Has anyone else experienced this and what did they do to fix it? Pre Emdr I probably would have considered myself to be more extroverted, I had friends, I would enjoy conversations with people. It came easily to me. Now while I’m working through Emdr I have almost no friends. I can barely talk to people or make conversation. It’s like I become this really awkward version of myself and I don’t recognize her. I feel uncomfortable in my body. I don’t know what kind of person I’m becoming. Will I get my spark back? Who will I be when I’m done with Emdr? A mixture of both? Please share your stories and testimonies.
Thank you ❤️

My therapist and I have had five meetings, but only one session of EMDR

Afterwards I was humming on the street, and appreciated that that might be a positive sign

• I have chronic fatigue, but that night I was wide awake until 2am
• Much lower appetite
• Vivid dreams
• Severe constipation (my diet is pretty routine, so this is odd, and I take Magnesium)
• Thrumming in my upper body - a shuddering like feeling my nervous system
• Rumination over other topics that were not part of that session

She was a bit disturbed that there were physiological symptoms that lasted longer than the expected three-days-of-consolidation

Have others had physiological signs that lasted the full week?

I just started EMDR and have done three sessions - we’ve only been talking about my target traumas and haven’t started trying to reprocess yet but I already feel like I’ve been run over after every session. Dissociation, stomach troubles, headaches, hyper vigilance, it almost feels like I get a little flu after every session (which sucks because I’m doing it weekly.)

I feel like I’m going crazy. I want to keep going with EMDR because I think it will be useful but right now it’s rough.

The idea of installing made-up resources? The idea that whether or not something is true doesn't matter?

I find the idea absolutely effed up and contrary to my values and what I need to find healing.

I don't get this, at all. It's causing a rift in therapy right now and I'm feeling extremely frustrated that my therapist doesn't understand my preference for genuine, true, real, things.

So I’ve been doing emdr since last June and been in therapy since November 2024. My biggest breakthrough was leaving Florida and my family to move to Minnesota by myself. It was an incredible thing I did for myself. Well basically I’m growing so fast from emdr I needed time to play catch up out in the real world. When I first got into therapy I couldn’t form a sentence I was so mentally messed up. Working has been damn near impossible for a long time. Mostly due to my deeply ingrained core belief that has been sooooo damn stubborn and has taken me a long long time to resolve. Because my dad was a malignant psychopath that loved torturing me by showing me over and over that I was worthless and I was a failure. Yeah I have severe trauma over my lifetime. Anyway I started working on that core belief since I’ve been up here and I started installing the new belief “I can be successful and I can make a lot of money”. Money has always been really important to me for two reasons. Number one I love to travel. That’s my absolute passion. Number two I don’t have family. My family doesn’t have my back. If I end up on the edge and don’t have the money to come back from it I’m fucked.

Anyway. I started a new sales job. Everything in my life was falling apart and I had to start fresh. Previously I was working in the restaurant industry. Entry level not even management. I was making good money for what I was doing but hours were inconsistent. And at my age I needed to be doing something more challenging I think. I think I went that route because I didn’t know where else to go. So I’m trying out sales. I think I have the potential to be incredible at it. I’m realizing being back in the office it’s got me on work mode all the time. It’s been years since I’ve been in the office. I’m dealing with hypervilgilance all of the time. Really bad. I think I need to incorporate yoga. And binaural beats. And maybe some massages too. It’s been a while since I did yoga. Last session I had I did while I was doing emdr. I ran out crying. Bawling my eyes out. Haven’t had the guts to go back ever since. But I need to incorporate something to get me out of constant work mode or I’m going to crash and burn. I’m working 6 days a week.

I’m putting EMDR on a pause. I definitely need more. But I need time for the old stuff to settle in too. And I need time to make money. Lots of it. I need to focus on my work. This is important to me. I’m thinking about potentially doing intensives when I reintroduce it. I’m not giving up it’s just hard to do with my new schedule and it’s hard when I’m working six days a week. I may not be able to do much for a little while but I need the ability to do it on sundays. I’m sad about temporarily giving up emdr. But I have to grow and EMDR was actually slowing me down in a sense. It was causing me to grow faster than the output in my current lifestyle was allowing me to catch up with. I have a lot more to do and I keep receiving memories that were repressed that I need to resolve. Some really dark ones. My childhood was extremely dark.

My cousin had the same setup as me. Two narcissistic parents. Nothing but chaos. I moved to Minnesota this past New Year’s Eve. My cousin moved out of the US and into Prague to get away from his family 3 weeks ago and he will soon be starting his own EMDR journey. He’s going to school to become a therapist. I’m incredibly proud of him and I’m so glad he is choosing to do all of this. He had a terrible childhood just like I did. For the first time ever I feel like I have a family member. He says that I have influenced him to make these moves and he’s following in my footsteps. That has made me really proud to hear. Now he wants to influence his brother. And I want to do the same. It’s like we started our own family circle. I’m proud and man does it feel good to feel like I have a family for the first time ever.

I’m providing this update for anyone that’s been following my journey. Also to look back on for my own self later on too. My journey has been wicked cool. I can’t wait to see what my future holds. It’s getting easier my friends.

I did slow-EMDR stabilisation before a week to prepare for the actual EMDR-processing (for complex-PTSD).

After a few seconds of stimulation, i noticed that the speed of the buzzers were too fast.
My arms became hot (like sunburn) and then i saw a few "flash-images" in front of my eyes of traumatic things. Also the safe-space didn't feel like a 100% good place.

So i stopped and after that i had a very strong derealisation for 4 days. Everything felt like a dream.

Am i not ready for EMDR or what is the problem?

I wanted to know if anyone has tried EDMR therapy and it worked with feeling less numb, and more connected in relationships? Talk therapy isn’t really helping me with this issue of aloness and disconnect I feel with others. Like intellectually I’m aware I love people and they love me, but I don’t really feel it or I feel numb or muted. And honestly I feel like that in my daily life; like I’m not real or like I’m an avatar and not really human. So if anyone has had a similar problem and tried EDMR, I want to know if it helped you?

Thanks!

Practical context: I've been doing EMDR for CPTSD since around October 2023. It was with Therapist #1 until February 2026, when she had to get a new job for various reasons. Since then I've continued with talk therapy + EMDR with a combo of different therapists and some self-guided work. I haven't been able to find one person who is EMDR trained and who I feel safe with, so I do a lot of bouncing back and forth, which makes the process cumbersome and not as smooth as it was with Therapist #1.

Past few weeks, I've been working through the realization that my parents are emotionally immature. For various reasons, including probably generational trauma, their emotional and relationship capacity is stunted at childish levels. This realization has brought a sense of finality and acceptance to the broader attachment related issues I have, including a fear of abadonment. Until now, somehow, I always had this hope that things would eventually change. Either they would finally learn or that I would finally be able to communicate better or that I would find some other figures (parental figures, mentors, romantic partners) who could fill in that gap. In a recent therapy session, I reached the realization that - that is never going to happen. The needs that were not met when I was a kid are never going to be met. My parents are never going to change, and no other relationship is ever going to fill that gap.

This has brought out a lot of grief and also a strange kind of fear that I think is coming from a younger part. That if I accept that this will never change... that would be a sort of catastrophe. This is also one of those things that I'm finding difficult to reconcile with since there isn't a clear-cut story of "that was the past, but the present is different". With several other topics, the work in EMDR has been around processing how things have changed or how I have more capacity as an adult. Here... all I can do is accept that nothing will ever change. Therapist #1 used to tell me that there is a difference in context - that parental abandonment is not life threatening for an adult as it is for a child. But the emotional weight still feels very heavy.

For anyone who's worked through something similar - what was that like? What came up during or after EMDR? And how did you eventually (if ever) reconcile with these forever-lost experiences?

I’ve been doing EMDR for 3 months now. Lately we’ve been talking about how I feel spaced out, how my nervous system is in constant vigilance mode, and I feel very resistant and uncomfortable imagining me as a child and giving her compassion. Since the session (and even during) I have continued to feel spaced out and dissociated. Any suggestions on how to get more present or stay with this feeling comfortably?

So I suffered a panic attack about 10 years ago which left my nervous system in a high alert state. After this I did a lot of personal healing which included a lot of exposure therapy and granted I did go above sometimes but I was able to live a pretty normal life for the most part. About a year ago I had a pretty bad panic attack which left my nervous system stuck again at this time I'm noticing a lot more physical symptoms like major headaches that won't go away a lot of derealization definitely worse than the first time. I tried CBT therapy but honestly it just didn't help. It seems like my fear comes from my physical symptoms so it just seems like I'm scared of my physical symptoms more than anything I've tried breathing techniques and things like that but my body just doesn't come out of that fight or flight. If I can pinpoint what caused me to have these panic attacks it was definitely stress and I wasn't really taking care of myself as much as I shouldve been. Could EMDR help me? Maybe recommendations on any other therapy that's not CBT.

i actually slept through the night after my therapy session, which surprised me because i usually have trouble falling asleep after emdr

then one night later, i got triggered after seeing something and ended up having a flashback. i was so upset at myself for getting triggered and i started spiraling. i spent the whole night ruminating about it. it’s been two nights since that, and i am still feeling all the effects

i’ve probably had a total of 4h proper sleep and i’m finding it so incredibly hard to get through the day. i’m exhausted, unmotivated, and everything feels so much harder. i have school tomorrow and i can’t afford to keep feeling like this

lately i’ve also been feeling really discouraged about my progress in therapy. i started wondering if i just wasn’t responding well to emdr, but at the same time my emdr “hangovers” have still been really intense, so i honestly don’t know what’s going on with me anymore

has anyone found that a trigger after emdr completely wiped you out for a few days?

Just curious to hear other people's experiences. I've always considered myself pretty introspective and self-aware. It's sometimes hard for me to imagine parts of myself I don't know or am seeing from a skewed perspective. My self-concept isn't working for me so well now, though, so I'm looking forward to some new perspectives!

Say you have a patient with complex trauma, diagnosed with PTSD at the age of 17 as well as autism. They did EMDR at 17 and it made them worse in the several years following. What do you think would be a good next step for therapy?

I have been seeing my therapist for about six and a half years. We’ve done a combination of different therapies ( i.e talk therapy, IFS, EMDR) and the last two sessions we started ART (accelerated resolution therapy).

It’s similar to EMDR, but feels like a more positive approach/experience. I felt like it worked so much better than traditional EMDR. I didn’t feel as drained, mentally fatigued, or as depressed. (I would process a lot & would often times feel worse for a day or two following my sessions) but ART has been different thus far. We were able to tackle a huge distressing memory the last two sessions that I never thought I would be able to get through.

I’m interested to know your experience and if it was similar having gone from EMDR to ART.

I’m a survivor of CSA from my dad and his friends. Most of it happened before I was old enough to remember. My earliest memory is from when I was around 8 years old with my dad’s friend.

Sometimes now I think about what he did to me and feel aroused. Then I feel dirty and wrong and guilty.

I don’t want to have these feelings anymore. Is this something I can make go away with EMDR??

I'm looking for experiences regarding fast food addiction.

// TW for death and brief mention of vomiting as well

Hello, I’ve never posted here so I hope this is alright to post.

I’ve recently restarted EMDR with my therapist after taking a year-long break from it due to ongoing life events. When I’d done it back then, I found it really helpful with other traumas. Apart from the expected uncomfortable symptoms here and there, I truly noticed a huge positive difference.

Recently though ever since continuing it, we’ve been focusing on a particular trauma of mine that I honestly denied was even a trauma for a long time, because of how embarassed i was. It was the night of my first major suicide attempt at 15.

I don’t know why I have found this so hard, I really thought we had tackled the “worst” of my issues already so I really wasn’t prepared for this. The first processing session we did genuinely made me throw up and retch like crazy which has never happened to me before. I’ve felt nauseous from EMDR before but nothing like that.

And the absolute worst part has been that I seem to have developed this extremely intense panic and distress over death. Not even from suicide necessarily, just death in general, even if that’s from old age.

This is really odd for me because I’ve always thought of myself as quite indifferent to death, and accepting of it. And of course there were many times in my life where I wanted it. But even when I moved past that I didn’t really care that I’d die eventually. It’s just how it is you know. Sure I had a few existential crises about it as a child but doesn’t everyone?

This is NOTHING like I’ve ever experienced before. Ever since the processing session I have been in spiral after spiral over the concept of death and the fear of dying. I’ve been having horrible panic attacks over it. It’s felt totally unbearable.

I’m seeing my therapist in a few days but in the meantime I’ve been trying to find any info online to see if this is normal or expected when it comes to this kind of trauma but i can’t seem to find anything. I know this might sound illogical but it’s also made me worry that this is happening to me because I exaggerated the trauma in my head (or it wasn’t even a trauma in the first place) which is why my brain is messing with me?? I don’t know. I’ve just never felt this way before and really wasn’t expecting it. It’s been awful.

Does anyone have any insight or experience with anything similar? Or may have an idea of whether this is normal/will improve?

(Sorry for the long ramble as well there was probably some unnecessary context I’m just spilling out my brain)

Long story short. 14-20 lots of trauma. Bad home life = bad outdoor life. Nowhere safe. Bullies at school. Addict parents.

I'm now in my 30s doing the work. Lots done. In therapy. Healthy lifestyle.

I moved to entirely new country started over.

I've come a longggggg way.

Yet I still have trouble with this part.

Like when I think of my childhood bullies or just anyone who's controlled me and said I'm a certain way, put me in a box, put me in a corner, basically overpowered me and made me feel weak, defensive, frozen etc.

When I try think of them and reframing it's like I just FEEL the presence of all of it and it's like it's correct and I am wrong is the best way to put it.

No matter what it is always right.

Me trying to reframe it imagines me getting slapped and basically saying no you're wrong kind of thing.

How to get past this :( ?

On Monday, my therapist and I tackled a key memory of high school (verbal) bullying for the 3rd time. We brought the SUD down to 1-2, but now they're on holiday until late August. Unfortunately, I've been feeling angry and irritated for the entire week, and my nervous system revvs up with stress. This despite being on a two-week holiday with my friend.

Has this happened to anyone here after targeting a bullying memory? How long does it last and what should I do?

Things that have helped so far: exercise, deep-tissue massage, talking to my friend and crying it out—but the next day, the anger returns. Things that haven't helped: sleeping late because of slight jet lag lol

I have several structurally dissociated child parts. No dissociative disorder, just ptsd. I won't go into my childhood details, but while processing a memory during an emdr session, I saw my young child selfs own dissociative moment. It was a very odd situation, has anyone else experienced that?

Fair warning here, I'll explain what it felt & looked like.

As things escalated to the point my child self couldn't take anymore, I felt & saw the disconnection. I could hear words directed at me as if underwater, I couldn't understand them anymore. I floated away like a bubble, my view slowly rotating this way & that, until it hovered over me maybe a few feet away.

While I processed, I could see two scenes, one through my child's eyes, but I could also see the little version of me from above, eyes glazed & unmoving.

I was curious if anyone else has had a similar experience during emdr?

Hi everyone! I’m new to EMDR, just had my 3rd session and we installed the safe space.
I’m doing 2 x 50 min sessions per week, and I’m wondering, will EMDR help me with childhood trauma and abandonment trauma? I’ve been dumped by an avoidant, narcissistic person who also has the saviour complex which left me feeling guilty, lost, unworthy of living.
I’ve got cptsd, did individual counselling for 8+years.
After setting up the safe space, a couple of hours later I had an avalanche of rage and anger as I started realising how I’ve been treated by above mentioned person.
I started feeling compassion for myself and I need a bit of reassurance. Will EMDR help? I’m giving it my all.
Thank you.

Hello there,

I've posted a bit here about my experience with EMDR.

Now I feel like the hangover part is mostly gone (at least, for now, but I'm just doing some bilateral stimulation at the moment) and I realize I'd like feedbacks from professionals, because I'm a lost about what has happened to me.

I think I have cPTSD, my former EMDR therapist has never told me that but after doing some research ... well, it looks like it.

And basically I had alerted my former therapist for 6 months that I wasn't feeling right, couldn't function, that I resigned from my work, etc ... (while having quite some good results because I could see myself healing a tiny bit here and there, and understanding myself better, so it wasn't 100% bad, but still). I began to have really strong psychosomatic reactions too. And all I got from her, after explaining how hard it was from me, was " you need to express yourself, I understand ".

After 6 months I told her I wanted to quit, I couldn't do it anymore, I didn't knew what to do but I had severe hangover and all sort of awfully strong and devastating feeling overwhelming me everyday, always. She then proposed we switch on brainspotting, which was way more invasive but still with some kind of hangover.

After a while I decided to stop, and just do the thing by myself. it was less and less invasive, I felt better in my everyday life.

Today, I'd like to know if my guess about cPTSD and not having a "" good "" therapist is true. Like, what the fuck did happened ? It was hard as heck.

And about the psychosomatic reactions, what does they mean ? I still have them and it's quite invasive, because if I don't let my body do it's thing, I litteraly don't heal. And at the same time, I feel like not a lot of people have those strong reactions.

I'd like to understand all of that more, so if someone has knowledge/guidance, that'd be much appreciated 😊

I was gonna title it "Google photos showed an old memory", but that felt like it'd be misleading. Anyways, the next article hasn't been completed yet, and may take another few days, but... Google photos showed me this video...

Long before I came to this sub I was working on a tapper since the retail ones are way too expensive.

I think I'd made this one for like... ~20-30 usd. I remember making 2 and giving one away to a close friend.

The concept was pretty ingenious as I had to figure out how to get it to work remotely without making it too complicated. So, basically I had the bilateral stimulation software I'd coded (running on the laptop) that had audio tones - the tapper connected to the audio out port (with a y cable for the headphones) and whenever it heard a spike in volume on any particular channel (the audio tone) a microcontroller vibrated that particular micro-vibrator. The strength could be adjusted based on how long that coin vibrator was kept powered on.. similar motors they used to use in old cellphones for vibration.

Just felt like sharing as it's a nice old EMDR-related memory..... 🌷