5 Day EMDR Intensive Experience

Disclaimer: EMDR intensives are not for everyone and the practitioner must have strong credentials and years of practice to safely guide you through the process. Each person, each trauma history, is different and I am only sharing my personal experience.

I have cPTSD linked to childhood/adolescent abandonment, a narcissistic parent and physical abuse. I left home at 16, dropped out of high school school and spent my adolescence moving from place to place working three jobs to keep it together. Somehow I ended up transitioning into a highly ‘functional’ adult and became an emergency nurse, but I think subconsciously I chose the specialty to keep the flight mode running on autopilot. I spent a decade in the ER exposed to vicarious trauma and patient violence, then I left hospital nursing for the humanitarian sector where I worked in conflict zones for 4 years. I’m lucky to have strong friendships, but I’ve struggled to maintain romantic relationships and avoidant attachment has been historically an embedded pattern for me.

I spent the majority of my adult life naively thinking I was ‘processing’ everything in talk therapy until I returned from a work contract in Gaza earlier this year and severe cPTSD hit me like a truck. I completely crashed into a state of major functional impairment, dissociative episodes, no appetite, total social withdrawal and a nervous system fluctuating between collapse and hypervigilance.

I was bordering on needing inpatient psych admission when I started to improve a bit on medication and my dissociative episodes gradually became less frequent, no more blackouts but periodic derealization/depersonalization. I found a psychologist and EMDR practitioner (accredited consultant) with a wealth of experience who provides intensives at her clinic in a rural area with animals around.

After we did phases 1-3 over 7 hours online, I travelled to her space three weeks ago and we did an intensive of 22 hours of EMDR over 5 days. We combined equine therapy after sessions for coregulation which was very grounding. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. The hangover was brutally intense, lasted over a week, but I got through it. I didn’t realize how much trauma was deeply hidden in parts of my body and because I’ve been masking my whole life, somatic focused EMDR sessions were the most profound for me.

I went from barely able to leave the house for 3 months to seeing a near 50% improvement in my level of functioning. My brain is still reprocessing it all, effects are rippling and it’s certainly not linear, but I have to say I cannot believe the impact it’s had on my life.

Incredibly grateful to Francine Shapiro for her magic.

Glad to answer any questions if folks are curious.