Good luck , I hope everything goes well
Support & hugs

Please, please, pretty please, with a healing hope on top, share your experience with it here. I, for one, will be eagerly awaiting the updates, MJ.

More support and hugs as you brave the new endeavor.

Thanks guys! Be back in a few hours . . .

I had 6 months with my therapist before we could start as I kept dissociating when I arrived and she wanted to work on more grounding techniques so if I had a hard session, we could get back to ground zero easier. I had huge panic attacks before starting. Now 3 years later, I love it and it has been the biggest help in all my therapy. The memories just disappear and no longer trigger, of course I have a huge bucket to work through but I do see progress.
At first I was super tired after and would go home. and sleep. Now it gives me energy and I feel very peaceful despite the awful awful memories that come back,.

Thanks Muskoka! I am definitely feeling drained.

It's been several hours since my session but I feel like I'm ready to share my experience.

We began by taking all of my current thoughts (work, kids, relationships) and I visualized myself gathering them up in my arms and cramming them into a jar and closing the lid tightly. Time to focus directly on a specific trauma.

My psychologist then gave me a list of negative talk statements and asked me to go through them and tell her which ones I say to myself when I am triggered. I can honestly tell you that it was almost all of them.

We started going through first and worst memories that I have with family and people closely tied to me. We also sorted through significant memories associated with other things like parenting, childhood, and traumas. Once my psychologist had all of that information we picked a trauma to work on first that I felt I wanted to deal with first. Watching my father take his last breath and hopelessly watching him suffer through terminal cancer has weighed the heaviest on my heart and mind so it seemed like a good place to start. We established the feelings that I have when I am triggered by these memories. Guilt and not feeling strong enough to be there for my dad the way that he needed me are the feelings. So I was told to visualize my dad in his final moments and repeat those words of guilt and I am not strong over and over while she did a series of movements with her hands. After each series she would tell me to take a deep breath and record how and what I was feeling. Through out the entire process I felt clammy hands, heart palpitations, dizzy, tense and closed off. Same symptoms of my panic attacks really. I had a difficult time expressing what I was feeling though. I'm not sure if that's because I feel this way so often that it's become somewhat normal to me . . . I dunno. I felt anger, sadness, scared, and at times I felt like a hurt child. I'm not surprised about the hurt child because I was hurt as a child and wasn't protected but that's another story for another EMDR session.

After doing this for awhile we switched to her taping my knees gently and changed the visualized experience to me having a conversation with my dad and explaining to him that I am sorry. There were a lot of tears through this visualization. After a few series though I noticed that my feelings about this conversation shifted to a bit of a lighter conversation with my dad telling me that it's ok and kinda making light of my behaviors and coping.

Once we completed the EMDR we established my safe place. I love yoga and find the yoga studio to be my place of peace so I picked that as the place to visualize when I need my safe place. I call it Peace and Serenity.

After my session I wasn't sure how I felt and if anything had really changed for me. I kept myself busy with driving my girls around and decided to go to a yoga class. On the drive I started to notice my PTSD symptoms. I hit a pothole and my heart jumped out of my chest. I was having trouble focusing and started feeling overwhelmed. I went to my yoga class anyways and struggled with concentration and relaxing. Close to the end my body started to shake. During our final resting pose I said to my myself that "my heart is home" and it made me shake and cry. Not a bad cry though.

I am feeling emotionally drained still and trying to unwind. I have another session scheduled for next Saturday so hopefully the symptoms lessen and my body and mind begin to process this better. It's amazing how the body shows you what your mind doesn't want to acknowledge.

Happy to share your excitement, mj! Looking forward to your update after it.

Yup, the body will definitely show what the mind denies. I believe I get a more accurate read on my mental health by reading my physical responses than by listening to the puppets in my head.

Thanks for the update, MJ. May the price you are paying now pay off in sustainable recovery down the road. Be extra gentle with yourself during the process.

Happy to share, guys. I wish I could take all of our suffering away and cram into a jar and close the lid tightly, lol.

Hi MJ :)

My therapy is currently talk and EMDR. Your experience is a bit different than mine. We use a hand vibration device, I assume because I am a tactile grounder. The tapping sounds like a really great method too. The first few sessions were also draining and I felt kind of left 'open' if that makes sense. Did you do the green cards at the end of your session replacing those bad thoughts of 'I am not strong enough' with 'I am strong' ?

We do that and then place everything else in a box and lock it. The rest is very similar. I do really hope you have as much success as myself and others here. Within weeks my triggers subsided immensely. It is the first time I have ever felt such progress in therapy and my life.

Yeah I have the same as Doo, my therapist uses the clickers, which I like and we set them up each time for intensity and frequency. Sometimes we just focus on the tension in a certain area of the body...this. has really helped. Of course some awful memories come up, sometimes horrifying but then you feel yourself being removed and just watching then the memory is gone and I feel so much better. Each therapist probably does things differently. sometimes I focus on a memory or a person too

We didn’t do the green cards and I definitely feel like I was left open as well. But I seem to be calmer.

hi, mj : ) thank you for sharing about your EMDR experience so far, it sounds like it is beginning to be helpful! so good. and for you too, Doo and Musk!! i had the experience that you had at first, Musk - i dissociated big time - just at the thought of it or the prepping for it. i don't even know. we didn't think i could do it, but he seemed to be preparing me for it anyway. maybe there are ways to do it even if you cannot feel the tapping - it sounds like it. i hadn't heard of the clicking, what is that?

i was very worried i would remember way too much and loose it : (

Thanks Lilly! It's definitely tough to relive the trauma but it's so necessary to get past it. The therapist won't push you any further than you can handle. And some time is spent at the end of the session closing it all off and creating a safe place. So far I have been feeling better so I am optimistic that this isn't just a temporary high.

no, it doesn't sound temporary, you are getting through things. the more i hear of people using EMDR successfully, the more i want to use it.

i'm thinking i could use it for things i already remember - to get them deactivated.

thanks again xo