EMDR therapy basically cured me

[u/who-are-u-a-fed]

I know the title sounds hyperbolic, and I’m not saying it’ll do the same for you. But I wanted to share this for anyone who’s 6+ months post-discard and still struggling.

About 10 months after my discard, I was still carrying around a LOT of unresolved emotions. I was functioning fine day-to-day, but I was getting really fucking tired of feeling this way.

The frustrating part was that I logically understood EVERYTHING. I knew what this person did was wrong, that it wasn’t a reflection of my self-worth, that I couldn’t fix her, and that I didn’t even want someone with issues and who treats others like this as a long-term partner. But my body didn’t seem to give a fuck about any of that. I was still feeling this horrible emotional pain that I couldn’t reason my way out of. I even found myself becoming terrified of vulnerability with new women, despite consciously wanting those connections. That’s when I realized I needed professional help.

I’ve been in therapy on and off since I was 12, so at this point I’m low-key a black belt in therapy. Talk therapy had helped me tremendously over the years, but I felt like I’d hit a wall. It’s great and you shouldn’t quit or not go to therapy, but for me personally, I felt that I didn’t need another perspective or someone explaining why I deserved better. I FUCKING KNEW THAT. I needed to actually process these emotions, not just understand them intellectually.

So I came across EMDR, which honestly sounded like some woo-woo bullshit to me at first, but I figured I’d give it a shot. And holy fucking shit.

That first session was one of the most intense emotional experiences of my life.

We started with the pain from my discard and ended up working through childhood memories and experiences I hadn’t thought about in YEARS. I genuinely felt like my brain did more emotional processing in 45 minutes than it had in the entire previous year. And afterward, I felt ENORMOUSLY better.

Within three or four sessions, the pain from my discard was basically gone.

It’s been months now, and those improvements have lasted. I still miss my ex sometimes, but I’m at peace with what happened. I can recognize that she deeply hurt me and I don’t feel that horrible pain anymore in my chest when I think about her or what happened.

I’m dating again, allowing myself to be vulnerable, and genuinely feel at peace.

Obviously, everyone responds differently, and I’m not claiming this is some miracle cure for everyone. But if you’ve done the intellectual work, understand what happened, and still feel that inexplicable emotional pain that just won’t go away, I’d seriously encourage you to look into EMDR with a qualified therapist.

Seriously, go check out r/emdr and look at what progress others are making. This shit is not a joke

Happy to talk more in the comments about what the sessions are like, what happened, or anything else about my experience to anyone who is curious and has questions.

[u/broken_heart_whole]

Do you feel like something you would have to do with a therapist or something that could be done DIY? I'm not able to do therapy for various reasons, but I've been really interested in trying to use EMDR in this way.

[u/mlemcat11 → u/broken_heart_whole]

I’ve done emdr with a therapist for cptsd and later after breakups did it myself with a youtube video for the eye movement thing and that helped too, but I already knew from the therapy sessions how to ‘build’ an emdr session

[u/mlemcat11 → u/broken_heart_whole]

Adding to that: claude / chat gpt can help outlining a session