r/EMDR

I'm looking for suggestions.

My son (14) had an autistic burnout and stopped going to school a little over a year ago. Recently he had the chance to try EMDR as a way of dealing with some of his anxieties about returning to school.

We're going through the 'get-to-know-you' process with the psychologist but yesterday he told me that he's scared to try EMDR for two reasons.

1. He is scared to think about school, and the idea of someone forcing him to think about it (even if the end goal is to lower his fear) is so scary, he doesn't dare try it.

2. He doesn't understand how it works and 'it feels like manipulation'.

Does anyone have tips for #1 and perhaps resources (e.g., like a really simple but realistic / factual video) for #2?

I’ve been doing EMDR for 7 months now and I never brought up that I’ve had severe arachnophobia since I was a kid and I’ve noticed HUGE improvements the last few months. A jumping spider was on my sweater and I calmly tried to get him to climb onto a post instead of up my shirt and then I brushed him off but it was more like a reflex than actual fear and I was worried I had hurt him even though I was gentle. I was doing EMDR for something unrelated and sometimes I feel like I’m banging my head against a wall and not getting anywhere but this gives me hope. Keep going💕🐞

What helped you guys?

I know I'm supposed to take something(s) that help me but I'm at a loss thinking of anything that might help right now.

I have a great therapist, 1st few sessions have been good, she's helped me map a trauma timeline and decide what themes we'll work on in order of how much distress they still cause. My traumas include sibling abuse, bullying by narc mum, abandonment by dad, ED, SA, DV and teen cancer survivor trauma.

My 'homework' this week is to find something to bring for sessions that will help me. Can't be anything too big or obvious as I go straight from work.

Can you guys help with some suggestions of what helps/helped you during/after sessions?

ok theres nothing more to this post but am just really excited and happy i’ve finally started processing after 8 months of talk therapy and wanted to share it :)

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. I guess my therapist does this along with EMDR (is that normally how it's done)? 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.

During my session today, my brain kept looping back to being so tired of myself and my own issues. I want to get over myself if that makes sense? Maybe I need to take a break from therapy? It’s been a year and a half of emdr. For background clarification, I’ve come a long way and made progress but “not enough” in my personal opinion and I’m kinda sick and tired of dealing with myself. Hope this makes sense to anyone.

Just started a new therapist who can do EMDR and I’ve been struggling with a really traumatic and drawn out betrayal breakup from over a year ago and was wondering if EMDR is a viable therapy for me. I know there are worse traumas but I was really hoping to try it since im still triggered pretty regularly and would like to fully accept it and move on. I still have symptoms of distress such as losing sleep and numbing behaviors. However my therapist is skeptical of me needing it (we’ve only done one 1-hour intake though so he doesn’t know the story yet). Is EMDR a viable solution for coping with a traumatic breakup?

I have been doing EMDR for about 6 months now. I am in the middle of processing a very difficult memory re: childhood physical abuse. My therapist says it will probably take multiple sessions to work through. For some reason, though, since my last session another TOTALLY unrelated memory (albeit equally difficult) from my adult life keeps surfacing. I am able to put it in my safe container and will discuss it with my therapist, but I am annoyed that it keeps replaying in my mind. This intrusive memory is for future exploration. Quite honestly, I only have enough emotional energy to deal with one at a time. Does anyone have any insight as to why this might be happening? (F69)

Hello everyone!

I just wanted to share something with all of you that I did yesterday after my session. I finally installed the positive belief that my feelings matter, which took me three processing sessions. I normally have my therapy in the mornings, but yesterday my appointment was in the afternoon, so I made a plan to avoid the 5:00pm traffic.

A friend suggested that I could go to the beach and journal after my session and see if the symptoms I usually feel after therapy subsided a little. Well, I went a little further than that and also brought my running gear to go for a run after journaling. A bold move because my past experiences with EMDR have been feeling sleepy, tired, sad, and so on...But my plan was that I was only going to do these things if I felt like it, and if I didn't, I would go home. The thing is that I normally feel too self-conscius and afraid to go alone anywhere. I still do things by myself, but I always feel anxious. Yesterday was different. I went to the beach and felt something I never did before while being with myself, fearless. I was aware of my surroundings and felt present in my body; it felt amazing.

I journaled about my session and spent a little time after just watching the waves and being in a calm present state. Then I went for a 4-mile run with my headphones on and listened to music. I have to tell you, I haven't been able to listen to music for the past three months after my ex broke up with me, and I've always loved music so not being able to listen to it made me feel like something was missing. I felt anchored, grounded, regulated and peaceful.

Today I woke up feeling neutral, but remembering what I did yesterday is helping me stay present and grateful. I know that EMDR hangover for me is imminent, but I feel so proud of myself for what I did yesterday. When the sadness and other symptoms hit, I just have to remember that good days are ahead, and I can make them happen.

I hope you all can have days like this, where you feel peace within yourselves. Thank you for reading!

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So I stopped going to college about five months ago because my social anxiety got extremely severe. I couldn't go to class so I started taking a break and going to therapy. We do EMDR with exposure therapy and basically what she makes me so is small things, like for example for the last few weeks I just had to walk to the school and then go back, simple enough. I didn't have to get in the classes or anything, just to the gate, and each time I did a little bit more. Last few times I wasn't that anxious and now since school ends in two weeks she decided we should do the full exposure, which is go to a class.

However I am freaking out so bad. I walked over today to the school and saw where the class was, it was filled with people so I left and I was feeling so uneasy and I'm so scared for tomorrow idk if I can do it. In the first semester I barely went and only passed three subjects, people have no idea who I am and if they remember my face is gonna be like why is this girl here after months of evaluations and tests? Why would she show up at the end for no reason? The teacher is definitely gonna comment on my presence because she's never seen me and I'm so extremely agitated right now. She told me if I can't go that's ok and we'll just work on it but I really didn't wanna be a failure. My new medication has been helping me more but I have such bad memories with that college just the thought of it makes me feel sick. I'm really scared to go and I don't know if I'm ready. I feel like the EMDR has been working but at the same time this feels like too big of a step and I'm really scared.

I hate exposure therapy so much

I have been with my current therapist about a year and really like her (but I am very slow to trust/open up) we figured out I have CPTSD early on.

We started EMDR a couple sessions ago (did other modalities before). The first time I felt like nothing happened (struggles to stay grounded/focused). The second time I connected way more with the memory and cried in session (same memory so far in both sessions).

Ever since that second session (~3 weeks), I have been feeling very angry and struggling to trust even close people in my life. My therapist didn’t do anything wrong but. I suddenly really want to quit with her and some of the anger I’ve been feeling seems directed at her (for no logical reason I can think of).

Has anyone else struggled with anger and trust after starting? Did it go away/get better?

I’m a few (maybe 5 or 6) sessions into EMDR, we are still at the formulating stage.

I’m really struggling and have been feeling dreadful for the last couple of weeks. I’m struggling with the resourcing part of the sessions, thinking of a safe space and even worse, safe people.

Any tips or resources for resourcing 😂 please let me know 🙏🏻 has anyone else struggled this much?

I have AuDHD and a specific issue with imperfection so I can’t think of safe people when there are times they have been unsafe, for example. But I realise I need this foundation before I progress.

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...

Hi everyone, please take a moment to read this because I really need some advice.
I’ve been in EMDR therapy since September 2025. From the very first real EMDR sessions, since I don’t have an actual traumatic memory connected to my main issue, we started working on what affects me the most: my constant inability to accept my body and the feeling that I’m ugly.
From those feelings, a scene started to emerge that resembles a possible childhood sexual abuse scenario. Since then, unfortunately, my therapist has become convinced that this really happened, and we keep working on that scene — or similar ones — almost forcefully. I feel stuck.
The problem is that when someone pushes me to imagine in a certain direction, of course I can imagine things, but it doesn’t feel like they truly come from me. I don’t recognize these memories as real, and honestly they feel impossible to me.
Recently I tried to tell my therapist this, but it feels like she doesn’t want to listen at all.
What I do recognize as partially true is a feeling of “wrong” or confusing sexuality, but not in the way she interprets it. If anything, I feel like it may come more from emotional neglect or from never having received the attention and affection I needed as a child.
Please help me: should I change therapist?
She tells me to trust the process. And honestly, I do feel like EMDR itself could help me — in some ways it already has, quite a lot actually — and I don’t want to stop therapy altogether.
But should I keep trusting her, or is it better to change therapists?

Hi all,
I’ve done 3 sessions of EMDR so far. I think things are going well but I’m concerned I’m not doing it “right”? My therapist says to just let my brain drift where it may but I find that unless I make a concerted effort, my mind just goes… blank and numb, including with emotional numbness. Is this normal for EMDR? Does anyone else relate?

I think I've realised that underneath my chronic fatigue, depression, and neurodivergent burnout is the belief that I cannot succeed in life. How might I work on this belief in EMDR?

I've always found work/study extremely hard due to undiagnosed (until recently) autism and ADHD. Despite this I've always put in tons of effort and managed to get good qualifications and worked as a healthcare professional for a while, until I burnt out.

I was always so keen to work hard, to do a good job, and to improve things, and I believed I would reap the rewards eventually. I thought I would buy a home, enjoy my career, pursue my hobbies, spend time with friends and family, achieve a degree of financial security, etc. I gained and lost some of those things along the way, and some of them I've never achieved. Over time I've been struggling more and more until I couldn't see the point not anymore.

When I was younger I had more energy and was able to mask pretty well. Now I'm older, far less able to mask, and have way less energy. What's more, my qualifications are worth less now and the cost of living, especially housing, is so much higher relative to wages. I feel the gap between what I'm capable of and what's needed for a good life has only grown with time. I desperately need security and yet I can no longer muster anything to use to create it. I'm in midlife with no career, dwindling savings, a miniscule pension, no house (stuck renting), and I feel I can never catch up - not to other people but to what I need for a safe, secure, happy life.

I'm seeing my therapist next week, but I'd love your input, as this subreddit is so amazing at coming up with helpful insights and ideas.

I want to get back to being the happy, optimistic version of me who believes I can achieve my goals and succeed in my life. I can't even look at possible jobs that might work with my autism and ADHD because I cannot get beyond the fact that my brain thinks I'm broken, the system is broken, it's all a trap and a scam, and it's impossible for me to succeed. Any ideas on how I could get there through EMDR would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance fellow travellers.

Hi everyone, just a few questions I have really, cut a long story short, I’ve suffered with OCD since I was a kid (f28) and every few years it comes on very strong, sometimes stronger than the last time. My anxieties often surround being a bad person, life experiences (future ones, like deaths, life changes etc) and afraid of change. I’m currently in hypnosis but unsure if it is working for me.

EMDR is something I have yet to try, and have been following some success stories for a while.

Questions I have:

- Can or has anyone with bad anxiety have any success with this therapy?

- I didn’t have an overly bad childhood, but grew up with an angry father in my life (we’re on good terms now) but my therapist thinks I have some signs of PTSD surrounding how I feel about myself and how I react internally to situations, is this enough for EMDR?

- Is this type of therapy something that you would recommend for someone who is trying to better their anxiety, about past, present and future to get better and stronger for the future?

Thank you in advance for your replies

Today during my session, we were about to discuss something I wasn’t even gonna process or address but my words slipped ahead of me.
As I was trying to process I had to stop because I was feeling so nauseous & like I could pass out but I was afraid to tell my therapist.
Has anyone ever experienced similar symptoms in session?

i have my first emdr reprocessing session next week and my therapist and i identified a memory to target but she told me to give that memory a name before the next time i see her. i can’t seem to think of any name or word that comes to mind?? i try to think of a word but my mind goes blank

i know the touchstone memory has a correlation to my bigger trauma but i feel like that memory is not “valid” or “traumatic” enough

I have Complex - PTSD and have suffered 28 years of abuse. I get triggered and have emotional flashbacks multiple times a day which have really prevented me from living my lofe and engaging with the world. The thing is I don't know my triggers, or the root of my triggers.

How important is this for me to know before the therapy starts? Or is it something not required for this therapy to work?

Thanks