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There are many people who tend to believe that EMDR (eye movement and desensitization and processing therapy) is the shit. I am not in that category. It’s often used for people with PTSD and I suppose it works fine for some people with single trauma PTSD because those people have told me so.
For someone like me with DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder), PTSD over multiple traumas, and a diagnoses list as long as a Walgreen’s receipt (and the Dollar General has gotten just as bad with those fucking receipts), it’s horrible.
It wasn’t just horrible, it was downright dangerous and made me physically ill to where I threw up in her trash can and could not drive myself home. She had talked it up to me for months, and I’d told her it sounded completely ridiculous and I didn’t want to do it.
Over time, she wore me down and I decided that perhaps I should be more open-minded since she was so invested in this shit. I told her I’d try, and she gave me more papers to fill out. She told me I was incredibly dissociative but she was hoping it would be good for me anyway.
The theory behind EMDR is that a person with PTSD is unable to process their trauma properly, and that doing crazy shit with your eyes like being led in a series of rapid bi-lateral eye movements while having memories dug out will do that.
It sounded like utter codswallop when she first described it to me. Kind of like how a dude pretending to be a doctor looked into my eyes to tell me a list of medical problems I had and which very expensive supplements could heal them. Now that I’ve gone through the experience, I’ve changed my mind.
It’s actually complete and utter highly dangerous codswallop and still one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever heard, much less done, and I’ve seen and heard some crazy ass shit. I don’t know why I went against my own better judgment and let her play games to make herself feel better when I hated the idea from the start.
EMDR made me feel like I was playing a ridiculous game that some kid down the street made up. She wanted me to focus on some small thing that bothered me, and work with that. I don’t know how someone with as much trauma as I have was supposed to do enough EMDR to make me magically begin processing them all in a proper manner, but it was stupid from the start.
I was upset especially because I’d been berating myself for not wanting to try something that she obviously believed in, and for thinking it sounded stupid when in her professional opinion she thought it would be great, but I still wish that I had listened to my gut.
After that terrible session, I couldn’t focus on anything for a week or more, and so much in my mind was fucked up. I did not have coherent thoughts and I struggled with daily tasks in ways I wasn’t used to despite being disabled. Just because it’s “scientific” doesn’t mean it’s not crap.
I never trusted her again after that.
I’ve become worried about the amount of irresponsibility as far as EMDR goes. I heard a woman say that it so helpful to her and that because she did hers in the height of the COVID pandemic, the practitioner did it with her over the phone.
Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.
Honestly that provider should be reported for doing something so dangerous. That person got lucky that it worked out for their patient. A provider isn’t supposed to do things that have a high chance of harming their client, and EMDR is unsafe enough in person, doing it over the phone should not have ever been an option.
Lately as I’ve interacted with people singing the praises of EMDR, I’ve seen trauma survivors tell other survivors that it’s okay if they don’t have access to a mental health practictioner, because there are plenty of tapping videos on YouTube.
Again…
Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.
Please hear me. Absolutely do NOT trust random people on YouTube who have made tapping videos, even if they claim to be mental health professionals. They can’t be too professional if they are advocating doing a dangerous therapeutic treatment via YouTube video all on your own.
There is a time and place for EMDR, since it does help many people, and that time and place is in person with a licensed, experienced, and skilled provider. It’s not a route that should be taken lightly, and there has to be trust between the therapist and the patient.
When I started with a new therapist not long after my terrible EMDR experience, I didn’t trust her either, but it seemed like she was able to see through me. She called me out on my very first visit with her for pretending I didn’t have an addiction problem. She gently suggested that it might be easier to just disclose it upfront.
I figured out right from the start that she would be able to tell if I was bullshitting her and so I never really bothered trying to lie to her after the first visit because that woman had my number. It did make me feel seen and heard, though, and I was grateful for that.
I don’t think lying to therapists is a good idea and I haven’t even felt the need to for the past several years after I finally realized they didn’t just want to lock me up every time some new trauma experience came out. My biggest mental health fear has been that someone would commit me to an inpatient facility, but I’ve started to see that most mental health providers don’t actually want to do that.
I know several people who ended up with inpatient stays due to their therapists insisiting on doing EMDR with them, and I’m thankful I wasn’t one of them. Even so, it was a horrible time of great confusion.
Therapy is hard work, which is okay, and I’ve now got a great therapist who won’t push me to do ridiculous shit just so that she can play with her shiny new toy. In fact it scared me how quickly I trusted her because trust is scary, trust means I’m setting myself up to be vulnerable to being hurt.
What I’ve learned is that there are good providers and bad ones, and to never let anyone talk me into anything that sends off as many alarm bells as EMDR did no matter who they are.