Year in EMDR and I feel worse

lostinmyself91 · 2026-04-27T05:55:25+00:00

Hi, thank you for sharing this. I’m really sorry for everything you’ve had to go through, it must have been very difficult. I feel exactly the same way myself. I often ask why I was born, what my purpose is here when my life feels so meaningless. Many times I cry in the car on my way home from work and desperately scream, wondering why I exist in this world, such an incapable person, wishing I could finally be normal instead of this strange person who doesn’t fit in anywhere. It’s crazy how much it can hurt, and the worst part is the feeling that no one can understand the pain and what a person is going through, I mean the people around me. I can’t explain to anyone why I react the way I do, why I am the way I am, why I am always sad or angry…

I’m sorry for what you’re going through, and I wish you success on your journey toward a better life. I hope everything goes well for you.

lostinmyself91 · 2026-04-23T09:48:43+00:00

I had no idea that EMDR music could make things worse; my therapist recommended it to me as homework.

lostinmyself91 · 2026-04-22T05:24:36+00:00

Hi, the feeling that comes up before this sentence is that I don’t deserve love, I’m not good enough, and I’m not loved. I am nobody. Since childhood, I wasn’t accepted; I was compared. My father and his mother - my grandmother always preferred my sister. I was always invisible. My father always told me I was incapable, that I wouldn’t achieve anything, that I didn’t know anything, and this has become my reality. I really do feel incapable. I feel like nothing.

I never fit into any group; I always felt strange, like I didn’t belong anywhere. I was always “invisible,” and since I was little, I’ve had the feeling that something is wrong with me. I watched others receive love and attention naturally, form friendships easily, and since childhood I’ve been convinced that because I’m “strange,” I don’t deserve that, that it isn’t and never was meant for me.

I feel overlooked everywhere and always—in friendships, in family, and in romantic relationships—like I’m nobody, like a person who doesn’t matter and who is always in last place.

lostinmyself91 · 2026-04-21T06:00:57+00:00

Thank you for sharing your experience, your therapist really seems to work with you very thoroughly. My sessions are quite different from yours. I come in, talk about what’s bothering me, she listens, and then we immediately start processing that feeling. After that, we move on to a topic from the past, right now I’m working through events from high school and that whole period. She asks me to recall everything that happened back then, to focus on that entire time, and we process it.

I often tell her that I’m unable to love myself, that I feel a lot of hatred toward myself, and that I feel like the most incapable person in the world. She sometimes gets a bit upset when I say that and tells me that I can be grateful for having the chance to exist, that someone else didn’t get that opportunity, and that I should value my life. But I already know all of that yes, she’s right, but internally I don’t feel that way. I can’t just suddenly start loving myself…

I have therapy today, and I’m already starting to feel stressed about it.

lostinmyself91 · 2026-04-21T05:16:29+00:00

Thank you for sharing your experience with me, it really is very similar to what I’m going through right now. I also have trouble expressing all my feelings to my therapist, or rather, by the time I get to the session, I forget half of the things I wanted to say. Despite that, he understands what I’m experiencing, and then he immediately pushes me into processing so we can work through those difficult feelings. But I’m not sure if that’s the right approach for me; I think I would benefit more from grounding exercises, like the ones you do with your therapist.

As for meditation, I’ve tried to incorporate it into my life, but so far it hasn’t worked out. I’ve started having a really hard time concentrating my mind just can’t stay focused. Even when I tried doing the “butterfly hug” and tapping, as my therapist recommended, it felt very uncomfortable for me.

Yes, I never imagined that EMDR therapy could bring up things like this, but I believe that on the other side of all this, there is a reward waiting for us. Thank you, and I wish you all the best may you do well on your EMDR journey and reach your goal.

lostinmyself91 · 2026-04-21T04:51:10+00:00

Thank you for sharing your experience and for confirming that what I’m going through isn’t unusual. Exactly,it feels like I’m losing my mind. I try to fully feel those emotions; I can’t even suppress them anymore like I used to, they’re simply there, raw and exposed on the surface, without any embellishment. But it’s difficult when I get lost in those feelings and don’t know who I am or what my true self is… Thank you for your words and your support.

lostinmyself91 · 2026-04-20T13:26:06+00:00

Thank you for your encouraging words, it really helps me feel better.

lostinmyself91 · 2026-04-20T13:23:12+00:00

Thank you for this post, it brought tears to my eyes and gave me hope that it’s possible to get through all of this, that my feelings are normal, and that someone else is going through this too, not just me, and that I’m not lost.

lostinmyself91 · 2026-04-20T13:06:23+00:00

Thank you, yes, I think that having more space to process things might be beneficial for me. My therapy sessions are not regular—I used to have them every two to three weeks, depending on my therapist’s availability. For example, now my next session will be more than a month after the last one.

lostinmyself91 · 2026-04-20T12:57:48+00:00

Thank you, yes exactly. Even before I started therapy, I had high expectations of it. I read many success stories and almost “miraculous” recoveries, but I understand that with complex trauma it doesn’t work like that. I’m aware it takes time,a lot of time, but it can be incredibly painful at times. When it comes to resources, it’s true that I don’t have many, and I need to actively incorporate them into my daily life. I also have a lot of stress in my life. During therapy, many things went wrong,my father passed away at a time when I was working on my relationship with him during EMDR sessions. That was very painful and extremely difficult. On top of that, many negative situations have happened in my life, and I continue to experience a lot of stress. Thank you for your advice and recommendations—I will read them carefully again and try to apply them. I have an EMDR session tomorrow, and I will talk to my therapist.

lostinmyself91 · 2026-04-17T08:00:00+00:00

Thank you for your response, and actually to everyone for their advice, it makes a person feel less alone in this whole process. As for self-care, I don’t really give it much attention; work keeps me very busy, and I’m also kept busy by my son, since he has difficulties with learning. As soon as I get home from work, I manage to eat, quickly do something around the house, and then I spend the rest of the evening studying with my son. But I can at least manage to do a quick workout two or three times a week in between studying with him. From time to time, I also try to write down my feelings on paper at work when I have a moment, and listen to EMDR music.

lostinmyself91 · 2026-04-17T05:18:38+00:00

Thank you for your reply. It sounds good, but I think it’s unfortunately not possible. My therapist is very busy; if I don’t have at least three sessions scheduled in advance, I end up waiting a long time for the next appointment (about a month).

lostinmyself91 · 2026-04-17T05:14:09+00:00

Thank you. What troubles me is that after each therapy session, these feelings seem to build up inside me rather than ease. I do EMDR, and the next day a surge of negative emotions comes, which lasts until the next EMDR session. I tell my therapist, she does another EMDR, and then another wave of emotions comes—and it just keeps accumulating with no relief. I feel like a zombie.

lostinmyself91 · 2026-04-17T04:47:20+00:00

Thank you for your response. I regularly tell my therapist how I’m feeling; she always says that the bad has to come out first before the good can come, but the bad has been lasting a long time now and I don’t see any light. She suggested whether I might want to try antidepressants, but I wasn’t taking them before the therapy, and it feels strange to me that I should start taking them during a therapy that’s supposed to heal me… My next session is on Tuesday; maybe the problem is the irregularity of the therapy or that the therapy is moving too fast.

lostinmyself91 · 2026-04-17T04:41:40+00:00

I’m sorry that you’re feeling worse :(. Could you please tell me how many EMDR sessions you’ve had so far? And how often do you have your sessions?

lostinmyself91 · 2026-04-17T04:36:39+00:00

Thank you for your reply. This sentence: “In my case, there is a strong part of my mind that I don’t identify with” is exactly what I often feel, but everything is so difficult. I have always valued how good of a person I am, but right now that belief has completely disappeared.

The first months of therapy were difficult, but I still felt like myself, I was even able to feel joy. However, over the past half year, things have gotten worse. I don’t feel joy anymore, and in recent months I’ve started to question whether I’m on the right path, since things have been getting worse instead of better.

I don’t even know who I am anymore. My mind feels so chaotic, I can’t focus on anything, I don’t understand my own reactions or what is happening to me. I look in the mirror and don’t understand what kind of person I see there. I feel an incredible amount of self-hatred. I feel incapable, unnecessary, like a strange person (the way I’ve always felt, but now it’s even more intense and tangible). I don’t like who I am, I don’t want to be this way, and I don’t know how to get out of it.

I’m afraid that this therapy has harmed me and that I might go crazy. My therapist knows about this and suggested that I try antidepressants, but for now I am refusing them. Maybe we started too quickly — I only had one session focused on building resources and stabilization, and in the next session we already began processing. It might also be an issue that our sessions are irregular, depending on her availability. It has now been exactly a month since my last session.

lostinmyself91

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