YOU ARE NOT ALONE - A companion online community discussion board for The Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast with Paul Gilmartin

Hello. I recently listened to the episode with Dr. Dansiger, in which he talked a lot about EMDR. My therapist has mentioned it as a thing we might try someday, but so far, she says, I'm too easily triggered into dissociation, and too lacking in skills for undoing the dissociation, to even begin. Very frustrating.

After listening to the podcast, I found Getting Past the Past (self-help EMDR-based book by Shapiro, EMDR originator). Just finished listening to that. Shapiro offers techniques for personal use, but says not to try it at home if you're already in therapy for a complex problem, or if you think you might have a complex problem.

I would like to try the initial self-calming techniques she suggests; maybe if I develop those skills, then I too will be one of the lucky people who gets better through EMDR.

Given how enthusiastic Dansiger and Shapiro are about its effectiveness, I'm surprised to find this forum empty. If it's as good as they say, we should be getting seriously better in droves! I used the search box, and see lots of scattered posts that include the term EMDR, but I bog down fast when I go fifty different directions, so I'm hoping to stimulate some input here.

If you have experience with EMDR (as a patient/subject, not a practitioner), please let us know how it went. Specifically, is it as fantastically effective from the perspective of beneficiary as it is from the perspective of practitioner? I'd have a lot more motivation to work toward it if I could hear from people it's helped.

If you've tried it and been disappointed with the results, then I really, really want to hear from you. Nothing is more frustrating than hearing how nearly universally effective a treatment is, only to find that I'm the only one I know of who fails to be helped by it.

Thanks, everybody!

Namu

I found this article in Scientific American. Might be helpful

https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... oser-look/

I have a therapist that used EMDR. I am not easily triggered, so my results may differ from yours. EMDR helped in seeing key moments in my past in a more neutral light.

Thanks for y'all's replies.

I've finally found a local practitioner, and have met with her once. I’m not bursting with hope. She doesn’t take my insurance, but is offering the first ten sessions at no charge. Turns out some pro bono work is required as part of her arrangement, either with her EMDR trainers or with the charity-minded providers of her office space. Turns out she's not “certified,” only “trained” (and it seems to me that her training is far from complete), and she's very unpolished — uncertainty, about many things, spouted from her like a fountain. There were many things about the session that were unsettling, including a great deal of unpreparedness, a fundamental miscommunication with my primary therapist about what I’m seeking from this new person, and a whole lot of chatter about many, many authorizations for communication, some of which I signed, though I didn’t really understand them, just to make the words stop coming at me. Even she didn’t really seem to understand what authorizations I should be giving her; she just had a vague sense that things might be harder for her at some point, especially if she ever ended up in court (!), if I didn’t sign them. I prefer to understand what I’m signing, but sometimes I just give in. I gave in.

I had been told — on the phone and throughout the preliminary paperwork — that the first meeting would include our initial EMDR work, but it didn’t. Next session is to begin with yet another preliminary step, a “dissociation assessment,” a list of experiences I’m to rate on how often they happen. I don’t know why this wasn’t part of the initial pile of forms.

The practitioner spent a lot of time talking about the classes she's taken, the classes she hasn’t, some “hand-outs” she needs to get from her mentor in order to get started with me. These handouts seem to be introductory material describing two of the four grounding (“resourcing”) techniques she told me were essential to the method.

Part of my homework is to come up with a technique for intervening when I dissociate during treatment. My regular therapist and I have been trying for years to come up with a way to successfully bring me back when I dissociate. This woman's teacher told her to throw pillows at clients if they dissociate during an EMDR session. I told her, promptly and clearly, that having a pillow thrown at me would escalate, not de-escalate, a trauma flashback. This seemed to be an entirely new notion; she had not been told any alternatives to pillow-throwing — thus my homework to devise a trauma-flashback-dissociation-intervention technique on my own.

God, I could go on and on trying to relate the details of this situation that results from what feels like a magnificent initial failure to communicate plus a rather extreme lack of practitioner experience and skill.

Clearly, I feel overwhelmed. It seems that I don’t feel like I’m in safe hands with this practitioner. There were plenty of other mildly troubling aspects of the encounter; after a couple of days to let it all settle, I’m left with more than mild misgivings. But it's free, and I have no money for it, and at this point the prospect of EMDR is the thing I use to keep me going.

Sometimes even free things aren’t worth what they cost me; seeking help from particularly unhelpful sources leaves me less willing and able to seek help. The effort to make use of self-proclaimed resources, and to figure out whether each dubious resource is actually costly or destructive rather than helpful, has taken too much from me over the years.

I don’t know whether it’s reasonable to hope that, with enough effort and attempts to clarify what I need, and to ascertain whether what I need is something this woman can give, I might benefit from continuing with her. I don’t feel like I can afford the effort it seems will be required. I have too much internal chaos already; I can’t bear to be around chaotic people, and trying to twist someone else's chaos into a healing tool for myself — it has never worked well for me.

I feel weary and despondent. Thanks for listening.

Namu

Sorry to hear about this situation. It sounds scary to be the guinea pig for this woman. She doesn't sound like she knows what she is doing yet. You deserve better than this pillow throwing student.

Hi Namu,
I'm so sorry that you had this discouraging experience. It's clear that you are trying to heal and you deserve better help than this. Please let us know how you're doing now. Did you decide to try working with this practitioner?

Take care,

rivergirl

Thanks, bb and rg.

I canceled the appointment this last week — I had a cold and used that as a lever for self-care of the “I just can’t face it right now” sort. Now I’m gearing up for dread and indecision about next week's reschedule, and/or whether to just call the whole thing off.

Ugh.

Fortunately, there’s a hint of a shift in my work with my regular therapist; I’ve felt stuck, mostly, for years with her, but have stayed with her for various reasons, positive and negative. This past week (despite my cold) we had what may have been a quiet and subtle but significant breakthrough, in my understanding of the work that's ahead of me and of the distinction between present triggers and past formative experience. I think it’s finally getting through to me that her triggering me (inadvertently) does not equal her being untrustworthy. It’s still very unfamiliar and slippery. Fingers crossed it's real.

So I’m keeping my gaze mostly on that for a bit, to ease the sting of this EMDR mess. I’m glad to have y'all's support to keep me company while I try to find my way forward, with the pillow-thrower or with someone else. Thanks again.

Namu

Boy, am I happy to see this forum!
I tried EMDR last week for the first time starting with "reprograming my brain with good memories". My psychologist tried the hand "buzzers" and then the hand tapping but I found both to be too distracting and I couldn't be in the moment. I got to the memory, and as soon as I felt the buzzing or tapping my mind will go blank. We tried 3 times for each buzzing and tapping but neither worked. I'm very disappointed and I was upset.
Honestly, I'm curious to know if anyone had this problem.
Maybe I'm too sensitive?
We will try visual and/or sound tonight.

I also have problems describing my feelings. He (my psychologist) tried to understand the problem. I hope we touch up onto that before we go over EMDR, otherwise it makes no sense. I have not way of explaining my feelings.

The reason for EMDR is to go over childhood trauma. After this session I realized that maybe being put down all those years makes sense that I don't know how to express feelings.
I'm a mess!

Hello gata5,

Sometimes my EMDR therapist uses a red ball on the end of a collapsible stick. She extends the stick out, and moves the red ball at the end of the stick leftward and rightward in front of me, in rhythmic time.

Kind of like the wand on this webpage https://www.colleenwest.com/for-therapi ... -do-i-use/

Please use this forum as a resource, take care, all the best, you deserve a life where you are not triggered by the trauma of childhood.

I finally gave up on EMDR. I was told, eventually, after a regrettable amount of frustrating failure to be helped, that my damage is beyond the scope of plain-old-EMDR; I needed to find a practitioner trained in "resourcing," a particular specialty within EMDR for addressing a client's persistent inability to self-soothe. It was very discouraging. EMDR practitioners at any level of training are scarce in my region; despite many hours of effort over many weeks, I never did manage to find any practitioner anywhere at all who had the special training in resourcing. The websites of organizations of EMDR practitioners seem to be very poorly designed and run, at least for those trying to find a practitioner.

It's hard to know where to turn when the professionals tell you that their specifically trauma-oriented techniques, which are effective enough for war vets, and more effective than just about everything else, and effective when everything else has failed, are, sorry, not effective enough in my case. The "resourcing" methods, insofar as I was able to get a glimpse of them, seemed to me to be patronizing, extraordinarily simplistic, and grievously blind to the differences in the sorts of difficulties different individuals face.

I have since stumbled upon Autogenic Training, which I find a lot less aggravating and disappointing, a lot more modest in the claims it makes, and a lot more supported by research. (It seems to me to be a sort of granddaddy of EMDR; if AT had caught on and proliferated, I doubt EMDR would have had occasion to be crafted and popularized.) I haven't made huge progress with AT, yet, but at least it's a path that remains open to me; it's a form of possible help that, so far, I'm able to pursue. I may be already benefitting -- there are changes I could point to -- but I don't want to get excited without more time to practice and observe. It's irresistible to think a new thing is helping; time will tell.

(Note: AT is basically nonexistent in the US; even the primary texts are rare and expensive. I managed to get hold of the first volume of the canonical series via interlibrary loan; I managed to find a practitioner on another continent, with whom I met via video conference. She turned out to be not very faithful to the originators' methods, and I want guidance that is more in accord with that original methodology. I'm taking a break from relying on help with AT; for now I'm just doing a very small AT routine on my own, aiming to build up a reliable habit of daily practice. In time I intend to find a practitioner better suited to my needs; I know now that I'll have to look for someone in Europe or Asia, someone who, like my first/previous helper, is willing to work with me from a distance.)

Clearly, lots of people do find what they need with EMDR. I hope you find your way to healing, one way or another, and if EMDR can help you, I will be glad for you. If nothing you can do turns EMDR into something that is actually effective/helpful, know that you're not the only one.

Peace.

Namu