emdr

I’ve been doing EMDR to help me recover from complex PTSD for several months now. We’ve worked on two memories so far, only part way through the second one. Whenever I look up EMDR and fatigue the articles talk about being a little tired after your session or a little tired for a couple days. That is totally not my experience. I have had crushing fatigue for at least several days, sometimes the entire week between sessions. I’ve blocked off the day after EMDR. I’ve had to quit pottery even though I love it, because my fatigue is too bad. I have days of little to no spoons (spoon theory).

I have so many more memories that we will have to go into in the coming months. I have seen a bit of improvement in flashbacks related to the first memory and a reduction in dissociation. However, since I have flashbacks to all the trauma memories, everything is still really overwhelming.

Curious if any of you also have had more intense reactions to EMDR?

I’m sticking with it cuz I think it will help me heal. Super overwhelmed by the fatigue levels though while also trying to take care of my three young kids (one was just diagnosed with ADHD and an adjustment disorder), hold down my part time job and deal with flashbacks.
#PTSD #dissociation #complexptsd #emdr

I’ve been doing EMDR to help me recover from complex PTSD for several months now. We’ve worked on two memories so far, only part way through the second one. Whenever I look up EMDR and fatigue the articles talk about being a little tired after your session or a little tired for a couple days. That is totally not my experience. I have had crushing fatigue for at least several days, sometimes the entire week between sessions. I’ve blocked off the day after EMDR. I’ve had to quit pottery even though I love it, because my fatigue is too bad. I have days of little to no spoons (spoon theory).

I have so many more memories that we will have to go into in the coming months. I have seen a bit of improvement in flashbacks related to the first memory and a reduction in dissociation. However, since I have flashbacks to all the trauma memories, everything is still really overwhelming.

Curious if any of you also have had more intense reactions to EMDR?

I’m sticking with it cuz I think it will help me heal. Super overwhelmed by the fatigue levels though while also trying to take care of my three young kids (one was just diagnosed with ADHD and an adjustment disorder), hold down my part time job and deal with flashbacks.
#PTSD #dissociation #complexptsd #emdr

I’ve been doing EMDR to help me recover from complex PTSD for several months now. We’ve worked on two memories so far, only part way through the second one. Whenever I look up EMDR and fatigue the articles talk about being a little tired after your session or a little tired for a couple days. That is totally not my experience. I have had crushing fatigue for at least several days, sometimes the entire week between sessions. I’ve blocked off the day after EMDR. I’ve had to quit pottery even though I love it, because my fatigue is too bad. I have days of little to no spoons (spoon theory).

I have so many more memories that we will have to go into in the coming months. I have seen a bit of improvement in flashbacks related to the first memory and a reduction in dissociation. However, since I have flashbacks to all the trauma memories, everything is still really overwhelming.

Curious if any of you also have had more intense reactions to EMDR?

I’m sticking with it cuz I think it will help me heal. Super overwhelmed by the fatigue levels though while also trying to take care of my three young kids (one was just diagnosed with ADHD and an adjustment disorder), hold down my part time job and deal with flashbacks.
#PTSD #dissociation #complexptsd #emdr
#Anxiety

I haven’t been feeling great lately. There have been so many things that are weighing on me.

Have been having lots of anxiety over being overwhelmed and in Freeze mode with my school assignments (to the point that they are already overdue). I feel helpless and trapped, and defeated.

Then I also lost all access to the PTSD sub on Reddit which I relied on a lot for support for the repercussions of a really violent SA I had experienced in 2021, and had all of my Reddit accounts permanently banned this past weekend — and they blacklisted my IP address and device MAC address, so I can’t make any new ones even with VPN — all because of a careless mistake I made on the title of a post on the r/medical sub, which I then tried apologising and explaining to the sub mods about to try and get the sub temp suspension lifted where they muted me after i sent them 2 completely respectful messages. I used an alt acc to ask why they muted me, and they perm banned that alt account, threatened to report me to the Reddit admins for ban evasion, then muted me again. Over a month after I served the temp ban on my main account, I forgot about the existing perm ban on my alt, and when I used my main acc to post another (completely different) question, the mods reported me to the admin. Now all my accounts and any new accounts have been / are being permanently removed from the site. I’ve tried to apologise to the Reddit admins during my appeals, and beg them to just let me have one account to stay on the PTSD sub because I need it (it is a major resource for me since I don’t have much support in real life outside of weekly therapy), they just keep rejecting me. I think they are not even bothering to reply to my appeals anymore. This has caused me to feel a lot of panic, desperation and helplessness.

I’ve also been feeling pretty shit about myself and my place in my family (and the world, really). I feel like I’m wasting all their money. I’m a student and am trying to find a part-time job, but my salary from a PT job barely covers 80–90% of my expenses on meds and therapy alone. My family offers to help me and they are already paying for my schooling. I feel like a burden and that they hate me for wasting their time and money. That they don’t, they can’t, love me. I’m just a leech on their time and savings. Maybe they think I should be dead so I stop being such a burden. My mum is always more frustrated with me than my older sister, even just for sleeping longer than everyone else in the family because I’m severely depressed and always tired. That me sleeping in later into the day ruins the ability to keep the house clean because my room can’t be cleaned by our live-in helper on schedule (she has a very loose schedule). I feel unloveable, like everyone hates me and doesn’t want me around.

From all of this, I’ve had a significant uptick in the intensity of my suicidal thoughts again, like attempting has become a matter of time again.

I went to therapy today. First she brought up my schoolwork and we were supposed to work on anxiety about that today. Then I asked her if we could spare 10 mins on the Reddit thing, and the awful feeling of having lost a resource — we shifted to that. I kept apologizing for wasting her time because the Reddit thing is honestly so stupid, and I don’t know why it’s affecting me so badly. Halfway through processing the Reddit thing, a lot of anxiety about my assignment that was due yesterday (that I still haven’t submitted and am pressed to submit ASAP) came up again. At one point she said “you’re not wasting my time don’t worry” and I started crying, bad. She asked me what was happening and I said I felt like I was wasting everyone’s time and money, especially my family’s, and that I feel like I’m unloveable and a burden. We tried to process that. And I feel fucking awful that I spent the 1 hour session jumping back and forth on so many things. I hate myself. I know she said it was okay, it was actually good, but still… what if she’s lying and she hates me too?

I don’t know what to do. It’s really hard right now. 😔Sorry for wasting everyone’s time with this stupid wall of text. I don’t know where else to put it.

#Therapy #Depression #severedepression #PersistentDepressiveDisorder #Anxiety #ComplexPosttraumaticStressDisorder #CPTSD #PTSD #SexualTrauma #SexualAssault #emdr

I’ve spent four years preparing for this. I built up my resources. I’ve learned about my parts of self. I’ve learned how to stay my most adult part of self most of the time. I can speak up for myself now. I know I can be uncomfortable and still be okay. I know that it’s okay if I sometimes need to take medication for my anxiety. I can recognize when I’ve been triggered most of the time. I have cleansed my house of most things that remind me of the dark times of my childhood. I know when I need to take my shoes off and go stand outside to ground myself. I’ve identified lots of memories to reprocess with #emdr .

Over the past month, I’ve had two intense EMDR sessions — what I’ve been working toward — and they have been successes. One was a recent trigger, one was a dark childhood recollection. Both times were intense, uncomfortable, and full of tears. Sadness. Grief for what should have been.

But oh my goodness, the end result was such a place of calm. In one instance, healing pain from the previous week. In another, healing pain from decades ago. Both times, I rescued my younger self. He was so afraid, so scared, so terrified, with no one looking out for him. But I am now. I’m strong enough now to relieve him of his fears, his pain, his trauma.

I still have work to do, but oh my god, how freeing it is to save yourself, to love yourself.

If I hadn’t journaled the experiences afterward to have the evidence, I wouldn’t believe it, wouldn’t remember the work and the lightness in my soul afterward.

If you’re struggling, if you’re finding it difficult to wrestle with your past or your present … it’s okay. It might not be immediate, but just keep on showing up for yourself. Even if you have others you need to show up for: don’t forget to be there for yourself, too. It might take a week, a month, a year, or half a decade. But it’s worth it.

YOU’RE worth it.

Keep on showing up for yourself, even for 5 minutes a day. Let yourself know that you’re in your own corner. That you’ve got this. That it might be tough and feel insurmountable. But it’s not. You’ve got this. Keep going.

#CPTSD #emdr #ChildhoodTraumaSurvivors #GeneralizedAnxietyDisorder #Anxiety #PanicDisorder #CheerMeOn

I feel frustrated because by the time I think I've started to get my insomnia under control, suddenly it slips out and I'm back to sleeping less and less. My meds are finally working after roughly 20 years of this, but my PTSD keeps making it hard to fall asleep or relax. I finally started EMDR, but I feel like I'm regressing in so many ways. I'm just feeling awful and not getting enough sleep is making everything so unnecessarily harder! Thanks for letting me get this off my chest, since my family doesn't care to belive or validate me. Its so nice to have a space with others who get the struggle.
#Insomnia #PTSD #emdr