T1 and T2 EMDR therapy is this normal?

Is this normal?.


So my first therapist for EMDR, we will name them T1 and my current therapist T2.


I was struggling to go to work due to panic attacks with flashbacks and excessive crying until 1am.

This was due to a bad experience at work that I worked with my mum and my mum basically told me to quit work at work! as I was crying. She told me "I dare you to go to the manager and resign from your position". I did that.

So after that this was 2015, I haven't been able to work.

History.

I went to therapy for 4 years. 2 years of a student therapist of nightmares! made my symptoms worse. I did DBT therapy and had a huge improvement and transformation. I was discharged after my 4th year. Though my psychologist still recommended me to see a therapist. ( I was discharged because I was in the public mental health system. In my country the government funds therapy, so the therapist work there have HUGE waiting list of clients that need to get into therapy. Hence why the discharged)

I went to find another psychologist based in DBT. That's where I learnt EMDR after my 2 bad reactions to 2 different jobs.

This was after 4 years of T1 that suggested EMDR.

I'm doing EMDR now with T2 and it began to make me wonder...did my T1 therapist do it wrong with EMDR therapy or is T2 doing it wrong and being an unproductive therapist.


T1 EMDR therapy.


They asked me to bring up memories of work and school.

Did the normal memory patrol call and level of disturbance.

At first we did fellow fingers but I had trouble with staying with one memory. I had tons of past memories that keep coming up. T1 asked me to put them into a container visually.

During our sessions. T1 told me not to tell them my unwelcome memories.

I became tired and exhausted during the session.

Afterwards I was utterly smashed with exhaustion.

I did notice I became forgetful, for example accidently leaving my keys in the outside car door at a car park. Luckily I came back no one took with the car. I struggle to keep up with house chores.

I had a few nightmares and noticed that if I thought of my bullies in the past from school, I vidily had a picture in my mind of T1 moving her fingers left to right and my eyes started to doing it, when I was drifting off to sleep.


My T1 asked me to fill out a paper chart and take note of any memories popping up. Which did happen..Walking my dog and the sound of a cricket singing among the grass, would trigger unwelcome memories.


I would email my T1 my paper chart.

I did develop over the 4 years a heavy dependency on my T1 of emails. I didn't notice at the time I became heavily dependent on my T1 emails that I couldn't function.

Not until! I met T2.


Eventually T1 went into maternity leave.

I found another psychologist T2.


So far I’ve been seeing them for 5 months. It is only now! We have started EMDR therapy.

My T2 isn’t the greatest at responding to emails. Even if it's about payments. They won’t reply over a week or just before my therapy session with them or just after. Their reason is because they have to look after their 1 year old baby and a toddler.I did send long emails and I didn’t realize how long they were!
Since T1 never told me or said anything. One day I sent T2 a copy of T1 email I sent about what happened last Christmas with my mother in law and how I literally get panic attacks because I'm scared of her. T2 was bothered by the email. T2 printed out my email and placed it on the table and turned each page counting 1 , 2 ,3 ,4 ,5 ,6! This is 6 pages! I don’t need to know minor details about your father in law sitting on the right side of the table. I felt ashamed and as if I was in trouble. T2 did realize the way they came across wasn’t effective and said “This came out wrong, you haven’t done anything wrong”. Yet my trust and feeling anxious to see them increased. I said how my fiance can come to therapy and explain it. So T2 agreed to this and my finance had to take time off work! And come into session because my therapist didn’t want to read my email.

During Christmas holidays I had bad panic attacks, nothing oddly happened with the mother in law! . Maybe because my fiance's sibling has a new patner and it changes the dynamic in the family in gatherings. Yet each morning I had panic attacks, hot flashes, constant runny tummies and the shakes. I had no support and after 2 weeks! I figured I would go and use DBT skills and found a nightmare section which helped me. I told my T2 about this and they said I coped well. I didn’t feel like I did since I had panic attacks and haven’t had panic attacks since 2016. So…..I felt dismissed. I did bring up the situation that happened with the email and the printed 6 pages, overall it went well and they told me they could’ve approached it better and realized I didn’t know it was 6 pages. Because emails aren’t like a Word document and show you how many pages.


Finally we started EMDR, my first session. We did some work previously to work on my three nurturing figures and she used EMDR tapping to install it so it's easy for me to access when needed.

Anyways

They told me before we started EMDR session that I was stalling EMDR therapy, however I’ve been having a lot of weekly worries, social anxiety , friendships and family issues. I felt blamed, that it was my fault.

T2 wanted to focus on my mother as they see is the KEY issue not work memories.

So they did the normal memory we are going to look at the disturbance level etc.

We are focusing on my childhood memories with my mother. They asked in the waiting room to do mindfulness for my 3 nurture figures and my safe place which i did.

They got me to sit in a room facing some pictures on the wall and the sofa as for something to focus on if need be. They sat close to me face to face. We tried to do fingers left to right but it wasn’t doing it for me. So T2 tapped both sides of my knees when processing the memories. They wrote down each thing I said and what happened after each process. The unwanted memories I had they suggested pretending to put tinted sunglasses on and pick a healing colour and do that to process the memory we are targeting on which helped.


It took 2 hours by the way. Not sure if that was normal.


Afterwards I told them I didn’t feel torrid or exhausted and they told me I shouldn’t be experiencing any unwelcome memories afterwards. I thought this was interesting because my experience with T1 was opposite of that.


So far I have had one nightmare and one random memory of my mother.


But I’ve been able to function and do house chores and not forget to leave my car key in the car door.


They didn’t want me to put a chart down like previously with T1 and record my memories

Or email them. They told me skills I can use when I'm distressed.

Such as Container Exercise

Nurturing Figures

Light Stream

Journal

Sensory Stuff

Mindfulness App.


Is this normal what I experience with T1 and T2 in EMDR therapy?

What are your thoughts?

Are there any alarming bells I need to be aware of?


Thank you for reading my message. It's much appreciate taking your time to read it.

and yes this may be a long post. If you have a issue with that it be much appreciate if you could not comment how long it is. Because it's not helping me to answer my question about is it normal for EMDR therapy. Thanks.

Just trying to be helpful here, I have read your post twice and have no issues with long posts.
I cannot answer your questions about EMDR therapy but to help those on this forum who might be able to answer - are you asking if it is normal to be exhausted after EMDR or is that a red flag?

Sounds like you just don’t want to work and are using therapy to get out of working. When you decide you want to work the therapy you’ve already received will be enough. But not until you decide you want to work.

what!!! did you not read my message probably or something. I said I try two times and had panic attacks, crying to 1am and flash backs. And I been told "sounds like you just don't want to work"
That is utterly most judgmental and dismissive comment I have ever read.

aw thank you for reading my message I really appreciate it and twice. And your time reading it.
Yeah Im asking if it's normal to feel exhausted after EMDR where as T2 says no, I shouldn't feel exhausted or distressed. And I begin to wonder because of my pervious experience with T1 and I was forgetful after EMDR sessions and distress and had unwanted memories coming in. If T1 didn't know what she was doing.

One thing maybe you could ask me. You know how I mention in my message how T2 printed the 6 pages of my email and take it into my session and turn the pages and counted them and the way they went on about it. Is that normal therapy behaviour?

I have shorten my emails quit dramatically for my T2 now. But they don't reply. So I feel all anxious and uncertain and not supported.

Where as previously with my T1 she always replied to my emails and never complain how long they were. Well I never knew how long they actually were.

is that normal of T2?

Hi Apple,

I think email policies are down to the individual practitioners, but I hope you can discuss this with T2.

Some therapists prefer to limit email to practical matters like scheduling, some are open to more general out of session contact.

Might it help you to have a sense of how long your emails are if you typed them in a word processing program initially, and then pasted them into your email provider?

This may also help you zone in on what you really hope to communicate with your messages.

I've never experienced EMDR, but in my reading about the practice, I think it is expected that you focus on one specific memory at a time.

I hope you can have the conversations you need to put your mind at rest.

Take care,

Lost

I would say T2 printing out your email and counting the pages in front of you is very shaming to be honest and Ts are not supposed to do that.
She was obviously trying to make a point that they are too long for her but went about it completely the wrong way and I would expect a T to know how to handle this kind of thing and be able to put better boundaries in place to help both of you.
If email is allowed and the issue was the length and you have shortened them and she still will not reply then I’d say no, this is not normal and I would be asking her has she changed her boundaries on email and why.
Assuming this is an ongoing thing and she has not just missed one perhaps by mistake

I agree, Ana.

That is such an odd way for a mental health professional (which all Ts are...) to handle it.

I can't comment on EMDR. But I'm also someone who used to send very long emails to my former therapist. I don't know that I realized quite how long they were at the time. And we had a couple conflicts over it, as she generally wouldn't respond and also said how my emails kept "getting longer and longer." And how she had to give equal time to all clients (even though she also said that most don't email). It really hurt. Especially as she waited until it was an issue to say something about it.

My current therapist, who I've been seeing for around 6 years now (saw previous therapist for 6), he always responds to emails, but will charge for them if it takes him more than 15 minutes to read and reply (he suspended that during the first year and a half of the pandemic). It was difficult for me for a long time.

But I admit that it has also trained me to think about how often I want to email and also how much information I really need to give in an email (vs. telling him next session). And also, after a few replies where he didn't respond to the most important part of my email, it made me realize I needed to think about what I really wanted to convey and get back. To say something like, "I just want a little support right about [issue x] right now."

To clarify, I also would have been hurt by my therapist doing what yours did, showing the 6 pages. But T's deal with email differently. Some don't allow it at all. Some will allow for sending it, and they'll confirm receipt, but not reply. Others will give a response. Some will charge for it.

Mine has said the reason he charges (and he's been quite lenient in that since the pandemic) is so that he won't become resentful of emails, that if he is getting paid for them, they're part of his job. And that it's not like I'm doing anything "bad" if I send one that leads to a charge--it just means that it's crossed that financial threshold. As in, he won't be annoyed with me or anything. (Incidentally, he's charged me for maybe 15 emails over 6 years--he's given me lots of free replies.)

I would have a discussion with your therapist about emails, what their policies are. Whether they'll read and reply. Read and not reply (maybe confirming receipt). Reply only if you request it. Or something else.

In this instance, it's very difficult for anyone here to know what is a "red flag" or normal because the therapeutic value of what you describe depends very much on tone, wider context, relationship with your therapist, etc and no one here knows these elements of your therapy. For example, your therapist printing out the email is not in itself problematic - even though you experienced shame as a result. I read this as a successful intervention on behalf of your therapist because it brought something into your awareness and you then experienced uncomfortable feelings. The key is whether you were then able to explore those uncomfortable feelings of shame with your therapist and this relies on her being adequately skilled and sensitive. However, if she printed out the email in a punitive way that is very different - and different again is you perceiving her as being punitive when that was not her intention or action.

I think one of the (very many) tricky things about therapy is that are few absolutes and so much of the work is subjective, modality dependent, individualistic, variable, exploratory, inclusive, challenging, upsetting. Outside of obvious red flags like sexual/physical/financial abuse, many of the more challenging aspects of therapy can be categorised as "the work" and seen as a positive area of growth. Where the line is between this challenge and something harmful is not clear - especially because asking outsiders is not always fruitful either because outsiders are not in the room with you. For example, I consider EMDR to be a load of hokum but it is a well established technique and many people, including posters here, are advocates for it.

Great points, Comrade! What you said actually really made me think of the time I posted here about my T wanting certain information from me before she would allow me to book another session, which at the time I was so upset about, I felt abandoned and betrayed and a lot of us here agreed it was a big red flag.

A year on, I can see why she did this and that she was in fact being a great T and doing everything she could to help me when I was in a messed up state. I stuck with her because I was so attached to her and I am so glad that I did because she goes above and beyond, does not have overly strict boundaries but is professional at the same time and I just get on with her and trust her better than any of my past Ts.

So yes the context and tone etc. absolutely matters and although we all try to be helpful and supportive on the forums, none of us can really know