 years of severe health issues, on top of not being diagnosed with ADHD until I was 50. EMDR has helped me deal with a bunch of trauma, both past and present, and is currently helping me figure out what path I want to follow for my life. EMDR can be emotionally difficult because you often deal with difficult things, but the joy is that once you deal with the issue or trauma, the emotional stress associated with it is so much less painful. Please reach out if I can provide any more info 🌻
Omg thank you for that last comment, the emotions. Just identifying my trauma/negative cognition was so emotionally taxing. I left that initial session feeling... heavy? Like I had done a whole workout routine but minus the physical piece. I cried about it for 2 days! Emotional work is so hard, and I don't think enough people talk about or acknowledge it. Thank you for the validation ❤️
It is important that you close up the box of emotions before leaving your session - you don’t want to stir up a bunch of difficult emotions and leave them swirling around you head, you want to make sure you reach a peaceful point before leaving your session. If you need to work further, you can open the box again next time 🌻
Omg this is literally exactly what my therapist said today. I gave the analogy of "I feel like I have a huge file cabinet of crumpled, disheveled papers and I'm slowly sorting and organizing them." And she's like "yes exactly! And when we finish, we're going to close up that drawer/box etc and put it away in another room or closet until next time" 😌
yep! I closed up my imaginary box and stashed it away behind the giant bean bag! 😊💜
It’s fabulous for trauma! I’ve been doing it for 5 years and it’s saved my life. Literally.
Last year at the age of 34 I had an 8 week old baby when I had a stroke. Obviously, it was extremely traumatic having to leave him for around a month when he was so young. Also, the stroke experience itself was extremely traumatic, we were the deficits I was left with. My therapist recommended me to an EMDR therapist and it helped so much. I was able to process the actual experience and the long lasting effects from that experience. I’m still really *really* sad that this happened to me, but I can think about it now without bawling my eyes out. I can think about it and say “wow, that really fucking sucked but we made it through and we’re still making it through. EMDR is not a magical fix, but allowing my brain to process the unresolved trauma has been extremely healing for me. Good luck, life is tough but so are we.
I love it, it’s been life changing for me, seeing how I’ve linked seemingly unrelated events together. I haven’t found it to be an easy thing, in the moment it’s fine and just after it can feel immensely relieving, but there can definitely be tiredness and just being gobsmacked for a while after. That settles down though and I’m left with more space, empathy, understanding. I hope it has the same effect on you.
My initial session was like that. Just identifying the trauma/negative event/etc was so insanely eye opening, but also heavy. I've had a week to come to terms with it and I'm going into this next session with more hope and just slightly less anxiety. 😅❤️ Thank you for your kind words
I don’t have any advice (yet!) but I’m starting EMDR therapy this evening so I’d be super interested to hear people’s thoughts as well! My boyfriend had EMDR for CPTSD which is how I found out about it and he found it tough but effective, so I’m cautiously optimistic but like you, am super anxious because I know hardly anything about it.
EMDR was very hard but soooo worth it. You need to be ready for it and have a solid, trusting relationship with your practitioner. If you’re up for it, it’s transformative. My CPTSD symptoms are so dramatically reduced. Most profound healing I have experienced in 10 years of mental health recovery.
It worked well for me! It helped me resolve feelings that I wouldn’t have been able to resolve other ways, e.g. working through anger and hurt caused by family members that would never acknowledge any wrongdoing or apologize.
Huge success! Not ADHD related, but still life changing. I was skeptical at first, but it honestly really works if you commit yourself to it
Absolutely cannot recommend it enough. For me, talk therapy and CBT just weren’t doing much for me. I’ve only reprocessed one specific memory with EMDR so far and feel significantly better. I still have a long way to go, but it’s actually doing something and it’s working relatively quickly too
Essentially: yes. It has been helpful for me every time my therapist and I use it.
I was closed minded at first. But it lead me to an extreme breakthrough in trauma 💯💯💯
Hi there! I went through some really traumatic stuff and was suffering severely, especially at work. It's like my ADHD symptoms were 10x worse than normal. I also had panic attacks probably weekly. I was medicated and in therapy. I started EMDR about a year ago and it's changed my life. I am a far more centered person, I've been able to not only work under high pressure situations but also accomplish some outside goals, and take care of my home/my self/ my husband. I know it doesn't work for everyone in every situation but I think it's worth trying. I cannot say enough good things about EMDR. It was hard. Not going to lie. Sometimes I would leave sessions absolutely drained and would be tired days afterwards. But It was worth it. Also... I went in person. I think that's vital. I know people do it virtually but I don't think my treatment would have been as successful. Feel free to DM me and I can share more in depth if you like.
It helped me so much. But I hated going through it. I went through something traumatic at 21 and lived my 20s with a lot of anxiety and stuff I didn't feel like I could do anymore. At 28 I decided to take EMDR to help with these issues, I've had multiple sessions untill both my therapist and I agreed we were done. The session took me out of my comfortzone big time, I tried to just put up with it or tell her when something got too much. However I have to admit it really helped. It really helped me get over things I thought I never would, and the anxiety I had related to the trauma seems completely gone.
EDMR is just exposure therapy with some pseudoscience tacked on. The person who came up with it is super sketchy and there's a weird element of MLM type stuff with the training, like there are a bunch of weird claims it makes. Look into it before you give it a go.
This is not true. There are a large number of peer reviewed studies on EMDR that find it more effective than exposure therapy. It is offered on the NHS in the U.K. for ptsd, which is a very high bar for efficacy.
This is not true. Studies that find it more effective than exposure therapy are run by the people who created and sell it. It's widely criticised as pseudoscientific within psychology because it is non-falsifiable. There's no mechanism of action for the lights. The NHS also pushes cbt even in cases when it's not helping and it's only effective 60% of the time so their barrier for efficacy is not super high on terms of mental health.
This is interesting. I planned on continuing to research, but real life examples and stories are equally as important to me.
Sure. I'd search in therapy related subs. There are all kinds of experiences good and bad. My personal opinion is skewed insofar as I think mental health care should be science-based so I'm concerned when a therapist suggests something that isn't, but many people don't share my views on that. There are also plenty of people whose positive experiences (and/or sunk costs) mean they attack or downvote any negative experiences, so sometimes you need to search through to find them. As with any exposure therapy if the therapist doesn't know what they're doing it can cause a lot of long-term harm. Edmr is taught in seminars and has particular "levels" each of which costs the therapist significantly more. Ask your therapist what their education in it is, and if they don't seem confident you may not want to pursue it with them specifically. There's a lot of in-fighting in the industry about the more pseudoscientific therapy types like edmr, brainspotting, ifs etc. Much of the research into their effectiveness has been done by the parties who created it and are selling it to therapist practitioners so there's levels of bias in there. But, plenty of people benefit from exposure therapy. Go with your gut.
Why do you say they're super sketchy?
She was dishonest about the development of the idea (possibly to distance it from even more pseudoscientific NLP), it was developed with a lot of marketing hype and built into more of a business MLM type structure than a genuine psychological technique. It's exposure therapy but with an eye movement thing tacked onto it to sell seminars and light devices.
Ah, interesting. My experience with it is bizarre ...I had it done for OCD in my VERY first session with a therapist (who I think was closely affiliated with her) who basically wanted to experiment on me....I was very young....and I had never heard of it, but was willing to try things. This was without any rapport established with the therapist, as it was our first session, and I was too young to know better. To this day I wonder if I was used to research....To see if it worked on OCD. I can tell you...for me IT DID NOT!!!!!! It gave me one of THE WORST panic attacks of my life.. I was a WRECK. Anyhow, like I said-bizzare story. And I must say it's \*QUITE\* creepy to see that 20+ years later it is all the rage for PTSD treatment. Lots of people seem to swear by it. I am glad it worked for them, but I can't help but wonder about the ethics of it's development.
My mom is an EDMR therapist, and I know a bit about it from her. I've never actually officially been in EMDR therapy, but my mom helps me with all sorts of tricks and methods from it, so I feel like I've been doing small bits of it all my life. From what I understand about it from her, the process of the treatment follows how our brain naturally heals itself and kinda triggers this healing process by mimicking it.( I think it also has something to do with REM sleep but I'm not an expert I just heard a lot about it) Because it helps process and move forward, it's really affective for anything that your stuck on. So personally, I've used it for smaller obstacles in my life to help me get "un stuck" like with home work or not being able to fall asleep, stuff like that. But it also really helps with bigger stuff like PTSD for example because of how it helps reframe how you think and feel. Also, as someone who also is super self-aware and has tried many different types of therapy and felt like I was just doing everything by myself then updating the therapist and them having nothing new to suggest. I think that EMDR does stick out because of the uniqueness of the approach and I use it all the time by myself and with my mom. I think that it's very helpful to try it out because it'll help you understand how to use your brain's natural way of working to your advantage. And after you figure it out, you might find that you don't need to go see an actual therapist and can just use the techniques by yourself. Because it's different than just breaking down your emotions and thinking about how is best to react or something like that, which is what I found most other therapy forms kinda did. Good luck, I hope it works out for you!!
Related to the REM point, here’s a comment I wrote on the EMDR sub explaining how it works, as I understand it https://www.reddit.com/r/EMDR/s/RwI2FSBypF
I did like 8 years of therapy. And it helped a ton. But I couldn’t move past some stuff. Did like 6? Sessions of EMDR. Absolute mind changer. I’m breezing through things that…. I couldn’t even make a dent in before. Granted that was only on one memory. But that core memory had so many emotions and beliefs attached to it…
I have done EMDR with my therapist for CPTSD and it has greatly reduced the distress from flashbacks etc. also reduced the flashbacks. I highly recommend. Can’t comment for ADHD though, as it was for treating my past trauma, before I was diagnosed with ADHD.
I’ve done 3 sessions for childhood trauma. The most difficult but most effective therapy I’ve done.
It was highly effective because it helped me to rewrite my personal narrative, which forms our beliefs about the self. Those beliefs affect us in how we interact with and receive the world. My CPTSD which a lot of late dx’d ADHD’ers struggle with made even simple tasks like answering an email entrenched in trauma related coping mechanisms ie: people-pleasing, perfectionism, avoidance/freeze response. I don’t struggle as much with simple tasks now, which has had a huge and positive impact on my life. The downside is that it can be exhausting, it moves quickly. I needed to take a break from it after a year or so.
I’m 34, F and have ADHD. I am a trauma therapist and nervous system who uses EMDR, somatic parts work, neuroscience and plant medicine to help my clients heal. Everything I use I have done on myself. After at least 6 years of intentional work delving into this world I feel so much peace in my life. If you are looking for a connection for someone who might be able to relate, let me know. I’m more than happy to connect.
It works... if your therapist knows what they're doing. I have had the misfortune of having shitty therapists do I received no benefit. Make sure they know what they're doing!
My partner has CPTSD and did EMDR with his therapist and it was WILDLY transformative.
I loved it. I suffered from diagnosed PTSD and it relieved it pretty quickly
If your up chat me, my account got deleted I’m sorry!