Experience with EMDR for birth trauma

[gollyimholly]

I've been diagnosed with PTSD following a difficult birth and difficult recovery (the birth was two years ago now). I have been having EMDR to hopefully undo some of the trauma symptoms I experience. I am about 20 weeks in (having weekly sessions) and have 4 more sessions left.

Before the sessions, I'd never heard of EMDR but wanted to give it a go as I was quite desperate to feel better. I was really hoping that I would feel differently by now. During the sessions, I am in floods of tears and my anxiety shoots up and I generally feel really low, awful and scared (I suppose it's because my brain thinks I'm back in that trauma setting again). And I leave the sessions feeling absolutely drained and exhausted (which I also accept because it is quite a heavy two hours of processing).

I am being patient with myself but I guess given it's been 20 weeks now, I am reflecting on how I don't feel like I feel any differently about my trauma experience or that the sessions have improved anything. The person who does the sessions is a clinical psychiatrist and she did say whether we do the EMDR for a couple more sessions and then think about whether we spend the last two discussing how I cope with the PTSD symptoms in the future.

If you are happy to share, I wanted to hear other people's experiences of EMDR. I only have four more sessions left and I'm wondering whether to ask for advice on how to cope with my PTSD (I was really hoping the EMDR would help with this but I feel like it hasn't done much to change my PTSD) for the full four sessions as I feel like I really could use the advice (given during the EMDR it's only really me speaking through it) or to continue having the EMDR sessions.

Grateful to hear about anybody else's experience with this x

Didn't want to leave you unanswered. I have experience working with trauma/PTSD but not via EMDR. What advice has the person doing the sessions given? Do they think there might be a breakthrough in the last sessions?

Thank you for your reply. The advice is to do mainly grounding exercises at home, or physical exercise like yoga or walking to lift my mood if I feel affected by the sessions. She has asked if I am really letting myself "go there" in the sessions because she feels I may be holding myself back. She doesn't want to tell me what point it is she wants me to get to in the session as she wants to see me get there naturally and ergo it will be the turning point - I understand this as I also agree if she explains what that thing is then I might artificially gravitate towards that rather than my thoughts organically go there. She doesn't know if there may be a breakthrough because she says it isn't something you can predict. I think though the reason she wants to hold the last two sessions back is because I will need coping techniques and maybe she isn't hopeful for any breakthroughs.. I am guessing though.

The thing with trauma is that it's a protection strategy to stop you going through the same/similar thing again. The dreams/flashbacks and intrusive thoughts are all part of the mind's attempts to make sense of what happened, because to prevent something you have to understand it.