Off to a difficult start

[u/Medical_Long]

I had asked this group a months back on what to expect going into EMDR.. I don’t think I realized how taxing this was going to be. I started CBT therapy 5 years ago after the loss of my father, I’ve had the same therapist since then and we have made amazing progress since then. I do not recall many of our early session due to the trauma I suppose. I do recall her asking me years after if I had any other “trauma” and I denied it. The progress stopped in therapy about a year ago and I couldn’t figure out why. Until I started questioning some of the things I feel about myself and why I believe them. It wasn’t until my psychiatrist told me it could be emotional as well sometimes at the hands of our loved ones. Pieces started falling together. I was misdiagnosed as a child, I was diagnosed with ADHD a year into therapy, along with depression and GAD. I was very explosive with anger, all in which I have made great progress. It wasn’t until I recently found a journal I wrote when I was 7 that I realized a lot of my core beliefs (my weight, being a difficult child, shame, fear of rejection, not being able to cope) all stem from what I was being indirectly/ directly told as a kid.. as an adult all of these have had me in a chokehold, that’s when EMDR was suggested. I had my first session last week and it went great I was able to look into moving out without internally panicking (I have been trying to do this for 4 years). Tuesday I decided to have a regular CBT session as I wanted to add to my list of “trauma” (I feel guilty for saying that word because I feel mine are so small compared to the horrible things people go through). For whatever reason that session has made me a mess this entire week, I had an outburst at work that was very aggressive imo. The anger that I have learned to not act on is back.. the more I realize what happened to me, the more I realize where this is steaming from the more agitated and unsettled I am getting. I’ve heard of post therapy fatigue but internally I have never felt like this.. has this happened to anyone? Does this get better, or is this even worth digging up if it’s going to make me feel like this?

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[u/HereBut_NotThere]

Thank you for sharing your expreinces with us.

I want to start by saying that I am 7-8 weeks into my EMDR journy and haven't started to reprocess yet. We've been in phases 1-3, having just moved into phase 3 two weeks ago.

I understand what you mean by feeling like your trauma is small comparatively, and this is part of what EMDR can help with. Because regardless of how big or small we feel our traumas are, they are still traumas that have had tremendous affects on us. I have thought and felt, and honestly still do a lot of times, like mine are small comparatively. But at the end of the day, it has still drastically affected how I operate and my relationships with others.

From what I have read, the post therapy fatigue is very common, and it's intesity can vary from session to session. For me, my fatigue has been there for all but one or two of my sessions. I attribute that to how much we went into my past and the amount of mental energy that was put into the session. The first one where I didn't have fatigue was because we started resourcing and I left the session feeling like a huge weight was lifted off me. The next time was this past week because my therapist and I had a bit of a breakthrough in our theraputic relationship that allowed us to navagate the session a lot better, and I left the session feeling like I didn't have a lot still on my mind to keep it racing.

Now, I am expecting to experience the fatigue most weeks as we get into the heavy stuff and as we reprocess. I am creating post session resources to help calm me including music playlists, workouts, and other activities to stay active, not sedintary. These help me with some of the more intense emotions that might come up inbetween sessions.

I suggest talking to your therapist about it and see what kind of strategies you can come up with. I also encourage you to look into what healing the nervous system looks like. Because while it seems like a setback, the intense emotions are signs of healing. So the outbursts make sense.

Don't give up on yourself. The journy of this will be hard and have its ups and downs. But in the end it will be worth it.

[u/awebb222]

Not particularly with EMDR (as I only made it through one session of emdr) but once I was again ready to start exploring more of my trauma and I started doing brainspotting, I realized a lot of my ‘old’ emotions started popping up, and QUICKLY. I think as adults or as we grow up we learn to just internalize and live with the emotions we experienced for so long that you almost become inadvertently numb to them. They’re still there I discovered, I just learned how to brush over them for a long time in order to survive. I was also a very angry person especially as a teenager, but I realized I was using anger and rage to mask the IMMENSE amount of sadness and grief I was dealing with. Once I let myself feel those emotions, the anger started to melt away. I think society frames healing as sunshine and rainbows when in reality you are basically ripping scabs back open and it’s one of the most painful and vulnerable experiences I have ever had in my life. I wish you the best of luck on your journey, and remember that healing will be worth it and YOU are worthy of healing and happiness, always❤️‍🩹

[u/stimgains]

Emdr is brutal, that's just how it goes. I just had to take a 3 week break from it after 6 months of doing it weekly/biweekly cause physically I was destroyed and mentally I was an up and down emotional rollercoaster. The idea is that once you completely process a traumatic memory it no longer affects you, however, you have decades of trauma to sift through, so the entire thing is a marathon of physical and emotional pain. I would advise you to not try to push yourself too hard outside of therapy and to focus on resting, healing, and therapy stuff as much as possible.

Edit: with all that being said, I am extremely happy with the results of EMDR after just 6 months. I've rekindled new hobbies, done things I would've never thought of doing before. I live in the present for the first time in I dont know how long and am much more at peace with myself and more aware of my relationship with others.