My PTSD Diagnosis and EMDR Treatment.

This article was meant to be about EMDR and how it works, but the back story of why I was writing it ended up being over 1000 words so I thought I would split it. This is the story of how I ended up receiving EMDR treatment, I will go into more detail about how it works in a further article.

When my son was 2, around 5 years ago, I came to the realisation that I was not coping with life. I was working in the prison service at the time and although it is usual to have strong emotional reactions to the things you see and hear in that environment, it was clear that I was losing it. I was crying all the time, everything was getting to me, I was arguing with my husband constantly, and blaming him for the deep-seated unhappiness that I was feeling, and had been self harming on and off for nearly 15 years.

Like I said my son was two, and he was the reason I sought help, he was watching me have these break downs and I knew it wasn’t healthy for him, my only goal as a mother was to not mess him up, so off to the doctors I went. The Doctor recommended I self-referred to Steps to Wellbeing which was the local mental health programme. I referred myself that night, and within a few weeks I had an appointment. I lived in Dorset at the time, I know that it doesn’t normally work that quickly.

I went off to my first appointment, and met my new councillor, he was an older gentleman in his late 50s, he made me feel so at ease and asked me loads of questions, I can’t remember exactly what was discussed but it obviously involved my upbringing and my childhood, but I think it was on the 2nd or 3rd session he said that he thought I had complex PTSD.

My initial reaction was absolute disbelief, the thoughts that ran through my head included:

‘You need to have had one big traumatic event to have PTSD’

‘If I have PTSD why don’t my three sisters’

‘My childhood wasn’t that bad I must be pathetic to have PTSD from it’

I just didn’t believe him, but he explained it over and over until I finally got it, he explained how multiple smaller traumatic effects can build up over time and cause PTSD, especially in very young children. He explained how my brain was essentially stuck as 10 year old Shelly.

My symptoms had nothing to do with where I was currently working, it was caused by my PTSD which had started in childhood. I am not going to go into the details of that, but the reality was I had spent most of my childhood in a state of heightened alert (scared). There was a lot of violence in my childhood and my brain had developed to be constantly on the lookout for danger.

I felt anxious all the time, no matter what was going on in my life I was waiting for the chaos, to the point where I would often cause it myself. I also had flash backs, not in the dramatic throw yourself to the floor, not realise where you are type of flashbacks, but subtle ones. A certain noise would elicit such a strong adrenaline response and memories would run through my mind, and it was like the event was happening all over again, I would have the same emotions as fresh as day one. I would be terrified and start crying or get angry. I knew why and I knew it wasn’t really happening which is I guess why I had never thought of them as flash backs, I just thought they were really strong memories.

He suggested EMDR, and this is when I thought well, I must be really crazy because that sounds heavy duty…. It’s really not!

EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing which makes it sound even more wacky. I will write a full article explaining how EMDR works but it basically uses either light, touch, or sound to reprogramme your brain. I know now it’s gone from sounding scientific and scary to alternative medicine and angel magic, but it is a scientific process, but to be honest it works so well I don’t really care about the details.

I have had operations on my eyes, so using lights wouldn’t work for me, so I used sound. I had to wear headphones and re-live the painful memories, talking about them and the emotions that I felt. The headphones would beep at different frequencies from one side to the other, and as I would talk the emotions attached to the memories would fade. It was like magic! It was painful at the time to have to go through all the memories, and during the treatment things I had forgotten or blocked out popped up out of nowhere but every time I would go through the process the memories would become harmless. The best way I can describe it is that when I started, the memories used to run through my mind like videos, in full colour and sound, vivid and clear, now that I have had treatment I can still remember everything that happened, the memories aren’t gone but they are still pictures, they are not pleasant in anyway, but they are totally harmless, the emotion attached to each memory is gone.

Now it doesn’t mean I don’t have PTSD anymore; I still have a lot of work to do. Unfortunately, I felt so good after the treatment that I thought I was fixed forever and didn’t do CBT afterwards which is a very important part of the treatment programme, I am now on the waiting list to start therapy again, but I am still a million times better than I was and that is the reason I am writing this.

It is so easy to dismiss what happened to us in the past as it wasn’t as bad as xyz, or it was so long ago that it shouldn’t matter anymore, and any number of other ridiculous reasons why our pain doesn’t matter. I am hoping that by writing my experience here it may encourage one person to get help. Getting help will never be a bad thing, it is the bravest thing you can ever do.