I had my first shot at EMDR a week ago, with a therapist I've been seeing for five months.

My trajectory? I'm a 'runner' i.e. when I feel that my life is leaving me no options the I either literally run away (one time, to another country for a year) or by imploding and becoming a gibbering wreck.

The first session was just a structure questionnaire, very innocuous - first, worst and most recent instances of my anxiety; what I felt at those times; you get the idea.

The second session, three days later, involved a pair of headphone through which I could hear alternating drum beats, left ear, right ear, left ear, right ear, back and forth. There were also a pair of rubbery things to hold in each hand, and they buzzed in synchrony with the earphone drumbeat - left hand, right hand, left hand and so on.

Mt therapist then started re-reading my answers from the questionnaire while this 'beating' (left, right, left right) was playing, for maybe a minute. At the end of each minute I'd be asked ' What do I feel? What do I think?' and asked to focus on that while the 'beats' started again. As we went down the path from each of the original questionnaire answers I'd given, the beating got faster. And faster.

And the questions would change. Go here. Come back to there.

BANG! I was - as happens in my worst and most horrible episodes - a
gibbering wreck. Sobbing. Inchoate. Wrought.

And ****ing exhausted. Depleted. Spiritually and physically washed up. The proverbial limp noodle.

I went home. I slobbed in the sun. I slept the best 12 hours in forever.

The next day I felt so different - unaccountably, indefinably different. Lighter. Relieved. Guiltless.

Happy.

And so, in 2 days, I go back for another dose of EMDR. Part of me is scared that the 'stuff' that's coming up is my own fabrications, not a reflection of history. Another part says 'so what? if those fabrications are breaking your brain then get them out, burn them'.

Either way, I don't expect Monday to be easy. But I do expect something grand of it.