EMDR - Anyone experienced it applied on pwBPD?

[Outdorenthusiast]

So along with additional misdiagnoses - my pwBPD has been told she is PTSD.  Soo she is being recommended for EMDR.

Anyone experienced it being used? Does it help? Hurt? Waste of time? Thoughts and experiences?

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[Amina]

Though my partner has undiagnosed emotional unstable personality and after years of describing situations to my therapist thinks he would benefit from DBT and attachment based therapy, she also uses the word PTSD because sometimes splitting is from complex childhood trauma, and if someone is undiagnosed BPD, it makes sense to use the word PTSD instead.  Imagine a defense mechanism like splitting protecting someone to still care about an abusive parent that a 2 year old absolutely has no choice but to rely on.   It's sad.  I'm sorry I don't know anything about EMDR, but I wish you and your partner luck in a healing journey.

[zachira]

I have had EMDR therapy and it was the most helpful of all the therapy I did. I do not have BPD though probably have some traits as I was raised by a mother with BPD. The EMDR therapy was extremely overwhelming and I always disassociated for several days afterwards until my therapist said she was only giving me a one hour session due to cost, and the real treatment protocol was a one and half hour session. Once we did the one and half hour sessions and my therapist took time to put me back together before I left, I was fine. It was really healing and life changing. My therapist quit giving EMDR because of  how her clients were so overwhelmed by it. I know many therapists now work with keeping the client in a zone where they can process, neither too overwhelmed with feelings or too shut down. You might do some research to see if EMDR is contraindicated for people with BPD. EMDR is the only talk therapy I would do now. For me, any other therapy I would do, would be some kind of body therapy that unlocks my frozen body parts and the stored feelings I carry in my body. There are many therapy modalities out there, and all the research shows that therapeutic success is based on the relationship between client and therapist not the modality used. You might begin your research with finding out who the really good therapists are in your area and what therapists and modalities they recommend for a client with BPD.

[Amina]

Sexual abuse is very common in BPD, and I can see how EMDR would be helpful or utterly crippling to someone as an adult that is allowing it into conscious for the first time, and forgetting every defense mechanism that allowed them to survive up until this point.