Last week's session involved a decent amount of EMDR and intense processing.
For sessions like this, it seems I then flatline emotionally for 2-3 days. Just flat, no feeling.
It's unnerving and also exhausting. I am back to napping on these days, post-session.
Then it seems I feel better after that passes, possibly better than I did before going. This has happened several times now, a quite tangible experience of, "Three steps forward, two steps back."
Actually my experience is more like, "Five steps back, then six steps forward a decent while later and spaced very far apart."
I think that's been one of the hardest things about this process. It has been flat-out hard upfront. It doesn't feel successful at all. It can feel like failing. It can be shameful. It's always tiring. There isn't anything immediately rewarding aside from gaining a bit more knowledge for the journey.
I think to succeed quickly and upfront then have some slippage on the backend, that'd be a whole different ballgame.
That's not how this works, digging out of a giant pit of depression and rewiring your brain. It's basically the opposite of that. Too bad there isn't an American version, the drive-through version, of trauma recovery: "I'd like a rewired limbic system with a super-sized hippocampus. Hold the cortisol please? And reintegrate my child self with my healthy adult self? Thanks. And no ketchup."
Have fun with that and you're welcome.