My therapist does this with me and I find out very helpful.

I am doing EMDR therapy. Twice a week. Except the next two weeks as my therapist is taking a vacation. I would take extended vacations too if I had to listen to all the fucked up stories we all share.

For me, I feel serious body issues while doing EMDR. So far nothing has changed for me though.

I read the book "Getting Past Your Past: Taking Control of Your Life with Self-Help Techniques from EMDR Therapy" by Francine Shapiro. she founded the EMDR program and process.

The book gave me hope at least. Some of the stories in the book were like, I had EMDR therapy and my life is perfect now.

Other practitioners I follow talk about EMDR is perfect for a one off event. Like a hurricane or car accident.

For longer traumas, like mine, from birth to about 9, it appears it takes a while. Bummer because I like the stories in the book about how people put their lives back together after 1 or 2 sessions.

I have had at least a dozen sessions with my current therapist. I keep going back because I can tell that my body has a lot of stored memories of the trauma and I can feel some relief and release of that.

Just hope it helps my mind soon.

I tried one session of emdr with a counselor I no longer see... It was intense to the point I experienced a violent rage inside me that it took all my energy not to just punch my counselor in the face... And if you knew me you would not believe I'm capable of such violent rage... As in very sweet and loving and mellow... I can say that at first I felt like it really helped but the effects wore off pretty quickly and I now feel like it was a total waste of my time...

I have a new counselor who is super helpful and she is trained in emdr but does not feel that I'm a good fit for this technique due to the fact I have multiple traumas since birth too very recently, 30+ years of accumulated trauma = complex PTSD...

So she has been using dialectical behavioral therapy with me and that seems to be the most effective... Since I started seeing this new counselor just about 1 year ago I have completely turned my life around... In fact if you had told me 1year ago that I would be who I am today I would have laughed in your face and told you there is no possible way...!!! But yet here I am... I am much more in control of my life than I have ever been... So for me emdr was a no go... But DBT worked wonders

Thank you everybody. I think I'm going to try it. I was just a little concerned. How does it work? Do they talk you through it or something?

Yes they start off usually getting your safe place established which is good and you get to see how it is with the tapping or whatever they use before getting into the heavy work. I was ablet to work through whatever was the most stressful memory or event. I have many but didnt seem to matter which just one at a time. I could actually feel the feelings come through the front of my head (wierd) but then the next week I felt a sense of closure or relief from that memory it wasnt as heavy and new thoughts could come in.