u/Fooflery

I wear a smart watch to sleep and I got a 192 bpm reading last night. Normally I'd brush it off as a glitch but I just started Allegra+Pepcid regiment YESTERDAY for MCAS GI issues. It's a little *too* coincidental. I went back all the way to March and my highest spike was less than 120bpm. Anyone has similar things happening?

Physically I don't feel different this morning other than maybe I feel a lot better...? I normally sleep 1-9. I just woke up at 7 and feel perfectly awake, except for this hear rate spike scare. TIA!

I had a heavy but illuminating session today. This is perhaps my 25th reprocessing session.

Right off the bat, I saw me as an infant self held by my grandma, unconsollably crying and kicking, asking for my mom, but she simply wouldn't bat an eye - just sat far away cold-faced. Then I saw that I was trying so hard to earn her approval, and meanwhile my cousin didn't need to do anything and my mother already adores her. (I'm an only-child but ironically have sibling-issues, apparently.) Then I saw my present-day mom being heart broken hearing how I actually felt and opened her arms and held me. I cried so much - that's something I've never ever felt in my life - my mother showing me unconditional love. Then my brain immediately sounded the alarms - that none of this is real. My therapist asked me how we can truly be safe, my mind went to an activity my mom really enjoys, then finally it went to another visual - my mom started belittling me and my teenager self went and calmly stopped her. She told her this won't work on us any more.

I dealt with many big targets recently. I released my inner child from some life-long family-death guilt, hugged my protectors, met my teenager self in the last session. I frankly never thought I'd get to a visual where my mom would understand and hug me. It's honestly a little bit confusing and shocking to me.

Is this the end? The beginning of the end? I kinda know that I'd get ny answer in the following week, but I guess I'm nervous to know.

I'm 6mo in, recently had a wonderful session where I saw my grandpa and resolved a core belief that I was a bad granddaughter before he passed and I suppose a big chunk of my self-abandonment issue. I got to hold my young self firmly at the end and I've been able to hold that image in my head since. I feel empowered. I had seen my inner self in my earlier sessions before but they didn't actually look like me, or they felt blurry.

I've not been able to release my anger towards my parents yet, other than some realization that they really don't know nor care about who I am.

I've also briefly experienced a period of good executive function, but somehow it went out of the window again. (I do have ADHD).

Can you share some pivotal moments of your EMDR journeys, please? Curious to rub the crystal ball a little bit. Thank you very much!

Looking for ADHD cPTSD success stories to keep me from spiraling.

I just did my 16th EMDR reprocessing session this past Monday. I started this EMDR journey because I finally realized I had cPTSD. I've worked through a lot of emotional neglect throughout my life and now I can finally message my parents without getting triggered.

I felt so close to the end a few weeks ago. I managed to brush my teeth nightly with ease. I found myself going to bed at reasonable hours without anxiously scrolling. I felt the world was my oyster. I don't know what changed. But I'm now sitting on the bed mad at never getting emotional support from my parents since I was little again.

And ADHD is just something else. I was fired from my last job a year ago because I HAD TO do a procedure my way, because doing it the way I was told to was not perfect and that felt unsafe. I don't want to do just any job out of fear and anxiety like I used to. I feel like I can do anything I put my mind to but my floor-drobe (among other things) is a daily reminder that I am different from other people and motivation is out of my control. When I want to reach for Adderall, my brain stops me because of the fainting episodes it had caused me. >!Waking up with cuts on my lips and actively peeing my pants!< was quite traumatizing in on itself. I suppose I need to do EMDR on that, but it's been low on the list.

I'm fearful that, because the ADHD aspect is never going away, I'm always going to feel helpless and stuck doing nothing. I was eager to heal. Then I learned to have patience. But now I'm fearful that my patience wouldn't get me very far. I've been telling myself this is because I'm finally hitting the core of my trauma, but I judge myself when I just sit around all day scrolling. Please share your success story if you have ADHD and it used to make you feel so incredibly broken. Thank you in advance.

I've noticed that during my sessions, whenever I get to a point of strong emotions, my brain tends to show me some clips of "positive memories". I wonder if this is my protector "pushing back" to invalidate me? Or is this a healthy process that actually validates me?

For example, yesterday, I was going through the verbal abuse I got when I was with my ex and his shocking comments and how I felt I was treated less than a human being. I let it out, and after my therapist paused the buzzers, I said he was a piece of shit, and I felt like maybe I never fully forgave myself for staying with him for 10 years despite my successful cbt sessions 5 years ago. Then she put the buzzers back on, I started seeing places we went to together, fireflies in the field in the summer, during our "good times". Then I got calm a bit. I wanna say this is my brain reminding me that I shouldn't blame myself and there were good days with him after all, but I'm not entirely sure.

Same thing happened when I moved onto the memory of begging my mom to stop yelling at me as a kid. I was reliving the despair and when the buzzers came back, my brain showed me memory of my mom cooking a dish that was miserable to cook (super spicy and smokey) but she loved me enough to cook for me all the time.

I feel validated in the sense that my brain is saying "I understand why you'd done it, like allowing them to push your boundaries over the years". But at the same time, I feel like this is my internalized mom's voice saying "you're blowing things up out of proportion", you're ungrateful for forgetting these things.

Do you experience this too? This has happened a lot since I "met my protector". She tried to scare me wearing a terrifying face mask, then we'd make peace, then she immediately scares me with that face mask again. Thank you guys in advance.