A client - let's call her Maya - sat in her car outside her own house for forty-five minutes before coming inside. She did this every evening for three weeks.

Her husband's phone had buzzed at dinner one night. She'd glanced at the screen without meaning to. The notification wasn't from a colleague. It was from someone she'd never heard of. Later that night, she found the messages and something in her brain rewired.

She could function at work. She could speak to him civilly. But every time a phone buzzed - any phone, anywhere - her chest tightened and her vision narrowed and she was right back in that moment, reading those words.

She wasn't being dramatic. She wasn't failing to forgive. Her nervous system had registered a survival threat, and it was responding accordingly.

And here's the thing: that same nervous system wiring - that terrified, vigilant, can't-leave-even-when-I-know-it's-destroying-me wiring doesn't just show up after infidelity. It's the engine underneath almost every toxic relationship that people stay in long past the expiration date.

This will be a longer than usual post, mostly because I've added content from an older blog post too. I had refrained from writing about relationships since it feels "cliché" but more so is a very touchy subject and I wasn't yet bold enough to address my thoughts publicly. So here goes nothing...

1. The broken compass

When you grow up in a home where love was inconsistent - warmth laced with criticism, needs punished or ignored, your nervous system builds a map. But it's drawn in a war zone. On that map, calm isn't safety; it's the eerie silence before the next explosion. Anxiety isn't a warning sign; it's the baseline. And chaos, with its familiar cocktail of adrenaline and cortisol, feels almost like… home.

I call this the broken compass. Your threat-detection system was calibrated in an environment where high stress was normal. So now, when you meet a partner who is stable and kind, your internal compass spins:

"This feels wrong. This feels boring. I must not be attracted to them."

Meanwhile, when someone love-bombs you, cycles hot and cold, keeps you perpetually on edge - your compass locks in. "This," it insists, "is real. This is what love feels like."

This isn't just psychological. It's neurobiology. Intermittent reinforcement - the unpredictable crumbs of affection from a toxic partner floods your brain with dopamine, much like a slot machine. The crash that follows, when they withdraw, sends you into a desperate craving state. Your brain literally becomes addicted to the cycle.

One client said it bluntly:

"I realised I was drawn to him exactly like the patterns I'm trying to escape. The dopamine hits, the intermittent reinforcement. It felt horrible, but I couldn't stop."

They saw it clearly. Knowing didn't dissolve the craving.

That's why kind, healthy partners feel "nice but no spark." The spark your brain was trained to recognise wasn't love - it was the electric buzz of your attachment wounds being activated.

2. The self that vanishes

Inside these relationships, the self doesn't just get hurt. It gets systematically dismantled.

Clients can describe exactly how they disappear. They stop sharing opinions because disagreement triggers punishment. They swallow needs because having needs once got them labelled "too much." During conflict, they don't fight or flee - they freeze. Throat constricts. Mind goes blank. Words won't form.

Afterwards, they replay the argument on a brutal loop, trying to work out what they should have said.

One client, when I asked them to imagine speaking their actual truth to their partner, was hit with a wave of panic so intense they could only whisper:

"Please don't be angry at me."

Their safety, they'd learned, depended entirely on their silence.

This is fawning - the least discussed trauma response. You become whoever the person needs you to be. You take responsibility for their moods, their problems, their failures. And underneath, a quiet, desperate belief: If I just do everything perfectly, if I never ruffle a feather, I will finally be safe.

It never works. The goalposts move. And the one person you're never truly safe with is yourself.

3. Why leaving feels like walking off a cliff

This is what I heard in my therapy session - said with the flat, exhausted certainty of someone who'd spent years dissecting their own wreckage:

"I know this relationship is destroying me. I can see it. But when I try to leave, my whole body screams like I'm about to walk off a cliff. So I stay. And then I hate myself for staying."

That's not weak character. That's a nervous system that doesn't distinguish between physical survival and relational survival. When you try to leave, your amygdala - the brain's threat-detection centre reads it as a survival crisis. It floods you with panic. It screams: Stay. Whatever you have to do, just stay.

And then there's the other cruel twist. When you finally land in a safe relationship or even a calm period, your trauma logic often revolts. It anticipates the crash. Why wait for the rug to be pulled? So it pulls the rug itself - picks a fight, finds a flaw, shuts down. I've heard this called "pre-empting the ambush." The mind would rather live in a familiar, manageable misery than risk the devastation of hope.

I call this the "golden carrot into the ditch" trap. Trauma dangles a shiny promise - the rush of validation, the high of reconciliation, and every time you follow it, it leads you straight back into the familiar ditch of retraumatisation. Because that ditch, at least, is ground you know.

4. The phone that won't stop hurting

After betrayal, even a phone buzz becomes a threat. You find yourself checking their phone. Scanning social media. Noticing every time they're five minutes late. You hate that you're doing it. You can't stop.

This isn't insecurity. It's a nervous system that has learned: be vigilant or be blindsided again.

And then there are the mind movies. You didn't witness the infidelity, but your brain constructs images anyway - vivid, involuntary, relentless. You see them together. You imagine details you don't even know. These aren't fantasies; they're intrusive images - the same mechanism that gives a war veteran flashbacks of combat. Your brain is trying to solve a threat by replaying it, even when there's nothing new to process.

This is betrayal trauma. Researchers have documented that 30-60% of betrayed partners experience symptoms of anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress at clinically significant levels. Some clinicians call it "Post Infidelity Stress Disorder" - not a formal diagnosis, but a very real cluster of symptoms: hypervigilance, emotional numbing, intrusive thoughts, avoidance.

And the worst part? The phone keeps buzzing, and your body keeps preparing for a threat that your thinking brain knows might already be over. The gap between "I know" and "I feel safe" is where the trauma lives.

5. When you're the one being accused

There's another side of this that almost nobody talks about: being the innocent partner who's constantly accused of cheating.

Your partner finds texts on your phone. They're from a friend, maybe a colleague. Nothing inappropriate. But it doesn't matter. You explain. You offer to introduce them. The suspicion sticks.

Or maybe you've been "distant" - stressed at work, distracted, tired. Suddenly you're not just tired. You're "emotionally cheating." You're "probably seeing someone." The accusation becomes the weapon, and you're on the receiving end of something you never did.

The psychological toll is brutal. You start questioning your own memory, your own intentions. You feel guilty even when you're innocent. You become guarded - not because you have anything to hide, but because anything you say can be twisted into evidence against you.

In my practice, I often see this pattern: the accusing partner is projecting past betrayal trauma onto the current relationship. They were cheated on before. Or they grew up watching infidelity destroy their parents' marriage. Their nervous system can't tell the difference between a trigger and a threat. The current partner, the accused, hasn't actually done anything. But the accuser's body is reacting to a past that hasn't been processed.

That doesn't make false accusations okay - if it becomes a pattern of control, it crosses into emotional abuse. But it does mean both sides of this dynamic often carry wounds that can be healed. The accuser needs to process their original trauma so it stops colonising the present. The accused needs to recover from the slow erosion of being disbelieved day after day.

6. The grief nobody warns you about

There is a grief that comes later. Not right away. It arrives when the fog lifts, when the nervous system settles, when you start to trust your own mind again.

It's the grief of time lost. Years. Sometimes decades.

A client, well into their processing, came to a session and wept - not for the partner, but for their younger self.

"I gave him my youth. I gave him years I will never get back. And for what? For a lie."

They weren't mourning the relationship. They were mourning the person they might have become if they hadn't been so entirely consumed with surviving.

This grief is essential. It's not self-pity. It's evidence that you're valuing yourself now. I tell clients that grief, when it finally comes, is an act of self-compassion - the part that knows you deserved better finally getting to speak. It doesn't need to be fixed. It just needs permission to exist.

7. Signs your compass is recalibrating

You don't need a therapist to confirm these. Here are the quiet revolutions I watch for:

• You feel bored or "off" with a healthy, stable person and instead of running, you recognise it as your trauma response, not a lack of love
• You say no to something small and don't get hit with a wave of guilt
• You pause between a trigger and a reaction, instead of spiralling or lashing out
• You let yourself be comforted without immediately bracing for the other shoe to drop
• You voice a need directly, without a long, pre-emptive explanation
• You stop replaying old arguments in your head at 2am because you suddenly realise you just don't care to spend the energy
• You feel anger about how you were treated - not toxic rage, but a quiet, clarifying sense of that wasn't okay
• The phone buzzes, and your chest doesn't tighten. It's just a sound again.
• You finally say, with your whole chest: "I am enough. The trap was believing I needed someone else to tell me that."

None of these look like "healed." They look like someone learning to trust themselves again.

The relationship you couldn't leave wasn't a moral failure. It was a nervous system running an outdated operating system installed in childhood. That system kept you alive then. But it doesn't know the war is over.

The same brain that adapted to chaos can adapt to calm. The same body that froze in fear can discover the steady, grounded power of a clear "no." The same heart that closed around grief can open - slowly, messily, tentatively to something that feels like genuine, unearned, un-chased safety.

The destination isn't a perfect relationship. It's feeling safe enough in your own skin that you no longer need to perform, bend, or disappear to be loved. It's being able to sit in a room alone and not feel hollow.

It's "I'm safe. Nothing is happening. I'm not trying to do anything."

That's not giving up. That's coming home to yourself.

(PS: I write these posts to help my own clients understand what's happening in their nervous system through their EMDR journey and I usually put the core content here on Reddit. All client material is highly composited and anonymized. This is education, not therapy advice. Open to questions in the comments, and I'd genuinely like to hear how others have navigated this.)

A client was in a situation where a frien, someone volatile, turned on them. Shaming, angry, out of line.

The client's gut knew something was wrong. But they couldn't trust it. They couldn't land on the simple truth: I am allowed to say no to this.

So they asked five different friends. Described the whole situation to each one. Looking for validation. Looking for permission. Looking for someone, anyone, to confirm they weren't the bad person in the story.

Five friends wasn't enough.

They went to ChatGPT. Typed out the whole scenario and asked, essentially:

"Am I allowed to have this boundary? Is it okay that I said no?"

An algorithm. A language model that doesn't have feelings. That was the sixth opinion they needed before they could believe their own internal signal.

And they told me this with an embarrassed laugh, like it was a quirky thing they did.

It's not quirky. It's one of the most honest descriptions of complex trauma I've ever heard in a session.

This person - smart, capable, functioning in the world, had been trained so thoroughly to override their own reality that five humans confirming their feelings wasn't enough. They needed a sixth source. And that source doesn't even have a nervous system.

That is not weakness. That is not "dramatic" or "needy." That is a nervous system that learned, very early, that having needs gets you punished, and that your internal compass cannot be trusted.

I see versions of this constantly. Not always ChatGPT.

Sometimes the group chat. Sometimes the three-hour phone call where you replay the same conversation on a loop. Sometimes the Google search at 2am: how to know if you're overreacting.

The pattern is the same: you cannot trust your own signal. So you go external. You poll the audience. You build a case. You gather evidence that you're allowed to feel what you already feel.

And it never sticks. Because the problem was never that you lacked information. The problem is that your nervous system does not believe you're allowed to exist without permission.

1. The fawn response - and how deep this really goes

The fawn response is one of the least understood survival strategies. We all know fight, flight, freeze. But fawn - the instinct to appease, to placate, to become whatever the threatening person needs you to be, is just as wired in.

For people who grew up in environments where fighting was impossible and running wasn't an option, it became the entire operating system.

One client described it like this:

"I can walk into any room and within thirty seconds know exactly which version of myself belongs there. The problem is when I'm alone. There's no version. There's just nothing."

Another told me, mid-session, that a chunk of what they were saying to me in that moment wasn't their genuine truth. It was "the answer that would fit this scenario."

Even in therapy. Even with someone whose entire job is to receive the real thing.

That's not dishonesty. That's survival architecture. A child who learned, decades ago, that the truth was dangerous - and who has been running a protective subroutine ever since.

2. The explain loop (and what it's actually protecting you from)

Here's a pattern I see so often I could set my watch by it.

A client describes a conflict. And then, without any prompting, they start circling back. Adding context. Justifying. Preemptively defending. Making sure I understand exactly why they did what they did, exactly what the other person's motivation was, exactly why the situation was so complicated.

They're not telling a story. They're building a case.

And they're building it because somewhere deep in their wiring, there's a belief that if they don't explain themselves perfectly, if they leave out a single detail, they will be misunderstood. Judged. Dismissed. Punished.

One client called it an "itch" - a compulsive, physical need to keep explaining, because if they stopped, something terrible would happen.

Another said:

"Repeatedly explaining and defending myself - even to people in my own head, was making me tired."

They weren't even talking to anyone. They were replaying arguments in their mind, defending themselves against imaginary accusations. The compulsion was protecting something old. As a child, they'd been abandoned, left alone in an institution. Their brain encoded a rule: if I can just make people understand me, I will not be isolated again.

Here's the clinical truth I've told clients directly:

"As long as you sit explaining, you do not have to go and face the emotion. As long as you sit with the why, you're always stuck over there."

The cognitive loop - the analysis, the justification, the case-building is a shield. It keeps your prefrontal cortex busy so your body doesn't have to touch the raw, stinging emotion underneath.

If you're reading this and you've ever replayed an argument in your head for hours, or sent the screenshot to three different people, or Googled "how to know if you're overreacting" -

You are not weak. You are not incapable of thinking for yourself. You're operating with a nervous system that was trained, from the earliest moments, to override its own signals. And that training can be undone.

3. What's underneath all of it

Strip away the fawning. The explaining. The perfectionism.

What's underneath?

I'll tell you what I see, client after client, session after session.

Anger.

Not the explosive kind. The quiet kind. The kind that has been waiting, sometimes for decades, for permission to exist.

Complex trauma survivors are often terrified of their own anger. Because in the environments where they were hurt, anger was not allowed. Expressing it got you punished. Or abandoned. Or made you "just like them."

So it got buried. Under people-pleasing. Under compulsive explaining. Under the desperate, exhausting attempt to be good enough that no one could ever have a reason to be angry at you.

But the anger doesn't go away. It waits in the body. In the jaw. In the throat. In the leg that tightens every time danger approaches. It waits for the moment the nervous system finally feels safe enough to let it out.

And when it comes out, it often doesn't look like rage.

It looks like crying. It looks like shaking. It looks like a person saying, through tears:

"I didn't deserve that. That wasn't okay."

I had a client who, after months of processing, finally accessed their anger. They described it as a wave of fury that burned for days. But what they said next was the important part:

The anger felt good. They felt good because they were finally, genuinely angry - not at themselves, but at what had been done to them.

And then something remarkable happened. The anger moved into grief. And then back into anger. It wasn't stuck. It was flowing.

That sequence - anger -> grief -> anger is one of the most reliable markers of healing I see. The anger isn't looping. It's completing a threat response that was frozen decades ago.

I tell clients:

"Anger transitions to grief when fully expressed. Anger goes to relief when it is expressed and witnessed. Anger goes to power when it is transformed into protective energy."

4. The body knows first

The shift from fawning to anger isn't just psychological. It's somatic. It happens in the body first.

I've watched a client's jaw unlock after months of being clenched so tight it caused physical pain.

I've seen a throat - the site of decades of suppressed voice release in a cascade of coughing, yawning, something tight and burning finally letting go.

Another client, deep in processing, felt their body wanting to burst open. They said they were done - done with all of it, done with carrying what was never theirs to carry.

And then the breakthrough. They said:

"I will not let it happen again. I will not abandon myself. It has been so unfair."

That "I will not abandon myself" is the sound of a self returning.

It's not calm. It's not polite. It's not the version of you that knows how to keep the peace. It's the version of you that has finally decided you are worth protecting.

5. The destination: from explaining to being

If the first half of healing is about accessing anger, the second half is about something quieter.

No longer needing to explain. No longer needing to justify. No longer needing to be perfect.

Just being.

A client who spent months anxiously performing their therapy - calculating the right answer, monitoring their progress, comparing themselves to others finally stopped. They sat back and said:

"I don't have to get it all done today. My mind will let me get there when I'm ready."

Another, after a massive somatic release, said something I think about often:

"I'm safe. Nothing is happening. I'm not trying to do anything. I'm just here."

That's the destination. For a traumatised nervous system, simply existing without trying to solve a problem, manage a threat, or perform a role feels foreign. It feels unsafe. The brain has been running on vigilance so long that peace registers as a threat.

When a client can sit in that peace, when they can feel "nothing" and not panic, when they can be bored and not fill the space with anxiety - something fundamental has shifted.

The prefrontal cortex has stopped its obsessive noise. The amygdala has quieted. The nervous system has finally, tentatively, entered a state of genuine safety.

It doesn't look dramatic. It looks like a person who no longer needs to explain themselves to imaginary accusers. It looks like a person who can say "no" and not spiral. It looks like a person who can be angry and not collapse into shame.

It looks like a person who has come back online.

Signs the shift is happening - you don't need a therapist to confirm these:

• You catch yourself about to over-explain and stop - not because you're suppressing, but because you realise you don't need to
• You feel anger in your body and it doesn't scare you - it feels clarifying, protective, even good
• You say "no" to something small and don't immediately justify it
• You realise you haven't thought about what other people think for an entire hour
• You feel grief - not self-pity, but genuine sadness for what you went through - and you let yourself feel it
• You recognise that someone else's behaviour was wrong, and you don't immediately follow that with "but maybe it was my fault"
• You feel, in your body, that you are on your own side
• You cry, and it feels like release rather than collapse
• You notice tension leaving your jaw, your throat, your shoulders
• You stop an old argument mid-sentence, not because you're giving up, but because you recognise it's an energy drain and you have better things to do with your energy
• You no longer need to ask five friends and an AI whether you're allowed to have a boundary - you just have it

None of these look like "healed." They look like someone learning to stand.

The fawn response is not a character flaw. It's a survival strategy that kept you alive in an environment where having needs was dangerous. You didn't choose it. You were trained into it. And the same nervous system that learned to collapse can learn to stand.

The anger you've been suppressing is not the enemy. It's the part of you that knows you deserved better. When it comes out, it may look like crying. It may look like shaking. It may look like your jaw finally unlocking. That's not regression. That's the body completing a threat response that was frozen decades ago.

The destination is not being angry all the time. It's being able to access anger when you need it and put it down when you don't. It's no longer needing to explain yourself to people who were never going to understand. It's being able to sit in a room alone and feel like a person - not a performance, not a shell, not a collection of other people's expectations.

The destination is: I'm safe. Nothing is happening. I'm not trying to do anything.

That's not giving up. That's coming home.

(PS: I write these posts to help my own clients understand their processing. All client material is highly composited and anonymized. This is education, not therapy advice. EMDR should only be provided by appropriately trained practitioners. Open to hearing how others have navigated this, and happy to answer questions in the comments.)

“I thought I’d already processed this. Why is it back?”

Clients feel like they’re going in circles. Like nothing is changing. Like they're broken and it's the same thing again - their troubles aren't ever going to resolve - it's the same thing post all the other therapies they've tried before.

I get why it feels that way. From the client’s side of the room, it feels like absolute stuckness. Like proof they’re fractured in a way that can’t be fixed.

But from my side that feeling is rarely the truth. It’s usually the exact opposite.

I’m not saying this as hollow reassurance. I’m saying it because I’ve watched this specific pattern unfold enough times, across vastly different people and histories, to know that when a memory returns again in EMDR, it almost always means the processing is deepening, not stalling.

So let me walk through what I actually see clinically when a client tells me they’re “stuck.” Because if you could see what I see, I think you’d be gentler with yourself.

The Onion You Don’t Realise You’re Peeling

One client spent weeks on a single target memory. A caregiver had humiliated them in front of others - the exact words had echoed in their mind for years. The memory kept returning: the same room, the same look on the parent’s face, the same phrase. They’d tell me, “I’m just looping. Nothing changes.”

But what they couldn’t see, what I track, was that every time that scene came back, their brain was working on a completely different layer of the trauma.

• First time: They were stuck in the cognitive replay. Rehearing the words, analyzing what it meant. Surface-level, but still processing.
• Second time: Same image, but now their body entered the room. Tightness in the stomach, heavy chest. They weren’t just thinking about the memory - they were processing it somatically. A deeper channel.
• Third time: They accessed something underneath all of that: the profound grief of being unseen, the specific aching wound of needing protection from the exact person supposed to provide it. In the middle of a set, a previously unspoken heartbreak finally came out.

Same memory. Same visual sequence. Completely different layer.

Trauma isn’t a tidy file you delete with one keystroke. It’s tangled up in thoughts, sensations, emotions, and physiological meanings. Processing moves through them channel by channel, depth by depth. The visual stays the same so your mind has an anchor; the actual healing happens underneath.

When Distress Goes Up, You’re Not Going Backwards

Here’s a moment that frightens people more than almost anything in EMDR. You’re doing the work, the distress level (SUDs) has been dropping, you feel like maybe you’re getting somewhere. Then the same memory returns and the distress shoots right back up. Maybe higher than before.

People panic. They think they’re getting worse.

I tell them: This is not regression. This is the next layer.

One client had been processing a belief that she was fundamentally vile. We’d worked through heavy shame, her distress had dropped, she felt lighter. Then the target memory returned and her distress spiked far higher than before. She panicked.

What she didn’t know yet: that shame she’d processed had been acting like a heavy lid. It was so overwhelming that her mind couldn’t open what was underneath safely. Once that shame layer was processed enough, the lid came off. What was underneath - raw grief, betrayal, righteous anger, finally had room to breathe.

The distress didn’t rise because she was regressing. It rose because she could finally feel what had been blocked for decades - and that's horrifying, but it's also the point. In my notes I wrote: “The SUDs went up because she can NOW FEEL what was previously blocked by shame.”

That spike was progress. That was the lid coming off.

The Doubt That Is Actually Your Bodyguard

If you’ve ever sat down for a session and thought - Is this even working? Am I doing it right? Maybe I’m just making this up. Maybe I should quit - you’re actually not alone. And you’re not broken....

That doubt is not a sign the therapy is failing. It’s a protector part. A highly adaptive mechanism your brain built to keep you away from the most threatening material. Think about it from a survival perspective: if you genuinely believe EMDR isn’t working, you’ll stop. If you stop, the deeply painful memory stays locked away. The protector wins. And from its perspective, that's shaped by years of surviving environments where feeling your feelings was dangerous - that’s a victory!

I gennuinely believe this when I say it: “Doubting is a better thing than facing this. It’s going to sting a lot once those parts move aside.” The doubt is embedded in the memory channel itself. Its whole job is to keep the status quo.

Here's one way it plays out over time for those curious:

A client kept asking, almost in tears, “Was I just making it up? Am I doing it wrong?” She wasn’t. What she was hearing was an internalised voice from parents who’d told her all through childhood she was too sensitive, exaggerating. That voice had become part of her internal architecture, now trying to sabotage her healing because healing felt drastically more dangerous than familiar pain.

Eventually, in a later session, the doubting voice rose up and told her EMDR was too overwhelming. And for the first time, another voice - her own, adult, grounded voice pushed back: “No.. I actually feel better. My body knows what it’s doing. I should trust myself.” That was a milestone. The doubt didn’t vanish, but it stopped being the only voice in the room.

“I’ve Never Done Anything Consistently” And Other Lies Your Wound Whispers

There’s a specific flavour of stuckness I hear repeatedly. It sounds exactly like this: “I’ve never done anything consistently in my life. I start things and never finish. This will probably fail too. I’m just not the kind of person who sticks with things.”

The painful irony: the people who say this are usually sitting right in front of me, for their third or fourth or tenth session in a row. They’re literally being incredibly consistent by showing up. They simply can’t see it because the trauma wound filters out any evidence that contradicts the core negative belief.

In clinical terms, this is positive dismissal - a profound cognitive blind spot. Your brain literally deletes evidence that contradicts the 'I'm a failure' story.

A client once told me with absolute conviction: “There’s never been a glimpse of consistency in my entire life.” They’d just spent weeks showing up, doing heavy lifting, making small behavioural changes at home. None of it registered.

Then one week they experienced a minor slip in routine. The exact kind of trigger that used to initiate a complete emotional collapse. Historically, they’d think, Well, I’ve ruined the day, might as well give up. But this time they paused. They thought, “It’s okay. I can still do one small task. I can still take a walk.” And they did.

That is not nothing. That’s incremental change physically rewiring the brain. But alongside it came the old, fearful voice: “Sure, but you’ve never been able to keep it all together. What if you actually succeed and then there’s nothing left to run from?”

I told them what I genuinely believe: “The core is the fear. If you don’t burn it out, you can’t move.” For someone who’s only known how to exist through a lens of high anxiety, calm can feel like a threat.

How You’ll Know You’re Moving (Even When It Doesn’t Feel Like It)

Because your own internal sensors can be so unreliable during trauma processing, here are the subtle shifts I watch for in every session:

• The memory looks the same, but the charge is different. One client described circling back to her ex’s abuse and realising: “Every cycle feels different. Less confusion. I can see the relationship more clearly… It hurts but I’m no longer asking why, no longer engaging with the illusion.” The image hadn’t changed. Her relationship to it had.
• Your body joins the conversation. When you notice your stomach churning or jaw clenching - that’s not a setback. That’s a shift from cognitive analysis to somatic processing. It’s uncomfortable, but it’s the trauma leaving the body.
• You catch yourself in the act. A client who doubted everything paused mid-sentence and said: “It feels like this is the same voice that’s led me to all this failure.” He wasn’t arguing. He was neutrally observing. That metacognitive shift is one of the strongest indicators therapy is working.
• Between sessions, something softens without your permission. A client told me: “I had an unpleasant conversation with my father, and normally I’d spiral for days. This time… I didn’t. My brain was just quieter.” That’s the memory network losing its grip on present-day life.

What It Feels Like to Not Need a Plan

In the final minutes of a recent session, a client who’d been certain they were incapable of stability had one of those rare moments therapists just sit back and let unfold.

Their mind spontaneously built an image of a calm, ordinary life. Then the old protective voices jumped in: “Where’s the plan? Where are you even going?” But this time, no panic. No collapse into shame. They sat there, looking stunned, and noted that despite having no grand plan, they felt a profound sense of peace.

I had to let them know: This is how most people in the world live. They don’t have it all figured out, but they aren’t panicking.

That’s the destination. Not a perfectly organised mind. Not a life without sadness. But the ability to sit quietly in your messy, uncertain life - with all the memories that still sometimes hurt, and not be destroyed by them... Or forced to plaster them with people-pleasing or perfectionistic performance.

A Few Things to Remember When You Feel Stuck Next Time

1. It’s not the exact same memory. Same image, but the sting has changed. You’re processing something now you weren’t strong enough to touch before.
2. The doubt is your bodyguard. When doubt gets aggressively loud, you’re probably getting very close to something real.
3. Your perception of consistency is warped. If you’re showing up at all, even imperfectly, you’re already disproving the lie that you never stick with anything.
4. The small changes are the real evidence. A conversation that doesn’t lead to a three-day spiral. A memory you can recall without collapsing. That’s the proof.

I’m not worried. I’ve seen this pattern too many times. You are not broken. You’re not endlessly looping. You’re simply deep in the work, and your brain knows exactly what it’s doing - even when you don’t.

And the fact that you’re scared it’s not working? That you care enough to be deeply afraid? That’s not failure. That’s investment. Your protector parts are still doing their job. Your only task is to keep showing up and, gently, let them know they can finally rest.

My next post will mostly cover titration/pendulation - Why some clients only process through body sensations or emotions with no imagery/memories (even though they don't have aphantasia), and when and why the mind opts to do this.

All client material is anonymised and composited. This is education, not therapy advice. EMDR should only be provided by appropriately trained practitioners.

Lol, this isn't an ad... I just saw a post on "adhd coaching" here and I was like... Hmmm... What is this even?

I come from the medical field, so I was curious how the dopamine imbalance and neural wiring peculiarities (baseline anxiety, executive dysfunction, working memory deficits, time blindness) are addressed and tackled.

I know you can retrain a brain through behaviour, neuroplasticity, but... Does it work? To what extent?

Has it helped anyone? How?

No theoretical answers please! Share practical experiences if you've had any...

Oh yeahhh... Is it worth the cost? And are results lasting?

TLDR: Has adhd coaching helped you:

1.) With what?

2.) Have results been lasting?

3.) any additional experience/stories you wish to share.

I'm a trauma therapist based in India, and I needed to "vent" about a pattern I see constantly that leaves so many of us feeling broken.

A huge portion of my clients are South Asian expats and diaspora living in the US, UK, or Canada. They come to me after spending months or years with local Western therapists, and they are deeply, deeply frustrated.

Western talk therapy is fundamentally built on individualism. So, when an Indian or South Asian client talks about toxic, highly enmeshed, or abusive family dynamics, the standard Western clinical advice is often: "Set a hard boundary," or "Just go low-contact/no-contact."

Here's the problem: For a Western nervous system, independence equals safety. But for a South Asian nervous system, collectivism equals safety. We are deeply, biologically wired for interdependence. So much so that we just decided to normalise abuse and neglect in the name of "family".

When a Western therapist tells an Indian client to "just cut off your parents," the client's prefrontal cortex (the logical, thinking part of the brain) might agree that it makes perfect sense. But their autonomic nervous system registers it as a massive survival threat - literally, social death.

So the client tries to set the boundary. Their nervous system immediately shifts into an anxiety or "fawn" (people-pleasing) response. They back down, the boundary crumbles, and then they carry immense shame for "failing" at therapy.

I may get flak for this, but I feel it's not a failure of willpower, but a failure of the therapeutic model - for a system orchestrated by generational patterns of subservience that's propagated by our elders.

You cannot apply individualistic, top-down cognitive therapy to a nervous system that has been traumatized by cultural enmeshment. The guilt of the immigrant, or the "eldest son/daughter," is visceral. It lives in the body. It’s the tight chest, the throat closing up when you try to say "no," the crushing physical weight of obligation that's been "programmed/conditioned" into us.

To actually heal this, we have to stop trying to just "change our thoughts" about our family. The work has to go bottom-up. The work has to involve understanding how this conditioning shaped our physical survival responses, and how that very conditioning sets us up for therapy failure.

The goal isn't to force you to sever your family ties just to be "healthy". Instead, to understand the physical, survival-based charge held in your body; We have to give the nervous system the visceral experience of safety in the present moment.

Once your nervous system feels safe, then you can learn to exist without being consumed by the trauma of it; and from that place of safety, you can actually make the clear decision to keep or cut off your family.

If you feel like a failure because you can't "just say no" to your parents, please give yourself some grace. Your nervous system is just doing exactly what it was trained to do to survive.

I had a few topics at hand for today - common "phrases/situations" in my practice, but I picked this one because:

1.) It's incredibly common
2.) It's confusing - you don't realize that the "looping" is actually new material. It's part of the same memory channel you're working on in EMDR reprocessing (IN EMDR Re-processing; The one pre-EMDR is NOT the same, that's retraumatising)
3.) This is EXACTLY the stuff the therapist should calmly guide the client to "stay with" to get to the other side (keeping in mind good Phase 2 resourcing).

Trauma comes in layers...

Okay, I'll share about one of the clients this week, to explain this...

Processing was going great -> distress went from a level 3-4 to a 2 (with 0 being no distress, 10 the worst possible). One layer cleared.

And then it happens... The exact same thoughts from before come rushing back. Her distress spikes to a 6 or 7.

Now she's distraught, frustrated, exhausted with the same thing happening again to her despite so many therapies before.

Sound familiar??

She was "so tired of the "mental wiring" required just to feel normal, while everyone else seems to live their lives so easily."

If you are in trauma therapy, you know this exact flavor of exhaustion. It makes you want to quit.

But here is what I told her, and what I want to share with anyone feeling this way: That exhaustion isn't a failure. It is a brilliant protective mechanism. It is your brain hitting the brakes.

In clinical terms, we call this "titration." Your mind knows exactly what is buried down there. It knows there is a massive backlog of stinging rage, grief, and terror. If your brain let you feel all of that at once, it would completely shatter your nervous system.

So, instead of letting you get overwhelmed by a flood of trauma, your protective parts step in. They make you feel "frustrated." They make you feel "exhausted." They numb you out to slow the pace down.

Another way this protector steps in is by obsessing over "The Why."

My client was stuck on a core, burning anger: "Why did this happen to me? Why does everything bad happen?"

We all do this. But obsessing over "the why" is actually a high-level cognitive defense mechanism. As long as you are up in your prefrontal cortex trying to solve the philosophical puzzle of "why," you don't have to feel the actual physical sensations in your body - the numbness in your hands, the tightness in your chest, or the burning pit in your stomach.

Your brain would rather you be angry and philosophical than emotionally terrified/overwhelmed and in your body.

In our session, I asked her to set the "Why" aside. Just for a moment. Stop trying to figure it out, and just notice the burning sensation in her stomach.

Coming back to the topic, the mind will often titrate the trauma by giving you just the somatic (physical) sensations rather than include overwhelming visual flashbacks, to prevent a total emotional crash. When we finally stopped asking "why" and just sat with the physical sensation in a safe environment, the burning decreased. We were processing the next layer! She felt a profound wave of relief because she didn't have to force a traumatic memory to the surface; she just had to let the physical charge burn out.

That relief isn't just a break from the work - it is a "glimmer." It is a visceral state of safety.

If you are frustrated with therapy, if you are exhausted, or if you are stuck in an endless loop of asking "why did they do this to me?"... give yourself some grace. Your brain is just trying to pace the healing so it doesn't destroy you.

Sometimes, the bravest thing you can do in therapy isn't to dig up another traumatic memory. It's to stop asking "why," put the thoughts down, and finally let your body feel safe enough to release the tension it's been holding for years.

PS:
The "other" topics I mentioned in the beginning:

I'll write on the "layers" part of processing trauma, and going back to repeat the same thoughts and memories (albeit with a newer version of emotions and sensations) and why that happens in some other post. I started this one, only to realise I needed that understanding to explain this one, so I touched on the layers aspect very briefly, just enough to make sense of this topic.

I need to also touch upon the switch from cognitions (setting them aside) to emotions and sensations during processing, and how to go about that safely, but that requires the phase 2 resourcing (troubles/issues and solutions) post done first.

Also, I have written about these protective guardians/parts in more detail in an older post. It covers exactly how they show up in therapy, so that's broadly covered and should be there in my Reddit profile... you may have to scroll a bit to find it.

I thought I'd address this today because my intake forms had about 5 clients who used this phrase in just the last 2 weeks.

So, these clients - they're in this brutal trap - They've read the books (body keeps the score is a popular one), some even know their attachment style and can name the pattern, a few others can also map out exactly how their parents' unresolved issues created their triggers. Very good intellectual insight into their trauma.... but still.. nothing is changing.

Tried talk therapy, CBT, psychoanalysis, yoga, meditation....

But, they still dissociate, still go completely numb/shutdown, still rage out; The executive dysfunction is crushing - You "know better," but you still can't "do better."

The way I see this is... it's not about failing, it's trying to solve a core nervous system survival programmed response at the conscious, logical, thinking prefrontal cortex level.

For a lot of people, intellectualizing trauma is a brilliant survival skill (I've written on this before). Growing up in chaotic, abusive, or emotionally empty environments, our brains learned: If I can just analyze the threat, if I can figure out exactly WHY they are acting this way, I can predict it and stay safe.

Pattern recognition became the armor. It kept them alive.

But now, that exact same armor steps in to protect them from actually feeling the raw emotion. Because to a dysregulated nervous system, feeling that original pain feels like dying - I mean to say that it sees it as a threat to survival, very uncomfortable.

This is exactly why standard CBT or talk therapy eventually may hit a brick wall for CPTSD. For those who have read that book by Kolk (which I'm not a great fan of, btw, owing to the questionable take on CSA and other topics especially), he puts it this way: "Talk therapy is a "top-down" approach." It's great for cognitive reframing. But when you're dealing with chronic emotional numbness or dorsal vagal shutdown (that deep "freeze" state), just talking about the trauma actually becomes a high-level form of avoidance. You end up talking in circles for years without ever moving the physical charge out of your body.

To actually break the loop, the work has to go "bottom-up."

You don't need more insight. You have plenty of insight. You need to bypass the intellect and start working with how your body is physically holding that survival energy. Whether that's through somatic experiencing, EMDR, or parts-work (IFS), the goal isn't to figure out the "why" anymore. The goal is to give your nervous system the visceral experience of safety in the present moment - so it can finally turn off the alarms from 15 years ago.

This is one of those reasons retraining Emotional Vocabulary and Somatic experiences becomes very important in EMDR resourcing/processing sessions. The reason I wrote this is to stress upon that in such clients, it may (ironically) work well to ask them NOT to use thoughts - keep them aside and work with just feeling emotions and sensations (after good resourcing).

Give yourself a break... it's not because of a lack of willpower... it's because you need to target a different system altogether.

PS: As much as I refer to theories and concepts like Polyvagal and the Window of Tolerance, or even pop psychology books, I do this not because they are completely scientifically unassailable (the theories have some substance to them, don't get me wrong), but because it helps clients form a bridge from knowing about trauma to understanding trauma and human biology.

I've been doing a lot of personal research to find psychological theories that are much more scientifically and biologically sound (I come from a medical background), AND ALSO highly accessible to clients (who are in distress, at times already with cognitive overload from trauma). I'm yet to find one to replace much of the theories I base my writeups on. So, keep that in mind, for whoever likes technicalities...

A lot of people with trauma relate to these: Constantly re-reading texts to see if you phrased something correctly, over-explaining yourself - wanting to be sure you've not been misunderstood, or needing frequent confirmation from a partner or friend that you're behaving "as expected/appropriate" for that situation/space.

From a medical and trauma therapy perspective, I feel the chronic need for external reassurance isn't a personality flaw, but rather a symptom of a missing internal structure - a sense of self: What are my needs, goals, what decision do I take, how do I behave, etc. etc...

Let me explain with some analogies I commonly use:

1. The Child Growing Up: The Missing Internal Blueprint

A child isn't born knowing how to calm its own nervous system. When a toddler is distressed, a healthy caregiver provides the external regulation: holding, soothing words, a safe presence. This is what's called as co-regulation. The first time this happens, the hug means nothing to the child and they may keep crying. Through repetition, the child's brain internalizes that support exists and that it'll come, and come consistently - not just present at times, and absent at other times. Eventually, an internal voice forms, that says something like: "It's okay, you're safe. You're capable."

In complex trauma or inconsistent attachment, this process breaks. If the source of "closeness" was also a source of threat - like a caregiver who was loving one moment and volatile the next - in such a state of unpredictability the brain never forms a reliable internal model for safety and self-worth. The adult "compass" for validation now has to point externally for a reference, because the internal one was never calibrated.

So, you become dependent on external signals - a good grade, a positive comment, chasing laurels, a partner's words, feedback from peers during socialising - just to feel regulated. Your sense of worth is conditional and unstable, because it's wired to be sourced from outside.

2. How This "Chameleon" Shows Up Daily

You might not feel "traumatized." You just feel like a chronic overthinker or a perfectionist. But underneath the cognition, the pattern runs on a loop:

The Planning: You draft an email multiple times, you plan on what to say next when interacting with friends or socialising - each time mentally rehearsing how the recipient might misinterpret it. You're not just communicating; you're trying to control the external response to pre-empt a feeling of internal shame or defectiveness. You don't want to slip up...

The Performance: Your worth is subconsciously tied to a dashboard of metrics - productivity, likes, visible achievements, certificates, allocades, or just working towards some new goal. A dip in any metric doesn't just feel like a setback - it feels like an erosion of self, requiring an urgency to fix (something). This is because your system lacks the internal figure that says, "Your value exists independently of this output, independent of performing."

The Hypervigilance: Your friend's is having a bad day, and a slight change in the tone of their voice triggers you. You leave a conversation and immediately replay it, scanning for clues that you were accepted or rejected. This isn't just social anxiety; it's your threat center (amygdala) actively hunting for external data to confirm safety, because it cannot generate that safety signal internally.

The constant seeking is an attempt to fill a structural gap. It's exhausting.

3. The EMDR Approach: "Manual Installation" of the Missing Figures

In EMDR, particularly in the preparation phase (Phase 2), we don't just talk about this pattern. We use a technique called Resource Development and Installation (RDI) to build the missing internal architecture.

This is a process of conscious "reparenting" - giving your nervous system the reference points it never got. We do this by creating specific internal resource figures/essences. Think of it as building your own internal board of advisors that is available 24/7.

All of this work is done under free-association using bilateral stimulation, instead of the conscious mind - so you don't need to actually have any reference figures(clients may have never had any person who made them feel safe), we find what the mind already links to the felt sense around them, and resource that.

As an example, here are the two core figures/essences we often start with, and why they directly target the reassurance/safety trap:

A. The Unconditional Acceptance / Nurturing Figure

What it addresses: The core wound of conditional worth ("I am only good if I achieve"). It targets perfectionism, the fear of being misunderstood, and the performance dashboard.

The Script: "Allow your mind to let an image, feeling, or essence to emerge that embodies complete, unconditional acceptance. This figure values you independently of your productivity or performance. It sees your worth as inherent. As you connect with it, notice the somatic shift - perhaps warmth in your chest, a relaxation in your shoulders, a deeper breath. This is the feeling of being enough, exactly as you are, without explanation."

Why it works: It provides the direct somatic antidote to the shame that drives reassurance-seeking. It begins to generate the feeling of worth from inside, reducing the desperate need to source it from outside.

B. The Wise Observer / Protector Figure

What it addresses: The hypervigilant scan and the intellectual over-analysis. It targets the part that obsessively replays conversations and needs external data to feel safe.

The Scrip: "Let your mind drift to a figure or essence with a tone of calm authority and perspective. This could be a protector, a wise elder, or even a part of yourself. This figure can stand between you and the 'bad voices' - the internal critic or the external stressor. It observes your patterns with compassion but doesn't get caught in the whirlwind. As you feel its presence, notice a physical sense of 'good cold' or settled strength in your body - the feeling of being backed up, of having an internal shield."

Why it works: It builds an internal authority. This figure provides the reassurance you seek from others, but from within. It says, "I see the situation. You are okay." This slowly rewires the circuit away from external scanning.

4. The Neurobiological Wiring

Trauma responses are habit loops in the brain. The reassurance-seeking loop is: Feel uncertain -> Seek external data -> Temporary relief -> Loop repeats.

Building these figures is about creating a new loop. By repeatedly pairing a cue word (like "Acceptance" or "Observer") with the specific somatic sensation (the warmth, the settled strength) during gentle bilateral stimulation (like slow tapping), you are literally wiring a new neural pathway.

You're teaching your amygdala (the threat center) that safety and worth can be generated internally. When that center fires, instead of shutting down your prefrontal cortex (logic) and forcing you to seek external validation, it can now access these installed resources. It brings the logical, compassionate part of your brain back online.

Safety, in this context, isn't an intellectual concept. It's a somatic felt sense. For many, the brain has no reference for what "safety" should feel like in the body. These figures build that reference, from the ground up.

Unraveling a lifetime of seeking external validation isn't linear. But if you find yourself exhausted by the need to check, confirm, and explain, understand this: you aren't broken or weak. Your nervous system is operating from a blueprint that lacked certain essential supports.

The work is about manually installing those supports. It's about building an internal sanctuary, so the constant search outside can finally come to an end.

So, I was to write on the progression of emotions through EMDR processing (anger and grief, etc etc to eventual empowerment), but someone requested this topic....

So, we know it's common for people to suffer for decades, jumping between specialists, before finally landing in an EMDR (trauma) therapist's chair.

And, as someone from the medical field, I can openly admit that a big reason for this is that the clinical medical field has a massive blind spot when it comes to CPTSD.

As doctors, we have patterns which are easy to match. When a patient comes in with a cough, fever, and specific sounds on a steth, we know it's pneumonia. We treat the physical endpoint. But when it comes to chronic, complex trauma, the presentation isn't linear. It doesn't look like a textbook panic attack.

So, I'll use an example from a recent intake (and also the reason I picked this topic as it was very fresh in my mind, details changed for confidentiality, of course):

I had a client referred to me by a holistic gynecologist. She was about to start IVF and fertility treatments. She also had some gynaecological complaints with regards to her uterus, and had a surgery for the same - a grueling 6 hour surgery.

The gynecologist didn't send her to me just because the surgery was scary. They sent her because the client’s baseline cortisol (stress hormone) levels were running persistently high, and a body trapped in a chronic state of stress (obviously) does not want to get pregnant. It wants to survive. Which wouldn't bid well for her expensive fertility treatments.

When I asked this client about her childhood, her initial response was standard: "I don't really remember much of it, it's very faded. I don't really have any trauma, just this recent surgery."

But as we started talking, a different picture emerged. A mother who was physically and emotionally abusive. A father who couldn't provide due to circumstances, leading to severe, constant household fights. Unpredictability. Emotional neglect. She also dealt with racism and bullying at school.

If we look at the ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) study, she easily scored a 4 or higher. We know scientifically that an ACE score that high alters neuronal functioning and the immune system. It keeps the threat-center of the brain constantly firing, pumping out cortisol, which exponentially increases the risk for autoimmune issues, severe inflammation (like her surgical condition), and hormonal dysregulation.

The doctors had been treating her organs for years, completely missing that her nervous system had been trapped in a survival state since she was a child.

But here is why it gets missed for decades: CPTSD is a chameleon.

From my personal experience, clients don't walk into a clinic looking "traumatized." They don't sit there shaking. Because the human mind is brilliant at survival. To keep you functioning, to keep you going to work, the brain puts a cognitive "tape" over the raw emotions (like feeling "defective," fearful, or anxious). It actively disconnects you from your body's sensations.

So, how does this chameleon actually look in daily life? Here are a few practical examples of how it runs in the background:

1.) (Extreme) People Pleasing

You act like a completely different person depending on the room you're in. At home, you're comfortable. But at work or in a social setting, you read the environment and bend your values slightly just to "fit." You become a chameleon because your nervous system learned long ago that standing out, speaking up, or being yourself leads to verbal abuse or neglect. So, you sit in meetings, perfectly knowing the answer, but a counter-voice pops up saying, "What if I'm wrong? What if it's stupid?" and you stay quiet.

2.) Cognitive Distraction/Dissociation (This is a term I've come up with as I couldn't find anything in literature to label it)
If you're lucky, you may feel a sliver of anxiety - BUT before that emotion can fully register and crash your system, your brain flips a switch. It gives you 15 excuses to go do something else, or to divert attention from that actual felt emotion.

In my client's case, she thought she was just being "healthy." She did yoga and meditation 4 times a week, tracked every single macro, tracked her daily steps, and prepared for trips weeks in advance. But she was doing it obsessively. She had to constantly have a goal.

Why? Because if she stopped moving, if she stopped doing PQRS, the cognitive distraction(dissociation, as I prefer to put it) would fall away, and she would suddenly feel the heavy, restless, somatic pressure in her chest.

(Dissociation in this sense is anything that distracts the mind from the actual emotions and sensations the body is feeling - to create distance from the discomfort, hence the reason I like to think of these cognitive explanations and perfectionistic tendencies as a form on the dissociative spectrum.)

3. Hypervigilance disguised as "Planning"

You think about the future every single day. Your mind spins 100 different ways a scenario could play out. You tell yourself you are just "planning" or "being responsible." But in reality, your threat center is scanning the horizon for danger, because when you were 7 years old, the environment was completely unpredictable. You are trying to control the future so you don't get hurt again.

___

When you live like this, you don't feel traumatized. You just feel exhausted. You feel like a shy perfectionist who overthinks. You might even laugh and make jokes about your traumatic childhood.

But underneath that cognitive tape? The baseline cortisol is still firing. The body is still waiting for the threat.

(Just a note to add here, cortisol may even be elevated in micro amounts which may not be detected by regular tests - may need tracking over the day even, but that doesn't mean it isn't high enough to cause trouble)

This is why traditional talk therapies can sometimes just spin wheels with CPTSD. If you just talk about the tracking, the workaholism, or the meeting anxiety, you're only dealing with the cognitions - the excuses the brain made up to distract you.

This is where trauma therapy and EMDR come in.

In EMDR, we don't care much about the narrative story. I regularly tell clients they don't even need to force themselves to remember their childhood (dissociative amnesia is there for a reason - to protect you). We don't need the images (other therapists may disagree here, and I'll respect that, but I do not believe it's required for therapeutic healing as much as somatic followed by emotions; Imagery is supportive for the client though, and helps with understanding the process).

We track the underlying patterns. The feeling of being "defective." The somatic pressure in the chest. The restless energy. We bypass the cognitive chameleon and go straight to the emotional and somatic charge. Once you process and burn those out, the memory loses its sting. It can't fire that threat behavior anymore.

When that happens, the cortisol finally drops. The nervous system realizes the threat is in the past. You stop having to mold yourself to every room you walk into, and you start actually moving toward the Quality of Life you want.

It takes time. Unraveling decades of chameleon survival behaviors is not a linear process. But if you catch yourself constantly exhausting yourself to blend in, over-explaining yourself, or running from goal to goal just to avoid sitting in silence... you aren't broken. Your nervous system is just doing exactly what it was programmed to do.

Normalise this. Understand the pathology. And know that the underlying circuits can be rewired.

(PS: I really don't use AI for these. The last post I made, some were accusing me of using AI, but it looked haphazard and everywhere because of the lack of it... If you have doubts about the content, drop by on discord because there's a much longer version of the same there in the general channel which I've texted, as it was a reply to a question someone had asked, and a quick post I'd made to share the same with everyone else. That being said, the reason I add this here is that it's utter frustrating to write such long posts, and then read that some AI could write this clinical experience... I can assure you 90% of this stuff doesn't come up online or in AI training, so it's highly unikely you'll get any of this content or examples. I write it because of that very reason, as it helps support tappers and clients in safer EMDR and in understanding their suffering.)

I wanted to share a bit about my approach to a specific part of EMDR Therapy, because I think there's a common misconception that can leave people feeling stuck. A lot of folks, clients and even some new therapists, think of therapy protocols as a fixed, step-by-step checklist you just run through.

In my experience the protocol is a crucial guideline - a map. But the map has to account for the terrain too, else you'll hit a wall.

This hits hardest in the "resourcing" phase (Phase 2 of EMDR). This is where we build internal tools for safety and stability before processing heavy stuff. A standard approach might be to teach a "calm safe place" exercise and move on. But what if safety itself feels confusing or threatening? What if that safe place gets immediately invaded by the very thoughts you're trying to escape?

That's where tailoring becomes important.

I have 2 approaches for this:

1.) Do the basics - container, lightstream and calm/safe place, and the moment we hit that first wall, like the safe place feeling unsafe, or thoughts that oppose loudly, we stop. We don't force it. Instead, we gently explore what a genuine feeling of safety should be like, often for the first time. We might use free association to build a "safe figure" the mind can trust, and from there - in their presence, find what a truly secure mental space feels like. This is a staggered approach - Build the reference safety figure resource, and then go back and complete the resourcing exercise that failed because of the lack of one.

We build the specific resource needed to cross that specific barrier.

2.) Do a longer Phase 2 early on:
For some, especially with complex trauma, we need a stronger basecamp before we even look at the mountain. We build nurturing and protector figures proactively. This involves collaboration between therapist and client - homework like noting down triggering thoughts and words, situations, possible negative beliefs, and us co-creating scripts and mental figures that offer the exact kind of support the person’s history has missing. For example, some of my clients are stock market traders, and one of them has over a dozen tailored resources that help manage trauma responses that directly impact their work and livelihood.

I usually mix and match both of these approaches - get enough resources to bootstrap into processing safely, and having understood how the client's system responds; And as processing goes, and you notice there are no counter-balances (thoughts and inner voices that remind client of their positive qualities and things they've done) we build the resource figure to support this lack.

So, processing is like a dance - one step phase 2, one step phase 4, and back-and-forth...

The Practical Aspect:

This is where it moves from technique to art. The resources have to resonate with your language, your culture, your mind.

• For someone spiritual, a "lightstream" resource might come from a sense of the divine. For someone from a different culture, this same approach could be dismissive.
• For a client in IT, their "container" for difficult thoughts wasn't a box - it was a meticulously visualized hard disk, reinforced with titanium wires. It worked perfectly because it made sense to them.
• In the middle of a tough memory, I’m pattern-matching in real-time: Is this a moment for a cognitive, somatic, parts-focused, attachment-based, or narrative interweave? What words will land and what might crash the client's process? It’s a high-stakes, rapid dance of observation and adaptation.

It can be mentally taxing for the therapist - those five minutes of figuring out what interweave the client's mind could relate to are intense - but necessary. The mind is incredibly adaptive, but it needs the right, personalized tools to turn the ship.

A recent example: A client on their 1st processing wanted to process a strong memory - A SUDS of 10 (high distress). We did the flash and brought it down to a 7, and from there began processing.

Immediately we hit the 1st barrier - no support against the client's NC - high externalising (which means without the external validation, we're practically stuck.) - client still at a 7-8, but feeling like breaking down...

We stopped processing and built the resource - right there in the storm... It was a slow journey as their mind built an internal phase 2 resource to support them - through free association, through guidance to set the counter-acting thoughts aside - an internal supporter, nurturer - One to provide INTERNAL validation that the client can safely rely upon to always be there for them...

Then with this resource we continued processing using something called pendulation and titration - stay with this resource for a few passes, go to the memory for 1-2 passes - repeat this a few times. It helps limit the sting of the trauma from becoming overwhelming. Also, I asked them to just focus on the emotions and body sensations as combining thoughts here could lead to overwhelm... so we had no cognitions to know what story was unfolding, but we could track adaptive changes in emotions and body sensations.

By the end of this 1st processing session, SUDS had dropped to a 4 (from a 10).

We rechecked on the memory and the client was surprised that for the FIRST time, they didn't crash and cry when recalling that memory.

I'm not asking that such should be done in every session. I work with clients where waiting for things to be perfect for processing is never going to happen because of the above issue of X relying on Y and Y relying on X loop... But my point to convey is that phase 2 is much more important than phase 4 BECAUSE of this exact reason.

Phase 2 will build lifelong stress tolerance skills. Phase 4 processing burns out the internal negative cognitions and thoughts (emotions, sensations) that bother the client, but life's external stressors will remain - job, difficult people and unexpected situations - these still need INTERNAL coping abilities which a lot clients are missing - which is what Phase 2 resourcing does.

To anyone feeling like therapy is a generic script...

It shouldn’t be. You are not generic. Your history isn't standard. Your protector parts, your inner critic, your longing for safety - they all speak in a unique dialect. Our job as therapists is to listen, learn that language, and help you build supports that actually make sense in the world you inhabit.

The map is essential, but navigating the terrain together - with empathy, flexibility, and deep respect for your unique system, is what makes the journey of healing possible.

I’m open to learn how other tappers have approached their sessions and how other therapists tailor the work for their unique clients. Share your stories!