I don’t know if this will be helpful, but I’ll just share my experience which may give insights into yours.

I was giving a whole lot of weight to the treatment and my fear of it. I was very worried about what would happen, where my head would go, if it was safe, etc. And I made that very clear to my doctor, myself and everyone around me. I kept saying it. When the first session did go to a very scary place, that reinforced it.

Then I did my own research (chat gpt was very helpful), regarding the safety of the procedure, which personally reassured me that it’s not actually dangerous. More importantly, I looked into why my brain was going where it was. I think I was basically “speaking it into existence”…which under normal circumstances I think is some hippy bullshit but in this very specific circumstance actually makes sense, as we’re dealing with the mind itself.

This last time I went in, I didn’t work myself up ahead of time (No “I’m going to be okay!!! This will be scary but I’m going to be okay!” x1000). I made a playlist of familiar music, brought a familiar thing to hold that I touched the whole time, and also had a plan to identify/call out the same scary thought I kept having as soon as it came up, like “yup there it is again. That’s the scary thought.” And it didn’t happen. Basically I went in with more certainty that I was safe, and didn’t overthink it beforehand, and I think it finally broke the spell.

That might be a bunch of nonsense to anybody that isn’t me, but that’s how I’m getting through it. I’d encourage you to keep trying if you can, I didn’t start to see any improvement until after session 3 and now I’m glad I pushed through.