I've been doing EMDR on and off for the past 10 months. We've been consistently working on one particular trauma from college now for about the past 3 months and I do see that I am making some progress. My therapist says that EMDR should always help anyone with trauma but the length of time it will take to work is dependent on many variables. The more complex trauma you've had in the past, the length of years you've had the trauma, whether or not you dissociate, and the skill of the therapist are all factors.

I have DID and I'm working with multiple types of constant trauma for the first 20 years of my life. This complicates matters that doesn't mean it can't be done it just means there's a lot more work to do and the DID requires us to go slowly because the brain stops processing through EMDR when you dissociate. I'm am lucky that my therapist has enough experience with DID and EMDR that he can use different techniques to keep me grounded and lessen my dissociation while processing.

To answer your question will EMDR work yes probably but it is not a quick or easy process depending on your background and situation. You have to be prepared for it to bring out all kinds of crap from the past and in the beginning you will feel worse then when you started but as you continue to work through it things will improve. I must say that face with the alternative of EMDR or prolonged exposure therapy from the way my therapist describes it I would choose EMDR any day.

The goal of EMDR is so that you will once and for all be over your past. It will not make you forget the past but it will allow you to accept it as any other normal memory without the flashbacks and the bad feelings and the negative thoughts that you associate with your trauma now. You will be able to eventually say yes that's something that happened it wasn't the happiest memory but I'm okay with it.

One nice thing about EMDR is that you always remain in control you can always stop the session at any time you don't have to give specifics about what you remembering or experiencing as long as you're able to at least tell the therapist that things are changing. I usually spend one or two possibly three sessions now in a row doing EMDR and then we will do a couple talk therapy sessions in order to work through the feelings that I'm having at the time. He also throws in a couple sessions of CBT and DBT along the way. The ability to stay grounded and your coping skills are vital to the success of EMDR. I'm sure I will be much further along if I just trudged along doing EMDR every single session but like I said the nice thing about it is you remain in control you push yourself as hard as you want to depending on your level of tolerance. That is my experience anyway.