Posted by antigua on December 17, 2003, at 23:30:29
In reply to Re: EMDR experiences? » CraigD, posted by Dinah on December 17, 2003, at 21:28:53
Dinah,
EMDR can work with fragments of memory too; they don't have to be complete memories. I started w/just fragments of things, thoughts & feelings and had no idea of how they fit together. Now I'm starting to group them into more complete pictures of experiences. It's as if I'm watching a movie in some ways, but I'm making it up as we go along. I say things that I see in my mind but I have no idea where they come from. My therapist says they are coming from memories that have been locked in place because I never worked through them as a child.
I almost feel kind of silly talking about this--I'm such a pragmatist and I have denied forever that anything had really happened to me because I had no proof and nobody to ask (my father is dead). As a matter of fact, my denial was my primary defense. But once things started surfacing in pieces (years before EMDR), I had to begin to accept that I wasn't making any of this up. I got stuck in therapy because I could NOT remember and I thought I had to remember in order to accept what had happened and to get well. If I didn't remember, it didn't happen, right? So I tried EMDR out of desperation. And, as I've already said, I don't know how it works, but I do know that no matter what, it is helping me to understand how I felt as a child and how I interpreted the events going on around me. The hard part is accepting how wrong my interpretations were, even w/the understanding that I was just a child.
antigua
poster:antigua
thread:291016
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20031213/msgs/291168.html