EMDR....and things coming up.

[Liketheducks]

Might be the wrong place to post this.........but......It's been a bit of a crap few years.   Sure there have been some good things, but mostly it's been setting up boundaries with the parents and flying monkeys....and dealing with crap.   Most recently,  like 8 months ago, I found out my husband was having an affair with a "friend" of mine.   We're working on it.  And, while we're doing all the right things and making good progress....it's super hard.     I'm a one woman walking economic boost for the local mental health community.  I'm so grateful that I've been able to get some good therapy....longterm over my parents and more recently with the whole affair b-s.   
At our marriage counselor's suggestion, I'm trying EMDR.     I'd never heard of it before.   I'm shocked at how it's been working.   The whole confrontation around the affair brought back full on PTSD...just now around my husband rather than my parents and the abuse I suffered as a child.    I never realized just how anxious I've been, like ALL my life, until now.     I didn't realize that not everyone felt this way!   
I've never liked the idea of mindfulness.   My mother used to lecture me about it, but coming from her, I just couldn't hear the message.  Mindfulness was something that other people had time for....people without responsibilities....or, in her case, people who just weren't responsible.   The more and more I'm trying this, the more things are falling into place for me emotionally and without anti-anxiety meds (though I feel good knowing that I have that as a tool if I need it).     I'd pooepoo'd it so much that it's been f-ing mindfulness in my counseling sessions.   We had to start calling it something else.   
At the risk of preaching to the choir here....holy cow....c-ptsd is real.  Really, real.   I've been living my life with my shoulders carrying the weight of the world and my stomach in knots....as my norm.     I've felt like everything is/was my responsibility...somehow never ever measuring up.   
I'm 51....I feel like I've wasted so much time.   Anyone on the outside would say that I've nailed this...I struggle with the boundaries - but put them in place.   I've done well.  I've been a better, good enough parent.  I've kept my child mostly safe (thankfully he's doing really well inspite of our struggles). But, I've always felt like the duck...calm on the surface but kicking like hell below water. 
The EMDR counselor said that it's because I've disassociated to survive as a child and now my mind and body are starting to communicate in ways that they should have long ago.   And, that I did that to survive.    Anyone else out there with similar experiences?   

[Psuedonym]

Wow Liketheducks, You're obviously a strong lady because you've been through the wringer. That's a lot of $%#@ to deal with.

I have not tried EMDR but I've been intrigued by it and your posts make me more so. The dissociation thing is fascinating. I am an only child, I was always a creative type and always lived a lot of the time in my head, but a lot of my childhood is sort of blank. To this day I struggle with thoughts of 'oh she wasn't that bad.' I've also recently realized how real s-ptsd is. I'm not communicating with uBPD/N m, my BF deals with her when necessary, but when something comes up I will often feel this overwhelming feeling of being trapped in a nightmare that I can't escape. It took me a long time to realize this is an emotional flashback and not an actuality.

Just curious, have you read Pete Walker's book? Thanks for this post!

[Whatthehey]

A little more than a year ago my DD insisted I see a new neurologist.  I have cancer and the treatments left me with, what I was told, non-epileptic seizures and bouts of aphasia.  Frequent.  The seizures would occur randomly and over the years increased in frequency.

In seeing the new doc there was a lot of testing and part of that was a neuropsychologist who did a full day of testing.  On my return for the results, he diagnosed PTSD and recommended EMDR.

I have been with my therapist and EMDR for a year now.  It took several sessions just getting to know her and trusting her before the session.  My first session was my brothers abusing me as a child.  The second my college rape.  I now think I may need to address some episodes from marriage.  I haven't had a seizure since January - 10 months.  No aphasia either.

There was one moment when I felt the beginning of one - when I dinner with my stbxOCPDh and he reached to touch my hand.  It took every ounce of control to not collapse in full on seizure.  Fortunately, I excused myself and texted him from the car that I had to leave because I was sick.  I have not been alone with him since.,

If you had asked me two years if there was connection between my abuse, rape, marriage and the seizures -- I would've laughed.  Who knew?

I am so glad you are getting help.  I will send good thoughts your way.

[Call Me Cordelia]

Our external circumstances are different but childhood abuse also conditioned me to have the weight of the world on my shoulders and my stomach in knots, all while wearing a bland smile. You describe it well... looking like a calm duck on the water but in a frenzy underneath. That was normal. I did have some level of awareness of the frenzy but didn't blame my upbringing until I went to college and got some real friends (including my DH) with whom I finally began to actually relax. I grew up with a lot of kids under a great deal of pressure and assumed it was everybody who was like that. I'm sure I wasn't the only one, but I was definitely branded as "weird" and "deficient." My parents took putting pressure on a kid to the next level. Nothing I did was ever good enough, and when there was no fault to be found that was merely what was expected of me.

I'm really sorry to hear about your husband's affair. You're very brave to be opening up all those wounds in EMDR and attempting to salvage your marriage at the same time. I've done EMDR as well and it was enormously helpful, but also extremely draining. You're giving yourself and your family a huge gift and great example.

[Liketheducks]

Wow Liketheducks, You're obviously a strong lady because you've been through the wringer. That's a lot of $%#@ to deal with.

I have not tried EMDR but I've been intrigued by it and your posts make me more so. The dissociation thing is fascinating. I am an only child, I was always a creative type and always lived a lot of the time in my head, but a lot of my childhood is sort of blank. To this day I struggle with thoughts of 'oh she wasn't that bad.' I've also recently realized how real s-ptsd is. I'm not communicating with uBPD/N m, my BF deals with her when necessary, but when something comes up I will often feel this overwhelming feeling of being trapped in a nightmare that I can't escape. It took me a long time to realize this is an emotional flashback and not an actuality.

Just curious, have you read Pete Walker's book? Thanks for this post!

I'll have to check out the Walker book.  Just finished The Body Keeps Score.

[Liketheducks]

A little more than a year ago my DD insisted I see a new neurologist.  I have cancer and the treatments left me with, what I was told, non-epileptic seizures and bouts of aphasia.  Frequent.  The seizures would occur randomly and over the years increased in frequency.

In seeing the new doc there was a lot of testing and part of that was a neuropsychologist who did a full day of testing.  On my return for the results, he diagnosed PTSD and recommended EMDR.

I have been with my therapist and EMDR for a year now.  It took several sessions just getting to know her and trusting her before the session.  My first session was my brothers abusing me as a child.  The second my college rape.  I now think I may need to address some episodes from marriage.  I haven't had a seizure since January - 10 months.  No aphasia either.

There was one moment when I felt the beginning of one - when I dinner with my stbxOCPDh and he reached to touch my hand.  It took every ounce of control to not collapse in full on seizure.  Fortunately, I excused myself and texted him from the car that I had to leave because I was sick.  I have not been alone with him since.,

If you had asked me two years if there was connection between my abuse, rape, marriage and the seizures -- I would've laughed.  Who knew?

I am so glad you are getting help.  I will send good thoughts your way.

Just finished reading The Body Keeps Score.  The author cited examples of similar issues with seizures and aphasia.   Hugs to you!

[Liketheducks]

Our external circumstances are different but childhood abuse also conditioned me to have the weight of the world on my shoulders and my stomach in knots, all while wearing a bland smile. You describe it well... looking like a calm duck on the water but in a frenzy underneath. That was normal. I did have some level of awareness of the frenzy but didn't blame my upbringing until I went to college and got some real friends (including my DH) with whom I finally began to actually relax. I grew up with a lot of kids under a great deal of pressure and assumed it was everybody who was like that. I'm sure I wasn't the only one, but I was definitely branded as "weird" and "deficient." My parents took putting pressure on a kid to the next level. Nothing I did was ever good enough, and when there was no fault to be found that was merely what was expected of me.

I'm really sorry to hear about your husband's affair. You're very brave to be opening up all those wounds in EMDR and attempting to salvage your marriage at the same time. I've done EMDR as well and it was enormously helpful, but also extremely draining. You're giving yourself and your family a huge gift and great example.

Yep....that's been the toughest right now.  H WAS my safe place.  My only safe place.   Never realized I put that much on him.    Now learning to make myself a safe place individually.    My mid-life crisis...I'm trying to grow older emotionally.   Smh!!

[artfox]

I did EMDR for about a year and a half. It was tough, but it helped. It had a way of helping me connect things and start to form a more whole picture in my mind, as there was a lot I'd blocked.

I felt better physically after doing it a while, and a lot of issues like recurring nightmares and anxiety attacks went away almost entirely.

I was doing a yoga teacher training at the same time I was doing EMDR, and those two things really supported each other. I was also skeptical of mindfulness at first, but I learned that the anxiety I felt was me trying desperately to escape what was going on inside my own head. Once I learned to stick around for it, it hurt, but it also helped me heal.

[hhaw]

Hi, LTD:

I've just had a session with T using EMDR.  She explained it like this.....
it helps the brain integrate, right and left sides, and engages the corpus callosum, strengthening the connection between brain hemispheres.... it's also a distraction..... and for me, around the situation I was struggling with at that moment,  which was my bringing a really tough weekend of personal struggle coupled with my youngest dd struggling too, and in a way that bumped up against my wounds.... just too overwhelming in those moments....

the EMDR was tried, bc I wasn't able to get out of that on my own.

T waved her hand back and forth back and forth 10 times very fast,  and I followed with my eyes, then she slowed, and brought her fingers down, asking me to notice my surroundings, particularly my peripheral vision, above, below, the smells around me, everything sensory.

Then we did the hand eye thing again,  then the mindfullness around my surroundings, and at the end of it my distress was a zero where it had been a 5 when we started.  It was a looping of distress that kept me from utilizing tools I KNEW how to use in order to move out of anxiety.  I've been using breathing, pressing on walls while breathing, walking backwards while breathing, humming, cold water on face or a shower, gargling... but I was so distracted by the distress,  and what my distress has always BEEN in my body.  What I've always done is weather the storm, and wait to feel better.   I just couldn't engage my parasympathetic nervous system on my own, so my fight or flight mode was geared up, and stuck in the ON position.

Just waiting takes all my energy. I had nothing to put into remembering new actions, choosing one,  and acting on it.   My survival mode was focused on staying alive.  It doesn't care about how I do that. I just knows that we've always survived with reptilian brain in charge during stress... it can't release it's grip to try other things.  Usually I can sneak up under the warning bells, and unhook them through breathing, or other techiques, to engage frontal cortext thinking again,  but  not this time.

My limbic system, mid brain place where old negative tapes run about who we are was in full control of my thoughts, and in that place there's no access to our higher brain thinking, logic, creativity, problem solving skills... just NONE, which explains how I could be in a place where I couldn't access new tools, IMO.  Fear that I'll always be stuck was engaged.  Fear I couldn't do it ever, was engaged. Shame I failed to get myself out... fully engaged. 

The EMDR was as helpful as tapping had been, but without having to engage thoughts and verbal action TOO.  EMDR was a very simple thing, simpler than the tapping... such a relief to add that to the tool box.

Just waving the hand.... one pass is a back and forth motion..... 10 times...... very fast, but not so fast eyes can't follow, and I have a new tool for getting out of my limbic system.

T says that all very difficult emotions went unprocessed in our brains, and keep pinging around in there, asking for attention so the brain finishes processing then files them away where they belong.  This happens a millisecond.  The brain is very efficient and wants the opportunity to process and file old emotions.   

I think EMDR,  tapping, mindfullness,  and non judmental focus are all tools that help our brains shift into frontal lobe processing where we can bring attention to the unprocessed emotions from our past, and finally get them filed where they beling..... and they're OUT of our systems, so to speak, making room for what comes next, IME.   T said we're cultivating the adult in ourselves to convince the child we're OK, all will be well, the adult is in place and handling things, so the child can relax, and allow the emotional processing to continue.

Facing the things we fear is difficult, though.
Cultivating curiosity, instead of judgment....
cultivating awareness while in observer mode....
giving ourselves emotional distance.....
brining our present mind awareness TO the space around us...
noticing the spaciousness around us, to the sides of us, above and below... in our cells, in the universe, and brining it INTO the spaces inside us that feel tight, painful, consctricted means we notice what's going on in our inner worlds and around us at the same time. 

I was guided to bring that spaciousness around me INTO my chest, and I must tell you..... THAT space is always feeling open and clear, and better.... we did that one time, and it's remained healed, as we work on the physical manifestations of stress around it.... I still notice it's relief, and know I can bring that to all parts of my distress.

I was very glad to read your experience with EMDR, and thank you for providing this thread.   

I tried it with my oldest dd over a food craving, and dd went on to make better choices all day long.  She had more space to consider responses, rather than reacting, which was her pattern. 

Again, thanks: )

[AD]

Liketheducks, thanks for sharing. I'm sorry that you're experiencing this pain, but it sounds like you've really made some breakthroughs. Good for your for putting in all of this hard work towards your healing - you should be proud of yourself.