Gonna be harder than I thought.
I am new to EMDR. My psychiatrist suggested it after I had a crying fit about constantly dissociating and how I didn't wanna live like that anymore. It's been almost 30 years of this and I'm sick of it.
Today was my 3rd session, but we are in the prep stage still. I was hoping we'd hop right into it. I had already been looking into this type of therapy before my Psychiatrist mentioned it and was interested because I KNOW 1000% it's gonna benefit me. I'd had 3-4 years of Psychotherapy and that has made a BIG impact on me. I feel as if I'm halfway to the finishline and now that's all I think of is healing and being whole..or as close to "healed" and "whole" as possible.
In our session today I spoke on some things. I spoke about my current breakup and while it's still fresh (Happened this past Sunday) I didn't shed a tear despite crying for like 3 days on and off. That felt weird to me because I know I'm still upset. Then we got into other subjects, my mom, my aunt and my supervisor killing themselves, etc.
What I didn't realize is how emotionally..locked away I am. I'm not sure how to put it so I'll share what happened in our session. I spoke about a time my mom made me and my siblings get dressed for the day, took us to our grandmother's house and then proceeded to yell and rant for 2-3 hours about how she hated us. It really fucked me up and this is a big reason I hate myself. Also, my mom has been a big negative influence over my life and how I view things, act, react, etc so when we get started, that's what I want my focus to really be on. Her and how she impacted me.
So I was telling my therapist about that day, because I can still see it as after 5 minutes I went outside and was in tears, hysterical. One of my younger brothers came out of the house shortly after to comfort me. I took a few photos because it was a nice day out, which is usually how it is when something FUCKING AWFUL IS HAPPENING. Yall ever notice that? So I was telling my therapist I could see myself sitting in the chair outside my grandma's house when that happened. During me recalling the story I was ugly crying and choking up. But when he asked me about if current me could go to that moment and how I'd comfort "that child" how would I. I froze and the tears stopped. The heaviness in my chest and throat were gone and I just felt nothing.
"I wouldn't know how. I wouldn't comfort that girl. I don't wanna touch her." It felt like I was kinda disgusted with that part of myself, but definitely indifferent. And distancing myself like we weren't talking about a 17 year old me. Without me being aware, we were dipping into IFS (Internal Family Systems/parts work). Ofcourse he was noting what I was feeling, saying, my body language. He challenged me a few times and kept asking how I'd comfort 17 year old me.
"Idk give her a hug I guess?" I said.
This really put into perspective how much harder this is gonna be for me.
Any thoughts for anyone who has already had many sessions?
TLDR:
I had an EMDR prep session today. We kind of dipped into IFS and when my therapist asked me about how I'd comfort a younger version of myself (pertaining to a distressing story I told) I was indifferent and partly disgusted. Before this when I was telling the story I was crying, so this really made me think about how much more work this all will be to actually "get into it". I wanted to jump right into a session today, but I see that that may not be the best idea.