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Over 20 years ago I suddenly developed a severe anxiety disorder. It was related to my health, thinking each breath was my last 🤪. I did EMDR with my counselor. It started to help right away to desensitize my fears. It took a while to truly accept I was perfectly healthy but, as time went on, I was able to put it to rest.

Depending on your issue (s) it may take some time, but hopefully you will be able to have some peace in your life.

Sending you strength.

Depending on your issue (s) it may take some time, but hopefully you will be able to have some peace in your life.

Sending you strength.

Good to hear you got the help you needed. Thanks for the encouragement.

I'll take that any day. May I ask how many sessions of EMDR you had?

Of course: I had 6 sessions, one session a week. I realize now I have no idea of the "normal" amount. Maybe I took too few, or maybe that's the intended therapy. My therapist stopped saying I was ready to go back to normal couple therapy, and suggested to resume my individual therapy in the meanwhile.

People want the pain gone and try to do everything too fast. IC, MC, meds. Look at this as an injury because it presents as one. If your WS had shot you there is no time table for recovery. Same thing with someone lying and cheating on you. Give it time.
The more stuff you bring from childhood the longer you need EMDR but it is still relatively short. IC then becomes the place you lay all of it on the table and talk it through. If there was a fairly happy childhood you don’t need to dwell on it and bare down on what you need now.
Good luck

Of course: I had 6 sessions, one session a week. I realize now I have no idea of the "normal" amount. Maybe I took too few, or maybe that's the intended therapy. My therapist stopped saying I was ready to go back to normal couple therapy, and suggested to resume my individual therapy in the meanwhile.

There probably is no "normal amount." It would depend on the skill of the therapist and on the amount of mental baggage accumulated by the patient. Thanks for your reply.

If there was a fairly happy childhood you don’t need to dwell on it and bare down on what you need now.

My childhood sucked, causing me to bail out of the family home at an early age. I remember the high drama but those memories rarely surface these day. The main issue I deal with these days is my obsession with my wife's infidelities and the possibility that she's at it again. Btw she passed a polygraph in 2020. That helped for a short time but then the thoughts came roaring back.

I hope you don’t mind if I talk about psychology. This is you. A child with a chaotic, toxic childhood. You did not have the vocabulary, the life skills, the understanding, of what was happening to you. The only thing you could do was duck, hide, lie and try to make sense of something that was way too convoluted for a child. What you developed were coping mechanism to try to survive. Often they are maladaptive to having a peaceful life. They were designed by you, a child, to save your sanity. You left but you took that child with you and all the rage you had under the surface. You need EMDR to bring out all the known and unknown wounds that were inflicted on you. All EMDR does is get them into the sunlight to take away their power. Your memories don’t disappear but their sting is gone. Give the therapist time because the more pain you carry to longer it takes to retake your life.
Good luck.

I'm generally a realist and skeptical of fads and the next best thing. I did EMDR with a therapist my husband and I were working with.

What I found is that it's not in any way an imposition on who I am but an extension of who I am. I resolved some long standing issues with her through EMDR. It's very good. In no way did I feel I gave away my sense of self.

What it did was resolve unfinished conversations from the past when I was too young to speak for myself, stand up for myself, and make me realize the person I am now is present, even as the younger version of me couldn't.

Does that make sense? It probably wouldn't have to me before I did it.

Are you talking about EMDR with your MC or IC?

I don't know where you are in the infidelity journey but I would definitely recommend it with your IC, or an MC you trust.

It was our MC I did it with. I trusted her.

I hope you don’t mind if I talk about psychology. This is you. A child with a chaotic, toxic childhood. You did not have the vocabulary, the life skills, the understanding, of what was happening to you. The only thing you could do was duck, hide, lie and try to make sense of something that was way too convoluted for a child. What you developed were coping mechanism to try to survive. Often they are maladaptive to having a peaceful life. They were designed by you, a child, to save your sanity. You left but you took that child with you and all the rage you had under the surface. You need EMDR to bring out all the known and unknown wounds that were inflicted on you. All EMDR does is get them into the sunlight to take away their power. Your memories don’t disappear but their sting is gone. Give the therapist time because the more pain you carry to longer it takes to retake your life.
Good luck.

Boy you nailed it. My father was a violent alcoholic who died at age 43. My mother would egg him on and never shut up until he beat her. As a child laying in his room, listening to the yelling and screaming night after night for years, it left an imprint on me. After moving out I burned through two marriages, multiple jobs, jail, homelessness all fueled by my own alcoholism and drug addiction. Monkey see, monkey do. All that insanity came to an end at age 29. The book 'The Body Keeps The Score,' which I'm reading, lays out everything you posted. Thanks.

Are you talking about EMDR with your MC or IC?

I don't presently have an MC or IC. I contacted an EMDR person and he contacted me back for personal information which I sent him by email. Never heard back so I called him and that call was never returned. Will have to find someone else.

Thanks for sharing your EMDR experience. Glad it helped you.

Be sure to see their training and credentials. EMDR appears simple but you need someone who knows what they are doing. It is going to bring up memories you don’t know you have. The therapist I consult any time I need to discuss issues like this has great success but that is because she continues to get more training. Learning about the brain gets deeper each year.

If you have ever watched a TED talk you know how informative they can be. Dr. Nadine Burke Harris talks about opening a clinic in a depressed neighborhood and finding what toxic childhoods do to adults. Please watch. It is about 20 min long.

Congratulations on letting go of some of your destructive choices. You have a lot of life in front of you. Finding joy is on your horizon.

If you're a reader, my reco is to check out Karpman's Drama Triangle stuff. He's got a website that monetozes his books but has free stuff, too. It used to be mainly about the free stuff, now it's not, so just search the web on 'drama triangle' for info.

Also, I suggest checking out 'Emotional Freedom Technique'. It's a way to deal with difficult stuff on your own. One of its principles is going into issues you have only if you are willing to change ATM - and there is no shame in identifying an issue that you don't want to open up without someone - a good IC, for example - with you while you do it. EFT may give you relief now.

I was introduced to EFT by an ex-physicist whose Ph. D. dissertation was his work on the Manhattan Project. He was always working on the problem of how to know if therapy worked. He was skeptical of EFT at first, but became an advocate.

I hope you find a good EMDR person soon. I'm very sorry your W cheated. I'm very sorry he's bot a great candidate for R (or has she changed?). You've done a lot for yourself already. I'm glad to read you're looking for ways to deal with your pain - that's a necessary step for resolving it.

Dr. Nadine Burke Harris talks about opening a clinic in a depressed neighborhood and finding what toxic childhoods do to adults. Please watch. It is about 20 min long.

Saved. Will watch. Thank you.

Karpman's Drama Triangle

Emotional Freedom Technique

What's interesting while reading up on this is that it mentions acupuncture. For years I resisted holistic/Eastern medicine but due to suffering from back injuries for many years and getting no help from meds, I broke down and went to one session with an acupuncturist from Taiwan and "poof" all the pain was gone.

I hope you find a good EMDR person soon. I'm very sorry your W cheated. I'm very sorry he's bot a great candidate for R (or has she changed?). You've done a lot for yourself already. I'm glad to read you're looking for ways to deal with your pain - that's a necessary step for resolving it.

There are many tools in the toolbox for those who want to deal with their emotional pain. God has a wrench for every nut.

I think the problem for me was that infidelity was a dealbreaker and I didn't realize it at the time. There was a child to raise and financial situations, etc. The years go by and the broken trust was never adequately dealt with. Now it's coming to the surface like never before.

I'm truly grateful to all who have contributed to this thread. It has been most helpful to me and hopefully helpful to others as well. Thank you.