[polyfractal]

I have been sexually abused by multiple perpetrators over many years, been bullied relentlessly at school daily for decades, had negligence traumas by nanny and secondary traumas for many years. I have been through extreme humiliation. I wonder why I have so much trauma and abuse experienced?

I sought help from mental health services since 2017 and now it is 6 years of help I have got. There seems to be much more to process with the trauma. I have been professionally diagnosed with complex ptsd. I wonder how many years do complex traumas survivors need to heal from therapy? 10 years? 20 years?

I also have a clinical psychologist right now who can do EMDR. We haven't tried it yet, but will soon possibly. I only have seen her twice. She's on holiday break right now until Jan 9 to see her again. I have DID. I wonder whether EMDR works for PTSD and CPTSD? Does it work in conjunction with talk therapy?

[CANDC]

@polyfractal sorry you have faced so many challenges.

You may find these forums will get responses from people who have faced similar challenges
https://mysupportforums.org/survivors-of-abuse/

https://mysupportforums.org/post-traumatic-stress/

Thanks for being a member in the MSF community.

[LonesomeTonight]

I don't have personal experience with it (well, a couple sessions here and there, I guess), but as I understand it, EMDR was actually developed to treat PTSD, and there have been clinical studies demonstrating its effectiveness. I'm not sure whether studies on CPTSD have been conducted. I think it's worth a try. I hope it can help you.

[zoiecat]

I have DID, CPTSD, Anxiety and Major Depressive Disorder. I started seeing my trauma T about 5 years ago after a bad car accident. One thing led to another and all the other issues came out. I knew I had a life of all kinds of abuse and neglect with depression and SUI but I did not know about the DID or CPTSD. I didn't even know what anxiety was.

I have been doing EMDR since the start. When you have DID, things go very slow. My T always says that it is really easy to go to fast and hard to go too slow. EMDR does help but you have to have someone trained properly. It will take awhile for you to build up safe places and skills to prepare for actual EMDR.

Before my T knew about all of my issues he originally said I should be able to tackle the accident within about 12 sessions. During those initial sessions all kinds of other stuff came up from my past. EMDR will help you see that all of your current thoughts and actions are a direct response from your past. In my case, I respond to stressors as I learned as a kid. The same issues come up over and over in life, just a different flavor. The nice thing about that is when you work on the initial issue it will help to resolve current issues.

The bad news is that the more issues (Trauma) you have, the longer it will take. My T says if I were only dealing with the accident, or a single experience with abuse, I would have been finished years ago. So yes, it will help but it will take years. That doesn't mean you will feel as bad as you do now for all of those years. You will gradually start to feel better but it is not a linear path. If you are like me especially with DID you are blocking out a lot of stuff and when these experiences come back you will feel worse but that allows you to start the healing process. I would say I am about 50% better. Sometimes I feel like quitting because I do feel better and EMDR is hard work but my T always says although I feel better for a person that has been through what I have been through, I can feel so much better if I keep working at it. I always say I want to be normal for a normal person, not normal for a person like me that has lived through so much trauma.

Good luck to you. I hope you find a great EMDR T that can really help. FYI..my T also insisted that I go through two series of DBT classes which I took for 2 years. I do not have BPD but I have to say that it really helped me deal with my emotions as well.

[Therapy reviewed]

Hi. I have complex cpsd and had 20yrs of therapy. Still deal with it daily but I guess I have more choices in hour it effects me more now.

[Taylor27]

I have been in therapy since 2001. I did not get much out of therapy until 2019 when I got a trauma therapist. Ever since I have been working with her and learning that I have C-PTSD I have been able to work slowly on feeling safe and trusting her. Eventually she will do EMDR when im more stable I have DID, I did not know this until 2 years ago and that has been a challenge for me to work through. I think I will be in therapy for many years to come. I have allot to work through still.

[ElectricManatee]

I do EMDR and talk therapy and I find that they do complement each other. My trauma history is not nearly as extensive as yours, but I think that it takes as long as it takes to process trauma. Everybody's path will be different. I am not done yet, but my quality of life is definitely improving over time. I have more freedom to live my life the way I want to and more "good" days now than ever. So even if your journey is long, hopefully you will start to see improvements long before you're done with treatment.

EMDR has been really useful for me. It works quickly to turn down the reactivity in my brain, and I just don't get as activated by certain things anymore. It can be an intense process, but it has been worth it for me. Then talk therapy helps with the cognitive parts of understanding what happened and with re-working my story.