Most of the posts in here talk about more panic with sessions or the hangover for days after. I know it's hard work but does anyone have positive experiences?
I'm autistic and I struggle to picture things that aren't "real" or an actual lived experience. This is causing problems and I haven't been able to picture a "safe, calm place" because I genuinely cannot recall a time or place I've been at ease in life.
Any suggestions on overcoming this or tips on how to "conjure" something that I don't have experience with?
Thank you all so much in advance! I really want EMDR to help me.
A client of mine, about four months into processing, had been doing some really heavy lifting. We were moving through the old stuff, and she had finally tapped into this really clean, mobilizing anger.
But then, right in the middle of a session, the forward momentum just stalled. She looked at me, looking genuinely terrified, and said:
"I feel like there's an ugly person inside that all my people-pleasing has been trying to hide. And I'm scared of what I'll find if I keep going."
I thought I'd address this today because this isn't just her fear. It's a universal crossroads in complex trauma recovery.
You do the work, you finally stop blaming yourself, you get angry at the people who hurt you... and then suddenly, the anger evaporates. You are left staring at a sheer drop of panic. You start thinking, "What if I'm not traumatized? What if I'm just fundamentally toxic? What if the 'nice' version of me was just a lid keeping a monster locked in?"
If you are a client reading this and you’ve hit this wall, I want you to take a deep breath. You are not regressing. You are not broken.
In my practice, I call this the "U-Turn." And if you'll let me gently pull back the clinical curtain for a minute, I’d like to explain exactly what your nervous system is doing right now.
Here is why healing suddenly feels so incredibly dangerous:
1. Anger is just a doorway (and you have just walked through it...)
For those who survived chaotic childhoods by becoming chameleons - fawning, people-pleasing, erasing your own needs, anger is a massive developmental milestone. When you first feel it in EMDR, it means your nervous system is no longer trapped in a shutdown/cower state. It finally has enough juice to protest.
But anger is a mobilizing emotion. It moves outward. And once that initial wave of "I didn't deserve that" burns off, the anger acts like an open door.
And what's standing right behind that door? Fear.
Because if you stop being the accommodating, shape-shifting person you've always been... who are you? Your brain suddenly realizes the survival armor is coming off, and it sounds the alarm.
2. The illusion of the "Ugly Self" (and the fear of losing your edge)
When you grew up in an environment where your authentic feelings got you punished or neglected, your brain learned a brilliant, brutal rule: Who I actually am is not acceptable.
So, it built a false self. The "good" kid. The one who reads the room and becomes whatever is safest.
But after decades of wearing this mask, you lose track of the core underneath. Your protective parts start to believe that the mask isn't just a strategy, but a containment vessel. You become convinced that whatever is under there must be vile, or else why would you have worked so exhaustingly hard to hide it?
For high-achievers, this shows up as a fear of losing their "edge." I'll have clients say, "If I don't have this external pressure and anxiety pushing me, I'll be revealed as lazy, worthless, and defective."
This fear isn't a prophecy. It’s just biological friction. It's evidence of how long you've had to hide.
3. The Pivot
There is a moment in this U-Turn where something shifts. It’s not dramatic. It’s quiet, but the quality of the distress changes. I always watch for it in sessions.
Before the shift, the fear is paralyzing: "What if I actually am a bad person? I can't look." After the shift, the fear is still there - but it is accompanied by a profound exhaustion. It sounds like: "I am so tired of being afraid of this. I am so tired of hating myself. I don't want to live like this anymore."
That isn't resignation. That is readiness. It’s the willingness to finally find out what's actually there, even if it's scary, because staying in the fear has become unbearable.
4. The Messy Calibration Phase
Here is the part of rebuilding that nobody talks about: it is messy.
From my side of the room, this is what I see: Your brain just tried a brand new behavior for the first time in your life. Of course it was clumsy.
Your nervous system doesn't learn through perfect textbook execution. It learns through experience. You tried it, it was terribly uncomfortable, but you didn't collapse. You didn't apologize just to restore peace. You survived the consequence. This isn't failure. This is calibration. You'll notice this happening multiple tlmes throughout the EMDR journey as the "new self" gets built.
What you'll actually find when the mask comes off...
This is the most profound part of my job. Across hundreds of hours of watching people navigate this terrifying U-Turn, I can promise you one thing with absolute clinical certainty.
Not one single person has ever found a monster underneath. Not one.
When the fear finally burns out and we look under the people-pleasing, here is what is actually sitting there:
The monster is a mirage. It's a protective guard dog generated by the exact same system that suppressed you in the first place.
Healing doesn't mean you turn into someone else. When the self-blame lifts, your real self just quietly emerges. It's catching yourself dropping a two-year argument over a door lock because you suddenly realize you just don't care to spend the energy. It's your chronic morning anxiety simply... vanishing.
You are not the chameleon act. You are not your people-pleasing. You are not the exhausting, hollow performance. Those were just brilliant adaptations that kept you alive.
What's underneath isn't ugly. It's just you. And you are incredibly worth finding.
(PS: Just a quick note as always, I write these posts out for my clients to help them understand their own processing, and I usually put the core content here on Reddit. All client material is highly composited and anonymized. Because this "U-Turn" phase is so massive and terrifying for clients, I've written a much deeper dive into this - including exactly how therapists should hold this space for their clients, and why boundaries aren't "one size fits all." You can read the complete article here: https://drantoniodcosta.com/blog/the-u-turn-when-healing-gets-scary.html
Open to learning how other therapists and clients have navigated this specific fear of the "ugly self," and happy to answer questions in the comments!)
Making amends with myself. Changing the inner dialogue. Repeating. Over and over again. New patterns. New emotions. Emotions all over the place some days.
Giving myself hope. I promise I will take better care of you.
You deserve a better life 🩵
Is it normal for emdr to take more than 20 sessions sometimes to process past emotional trauma? Thank you.
I want to know if there are any affordable therapists based in India who practice online. Please advice
Hi everyone,
I had 5 months of EMDR which ended around a year and a half ago. Best thing I ever did. I couldn’t date as I would have anxiety attacks and it was really getting me down and affecting my quality of life. I unlocked a memory I had buried and it completely changed how I felt about myself/about dating. I felt like my brain was finally at peace and it remained that way for a year.
A year later after dating different people, trying to find my person, I met the loveliest kindest most thoughtful and loving man.
I have never felt so safe. I did find it slightly difficult to let my guard down but over time and consistency I did. We’ve been together 4 months but now on and off I get crippling anxiety about ruining the relationship or him going off me. Then I get anxious about being anxious and ruining it that way. The cycle continues. I’ve just had 2 weeks anxiety free but it’s back again and I cry and feel hopeless. It’s so awful. I know it stems from a past relationship trauma which completely shocked me to my core and I felt the rug was pulled from under me, led to beliefs of me being too much etc.
I’ve contacted my EMDR therapist and we are going to restart therapy for these triggers/issues.
Anyone dealt with similar?
Thanks so much
I’m diagnosed with bipolar disorder and I’m scheduled to have my first EMDR session later this month.
I’d really like to hear from anyone else with bipolar disorder who has gone through EMDR. What was your experience like? Did it help? Did it affect your mood in any way (for better or worse)? Did it trigger an episode (despite being stable on meds)?
Were there any precautions your therapist took before starting?
I’m especially interested in hearing about how you coped between sessions if processing brought up intense emotions.
I know everyone’s experience is different, but I’d appreciate hearing any personal experiences or advice. Thanks.
I was wondering, do people find they get super fatigued and a weird brain empty feeling the day after to 2 days after the session? I’ve been finding it hard to think straight and all I can really do is just kind of lay around and scroll/watch tv. I started in march and have had a week off here and there and it just really exhausts me.
How normal is this? I feel really dysfunctional and it’s bumming me out a bit - I’m also SO hungry the day of and the days after my session
I find by the time my session has finished I’m extremely fatigued/shut down/in a state of disassociation
I’ve been doing EMDR for a few months. It’s interesting how many seemingly random memories will pop into my mind during the bilateral. But the past 2 sessions included two general, symbolic images. One of a raft/boat in the middle of the sea, the other of cards in a card/poker game. In both cases, I understood them to be symbolic of how I feel at times, but they aren’t images I often consciously think about. Has this ever happened to anyone?
Can someone explain to me what exactly they do during EMDR therapy? I am highly considering doing it for ptsd/cptsd.
I should mention I also have adhd so it’s really hard for me to focus and describe certain events without going off on a tangent to a completely unrelated topic. Only saying this because I’ve heard you have to describe certain events in detail.
I recently finished reading through some success stories here, and I wanted to share my own journey and ask for some perspective. I'm 36, male, and I've started EMDR therapy three weeks ago. I've had two sessions so far.
My Background
I had a very difficult childhood. My parents were in an unhappy marriage; my father was an absent alcoholic, and my mother constantly unloaded her pain on me. Being the most sensitive child, I became the target for her venting, and I was often labeled the "difficult" one for clashing with my brothers. Later, I experienced physical abuse from an uncle and, as a teenager, lived in constant terror of local predators while commuting to school. I never spoke up about these things, and I eventually learned to stop trusting others entirely.
I threw everything I had into my education as my only way out. It worked—I passed the most competitive entrance exams, moved to a different city at 20, and today I’m in a senior position, married and living in Europe with an owned house.
The Challenge Today
On the outside, I look successful. Inside, however, I live with a constant, unexplainable sadness. I struggle at work with focus, memory, and expressing complex thoughts. I feel "stuck", and despite my manager being supportive of a promotion next year, I am terrified of taking on more responsibility because I don't believe I can handle it. I feel like my performance has been declining since my university days.
My Experience with EMDR So Far
I started EMDR as a last resort, hoping for a "miracle" or at least a path to fixing whatever is broken. However, I’m not getting the experience many others describe.
When we focus on a memory, it feels like I have no sharp focus on the trauma at all. My mind just wanders off to random songs or a video game I’ve played recently. It’s as if there is no trauma to process. I am willing to walk through hell if it means healing, but my subconscious seems to have no interest in going back there.
My Questions for the Community:
I’m sorry for the length of this post. I feel like I'm getting close to an edge, and I'm hoping that sharing this might help me find the right direction. Thank you for reading.
All trauma processing is difficult, but some modalities are harsher. Is there any way or any warning signs that indicate whether a patient can be made permanently worse by things like EMDR
TLDR: what did you do to help yourself not to fall into unhealthy numbing habits like phone/social media addiction?
I'm fairly new to EMDR and maybe three sessions into the finger wiggling stage (you can tell I'm great with the lingo.). It's hitting me way way harder than I expected. I'm now just consistently feeling blue and slightly disengaged, whereas before I was an extremely bubbly social person. I know I need to give myself more of a break from social interactions to give myself time to rest, but when I do have alone time I just stare at short form videos phone or listen to sad music and feel sad.. before I did EMDR I had my phone social media usage pretty under control and was one of the lightest users I know.
Is this a common experience? What did you do to navigate this? I'm not sure if it's something I should accept or try and navigate away from? Any help welcomed.
Has anyone else experienced this during EMDR/recovery?
I’ve been doing EMDR/trauma work for years for cPTSD. My last round ended around January, and the past 6+ months have been some of the best of my life. I’m making friends, traveling, going out, genuinely enjoying life.
Then, seemingly out of nowhere, I started ruminating HARD about who I was 5–10 years ago when I was in survival mode.
It’s not one specific memory; it’s an entire era. My brain replays old conversations, awkward moments, mistakes, and I get stuck in shame loops or flashbacks comparing “old me” to who I am now.
The weirdest part is that it seems to happen after really happy moments, like spending time with friends or taking an amazing vacation with my husband.
I have an EMDR appointment next week, but I’m curious: Is this another layer of healing? Thoughts or insights?
I really need some hope and advice, iv enquired for intensive, and it is costly private, but my body right now is in shurdown, I feel exhausted, eyes heavy from sometic eye lock and minutes are feeling like hours, my skeep is hard as when nighttime comes my body doesn't let its guard down.
If im rejected for the intensive then my onlt option is to brute force myself through the discomfort thru vigorous work and sleep. I see no other option in making my body feel safe and turning of the threat signals.
Has anyone been in a deep functional freeze and managed to get lasting results from emdr intensive, or even weekly sessions.
I just think intensive is best for me as I want quicker results rather than getting to the end of thr session feeling more safe and then having to shurdown until the next session?
i’m looking for some tapper recommendations :)
i’ve seen a few different brands online but have seen mixed reviews. i don’t want to deal with anything too fiddly - and happy to use wires if it reduces issues of connection.
any help would be amazing!
I’m going through many changes in my life right now and everything I have learned about this practice just feels right for me so I’m taking the leap and doing it. I met my therapist, she seems lovely and I look forward to working with her. I’m a little nervous about the road ahead but I know ultimately it will be good for me. I decided to get a new journal to keep throughout my journey, think it might help with my processing of events. Id love to hear any advice or stories you might have.
I was doing well for 5 weeks, only noticeable change was intense dreams about my mother or the women in my family. I also have PMDD and was about to have my period the last week. A couple days later my emotions were super intense, and i was experiencing suicidal ideation, it was weird tho because it was realistic feelings from the peiod of time we were last working on and i was able to notice that, however noticing did not stop the intensity. I also have ocd so it can be confusing. But it didnt feel intrusive to the 'then' thoughts but intrusive to the adult version of me. anyways, I shared with my homies and my therapist and even texted the suicide hotline (first time ever) and ive been sober for 12 years. My therapist was as surprised as i was. we spent two week after back in safety mode and then shes been moving across country for two weeks. i have gotten back to baseline, however, im now terrified or scared to go back.
any experience or thoughts would be helpful. thank you all
Has anyone else found that the memories are suddenly just..unlocked? I am only 2 sessions in, we haven't even gotten to phase 2, and so much seems to be surfacing? I am at a loss, I never expected this to happen so quickly. Some days I'm terrified of what I may remember. Other days, I can't wait, so I can heal the little girl inside who needs to know it's ok.