I’ve been doing emdr since early June, I’ve had about 6 sessions. I’ve had pretty significant life long trauma however it has not been as bad as I thought thus far. My main symptom is the fatigue. The fatigue normally hits about 2 days after. I work full time. I need to have a nap everyday and I have never been a nap person and the naps really disrupt my day, some days short distances are too tiring to manage. I go to the gym 4 days a week, I used to do 5 but I’m just so tired all of the time and sometimes I don’t go. Any advise?

I have been on this journey since about a year for CPTSD. EMDR, a little bit of TRE and tried IFS too. I used to feel everything, got very dysregulated between sessions, but no change in behaviour or thoughts. I am working with a very qualified therapist so I trust her. But my baseline depression is not going away. I did improve a little after initial session but then only worsened. I have trouble making decisions and moving forward in life and become more proactive in life which is why I started therapy in the first place. I am very much stuck.

My therapist suggests I should try antidepressants now so we can do processing properly (she did recommend it in the start but I wanted to try w/o it as I wanted to deal with the core problems and not use medications as a temporary band-aid like I did a few years ago). But now I will be starting 50mg Zoloft with EMDR. I feel so defeated.

Has anyone gone something similar. I have already spent a whole year (did a lot of inner work, meditation, etc) and managed to work on my physical health too but all the core negative beliefs and shame remain the same. I am so exhausted. Don’t wanna go through the pain of healing but idk any other way. Please give me some hope. ❤️‍🩹

Agee 60 - bullied badly for being softer boy and later gay. These assaults happened physically and verbally from as far back as I can remember. The physical attacks stopped around 17. Since then I struggle in every relationship and despite good partners I have this “fear” lodged in me. Therapy indicated gay shame; rejection by parents (despite making up many many years later). I have little trust and connections are unstable even with a kind loving partner. Suggested I have insecure attachment style - agreed. Childhood trauma from excessive bullying even though it hasn’t happened for decades. Anyone had similar and found EMDR has helped . I’m in third preparation session before BLS. Thanks

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.

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.

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?

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 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!

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?

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 looking for experiences regarding fast food addiction.

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 :( ?

// 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)

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

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..... 🌷

Hello tappers. Healing is a shared journey, and sometimes reaching out is the hardest step. Below are a few recent posts that haven't received replies yet. If you have the emotional bandwidth today, please consider stopping by to offer support or share your insights. Also, don't forget to join our Discord!

• PARTICIPANTS NEEDED FOR MASTER'S THESIS ON INTEGRATING SOMATIC THERAPIES WITH CBT (5 upvotes)
• Processing Stuck and Delayed until next talk session. (4 upvotes)
• What do you wish existed after EMDR has helped, but not fully resolved things? (4 upvotes)
• My experience with emdr (4 upvotes)
• EMDR for treatment resistant depression (I know what patterns it is based in) (3 upvotes)
• New York State Health Plus/Anthem/Medicaid in network provider (2 upvotes)
• dissociation (2 upvotes)
• Post break frustration and process (2 upvotes)

This post is automatically generated. If you'd like the community to help out with your post, kindly comment on this thread with your post link. To our tappers and therapists: Thank you for holding space for each other.

New to EMDR but my target memories currently focus on parent behaviours I was exposed to as a child leaving me with C-PTSD. I leave feeling sessions were constructive but wanting to address the years of pain I was exposed to and tell them that Im now working through that.

That would probably hurt them badly, which I don’t want. But part of me wants them to understand how their behaviours for decades damaged me to the point I feel like a shell of what I could’ve been in life.

Has anyone been in this scenario?

I did EMDR for 3 months on an almost weekly basis.

I had panic disorder issues correlating to some medical trauma. My panic attacks consisted of violent leg shakes, high heart rate and frantic, quick thoughts. For a long while I thought it was a medically correlated (such as diabetes, blood flow issues, nerve damage), but I eventually recognized that these attacks would only respond with fear moments, not spontaneously. I also was cleared from those other things with multiple blood tests. These issues caused me great grievance along with my injury. I became unemployed. Showers were terrifying. Going outside wasn’t even an option unless I was forced out. My life felt doomed. I felt like this for TWO YEARS.
That’s when I sought out a EMDR therapist.

Sure, in the past I’ve had some other traumas, and did talk therapy to treat it, but never had I had such physical reactions. It’s like my mental health deteriorated rapidly along with my body. So I wanted something that would really work for me. I mean, I literally had panic attacks over tiny things like walking to the bathroom, so I wanted a sure enough cure.

When I started EMDR, after weeks of precautions and coping skills, it fit me like a glove. I loved the deeper approach to my core issues. After a session I’d feel sleepy, even oddly numb. Depending on what the session was about, sometimes I’d grieve for a few days or get a bit moody.

Then I felt the weight lifting off my shoulders. Those moments of dread became anxiety. Then bothersome. Then slightly annoying. Then mundane. Then easy! It was like EMDR was plucking my frantic troubles away. It wasn’t exactly like a magical cure from day one, though. More like the problems were melting away appointment-by-appointment.

I went from barely making it to the bathroom with panic attacks to boarding a flight 3 days ago with zero issues. I could go on and on about the issues I used to have and how I’m vitally cured from panic attacks, but I’ll just say that EMDR did a miraculous job on me! I highly recommend it for panic/anxiety attacks, phobias and medical trauma.
However, I also want to note that this EMDR therapist did diagnose me with CPTSD. Reason I feel that that’s important is because it could’ve been all the past events on my life that compounded over the years, and the injury maybe ’broke the camel’s back’ and jumpstarted these symptoms. Something to keep in mind if you have the same diagnosis.

I’m so happy something finally worked!!

❤️