Tag: PTSD

Therapy today was good. we talked a lot about the anxiety, and eileen had us do some EMDR to help with it. We worked with the pulsers, and she had me bring up a safe place, somewhere where I felt peaceful, calm, and soothed. I decided that I wanted to be back at torc waterfall, where I went last summer, because I loved the sound the water made, it was so calming. So using the pulsers I was able to bring up the image of it, and then Eileen had me come up with a word that I could use when I wanted to go there in my mind, so I used the word soothing. She said, when I said that word that immediately the images of torc waterfall would come into my mind. She told me during the week, if the anxiety gets really bad, that I should do the butterfly hug, which is an EMDR exercise, and say that word soothed aloud, and doing both of those things, I’d be able to calm down again. The anxiety felt so bad this morning, it really felt as if I was going to die from it. I can honestly say it was the worst its ever been. When we first got to our session, we were dissociating a lot. Actually it was Emily who was out at first, and it was a little while before Eileen was able to get Liz out and then get me back again. She had to keep telling us over and over that we were safe, and there was no immediate emergency. We kept wanting to run, that happens to us sometimes, we’ll want to run away. It usually happens when we are very distressed or very triggered. Overall though we did have a good session, and we were really happy when we left, calmer, more able to function again, and when we got home we slept for a few hours, because we were drained, therapy always makes us tired, especially if we’ve been doing EMDR.