I keep hearing about people doing EMDR to process stuff better and to bring memories up to the forefront of your thoughts. I'm wondering, right now I'm worried about getting worse, worried that if I go EMDR with a therapist, I have more problems at work and won't be able to cope.

Anyone who has been through it want to share more about it?

Jason

EMDR is a technique which involved stimulating both sides of the brain simultaneously in order to process thoughts and feelings quicker. At least, that's how my therapist has described it to me. There are 3 ways that I know of to use it.. the 1st is by touch in the palm of the hands, my therapist uses vibrating paddles. Another way is audio and another way is visual with lights.

From my experience, its extremely exhausting, but it seems to help take the edge off. I have my EMDR appointments setup for days that I don't work because in all honesty, there's no way i'd be able to work after EMDR. A friend of mine was musing the other day that the perfect thing for an afternoon after EMDR is "Netflix"... which I think is so true. I never feel like doing much of anything afterwards, im always so exhausted and just want to sleep or lay on the couch and do something mindless.

I do recommend it, but I do recommend proceeding with it carefully. I made sure to find a therapist that specialized in more than EMDR so that she could recommend whether or not it would be a good tool to be applied to my situation.

~Brian

My T waves her hand while I keep my head still and watch my moving my eyes back and forth. Ten repititions of that are always following my a couple of minutes of meditation, and then a couple of minutes of questions. My T describes it as trying to find a channel.

The result for me is that it has, as Brian stated, taken the edge off of a lot of my emotions. The fact that the feelings have been dulled somewhat makes it easier to feel them. However, at the same time, losing this edge has made these emotions, as well as memories, flow a lot more smoothly. In the long run, this might be a good thing. For right now, it has made me much more easily triggered. While it might be easier to deal with having a single memory brought back, right now I'm dealing with tons of memories.

Nobody really knows how it works, but I will say that it is quite effective.

Bryan

Jason:
There is a ton of info on the 'net about EMDR. Although the clients I've done it with say that they are a bit tired after a session, I've not heard of anyone having to take off from work for days. I wouldn't necessarily recommend going back to work after a session. I like Brian's suggestion of making it a Netflix day for the remainder.

You could research it online or do a search here. There have been lots of postings here over the years. You can get a listing of therapists who do EMDR in your area from the EMDRIA (not sure of the spelling) the parent organization.

Ken