I want to share my experience of EMDR which I hope will help anyone on NMP now and in the future.
My story can be found on the thread "Pregabalin at last". I dont know how to post a link so perhaps a moderator can do that for me
I first can across EMDR 3 years ago when my NHS psychologist suggested it may be helpful for my PTSD which developed as a serving police officer in 2001. The first "trauma" in my life was as a 17yr old when I was a front seat passenger of a car crash which killed my 3 friends and another man in another car. This was in 1982 when counselling was unheard of. Years later as a police officer I witnessed some horrific scenes which triggered emotions long buried in my mind about the car crash as a 17yr old.
Fast forward to 2010 and I am offered EMDR. So as I normally do, I started reading up about how it works. I am the kind of person who needs to know about the psychology of treatment before I start it.
I was fascinated by how the mind works in suppressing emotions and how in our dreams we "process" daily things that have happened to us,passing those sometimes distressing thoughts into the part of our brains that "normalise" these occurrences. Kind of "defragmenting" of the brain like a computer.
So in 2010 I spent about 8 weeks having a session a week dealing with the various "traumaS" I had experienced in my life starting with the car crash, moving forward through the traumas as a police officer. It worked....I mean REALLY worked!!!!
Having retired from the Police shortly after this I decided to come off Citalopram as I felt so well. However, anxiety gripped me again leading to admission to a psych unit earlier this year. Of course the very sudden admission to hospital became a "trauma" in itself and my PTSD issues became about the fear of losing my mind and the fear of the "fear" itself. The vicious circle of anxiety. So I knew that I would have to deal with this new "trauma"!
Luckily the new psychologist was in fact my "old" psychologist who agreed straight away that EMDR would be a good thing to deal with the trauma of the admission and my fears of losing my mind, losing control etc (all the symptoms of acute anxiety).
After 3 weeks of talking about the "triggers" and "The Fear" and learning to have a "safe place" we stared this week with EMDR "proper".
It was a very exhausting and emotional 1 and a half hours...but incredible at the same time. I could feel my fear levels drop as we "processed" my thoughts from 10 /10 at the beginning to 2/10 at the end of the session!!!!!
I feel completely different already. My fear really has almost disappeared!!!
The only reason I got stuck at 2/10 was my fear of the "unknown" and the fact that I was tired and could not continue. Next week we start to deal with the "unknown" fear.
I am frankly quite stunned at how brilliant EMDR has been for me.
If anyone is interested in this treatment please try and read up on how it works.
If you have managed to read all this then well done!
Thanks for reading
Sarah
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