Just wanted to drop in and offer I know about EMDR and have done some.  I give it the thumbs up, if your T is trained, and I assume s(he) is. 

EMDR is used a lot for folks that have experienced trauma - there is what's known as big trauma (T) and little trauma (t) - EMDR has research behind it showing effectiveness for both.  Big T is stuff like torture, war trauma, people that witnessed 911, etc.  Little t is like chronic emotional abuse, abuse where life was not threatened, but the threat was perceived.

EMDR as well as sensorimotor psychotherapy are methods used to deal with symptoms that go somatic -meaning instead of your d being able to say, I feel hurt, abandoned, angry, afraid, she's saying I think I want to throw up.  For some people, somatic symptoms can be distress or pains all over their bodies. 


Molls.

I have a book on EMDR which I have been reading.  A psychotherapist discovered inadvertently that a type of rapid eye movement is made during traumatic events or recalling traumatic events. When we dream in deep sleep we have REM (rapid eye movement). Theory has it that our brains our processing events from our day, the bad, the good, etc... .  Theory also has it that PTSD and other mental illnesses, or phobias can be caused from our brains not healthfully processing traumatic events and they are "stuck" in an area of our brain where it shouldn't be - and because of that, suffering occurs... .like when the body is not able to heal itself properly from an injury, long term pain & suffering can occur. Our brains are no different; they have the natural healing ability to process emotional trauma & pain, but somehow, some reason it doesn't get processed the way it should. EMDR therapy is supposed to help the brain process this painful information. From what a counselour friend of mine says, as well as other mental health professionals, EMDR succeeds where other forms of therapy has failed. There is much excitement about this therapy in the mental health field. They don't know why it works, but it does.

I have done EMDR and am pretty familiar with it.  Just as a point of clarification - it is not retrieval, but reprocessing that is done.  The idea is that existing trauma that is remembered creates a trauma response today - even if the trauma occurred in the past.

EMDR attempts to help clients become desensitized to the trauma trigger(s), and reprocess the trauma - to move through it as opposed to stay stuck in it.  It was developed by Dr. Francine (I think that's her first name) Shapiro - therapists use cognitive restructuring of the trauma event as well. 

Nothing about trying to retieve lost or forgotten events is part of the normal course of therapy - per literature about EMDR, as I understand it.  FWIW.

Molls.

AT,

   I couldn't tell you if EMDR will work for someone with BPD or not but I am currently doing a series of EMDR sessions with a therapist and I have been amazed and pleased with the results I've experienced. I was a little skeptical when I started seeing this therapsit two months ago but I figured it couldn't make anything worse so why not give it a try. I had PTSD symptoms and was referred to this EMDR practitioner by the therapist I had been seeing. Certainly there is no one-size-fits-all therapy that will work for everyone but my experience has been very positive with noticable results after each session.

Perhaps the counsellor is not that far off. I've read that possibly 80% of BPD cases stem from PTSD - an event of trauma or abandonment so intense that the child has to split off that reality and memory in order to emotionally survive. Hence comes the "splitting" and "disassociative" emotions in the adult BPD. (Don't I sound like the armchair Freud?)

I'm quite sure that my BPDex is a victim of PTSD. I think that the suggestion of PTSD is more palliative to a patient than BPD and would allow for more compliance in therapy.

If your counsellor is familiar with BPD, you might ask whether they are familiar with DBT, ":)ialectical Behaviour Therapy", developed by Marsha Linehan. It is a "talk" therapy that is proving to have some success with BPD.

I have done it once, and it was very helpful in dealing with issues with my uBPD mother, who was high functioning.  Part of me learning what to change in myself dealing with my BPDh is to uncover those deeply embedded messages from growing up.  My T described it as a therapy shortcut - you learn to be accepting of yourself, and rewire your brain so that you can look back on traumatic events without still living them, and without them hurting you.  You get further much sooner than with traditional therapy.  I plan to do it again, I was so pleased with the results.

Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing

Yes I have had several treatments.  My T said she can often help a rape victim in just on or two sessions.  I had to tap her jaw to get it off the floor when she did an intake history on me.  She said I would need at least 8!  Before the decades of abuse at the hands of the BPD/NPD estranged I was exposed to some extreme traumas.  I think I might have gotten away from him sooner had I not been set up to suffer PTSD.  For some reason I expected a soft landing in my marriage... .but y'all know what we really get!

The treatment  (they think) gets the two sides of the brain to work together again.  Trauma some how creates a disconnect of sorts.  There are several ways to do this.  Rhythmic tapping on the sides of the legs, following a motion back & forth with the eyes.  It is the only therapy proven to be a long term help for PTSD.  It is something like hypnosis, but you are awake.  You will remember events, but it does take the "charge" from it.

It was used to help the Twin Towers victims, & the Tsunami victims.  People can be quickly trained to administer this therapy.  Here it is through therapists, but that is not necessary.

Silas

I did therapy for about 5 years, almost weekly, to address the issues from my BPD/NPD momster, and physical and emotional abuse starting when I was a baby.

A lot of the physical abuse took place before I was verbal, so my memories are very feeling and sensory based and fuzzy.

The talk therapy was vital, but what really helped to clear most of the trauma up for me, on deep levels, was EMDR. There were issues that I could "get to" and resolve with EMDR that no amount of talking could have touched.

My therapist was also trained in EMDR, so we would just do EMDR at various times while I was seeing her over those 5 years.

For me, it was extremely helpful.

My most dramatic session with EMDR happened after I had been NC for a year or two. This was a year or so past the 5 years of therapy I had done before. At that point, well into the NC, I could not stop thinking about momster. She was constantly in my mind. I felt anxious and stressed and anytime I wasn't busy, thoughts of her would come into my mind. I felt intense anger toward her and it would not go away.

So I decided to go back to my therapist and do some EMDR to see what would happen.

I don't know how we chose this, but we decided to do an EMDR session on a memory from when I was about 9 years old. I had uttered a bad word in front of momster, and she reached out and slapped me across the face. We used that memory as the starting point for the EMDR session.

When I left my therapist's office that day, the repetitive, anxiety-filled thoughts about momster just stopped. What happened, I realized, was that we had tapped into a big pocket of fear that I felt toward momster, and when that was resolved through EMDR, the anxiety and constant anger I felt toward momster finally went away. I could really see that it was intense fear that was driving the intense anger I felt toward her. When the fear melted away, so did a lot of the anger.

That was a few years ago, and I mark that day as the day that I was finally able to detach and let go from momster once and for all.

I did EMDR a few years back and it was INCREDIBLE for me. It really allowed me to put to rest a lot of the anger I had against my parents. My first session was similar, with the focus on the safe place. The actualy EMDR sessions were intense. I liked that I could stop it at any time. I did stop it at one point because we started getting into possible sexual abuse. I have no memory of being abused, but I've wondered. Anyway, I felt really young and started feeling as though I were being touched. We stopped right away until I got comfortable to move forward. That safe place comes in very handy.

I wish you luck with your EMDR. If you're even half as successful as I was, you should be happy.

No one is sure how it "works". They think maybe it has something to do with the back and forth eye movements. That it's a way of connecting the two sides of the brain and allowing us to think about things in a different way. Make connections we may not have made before. My T likened EMDR to a computer's defrag function.

As to the particulars? For me, I sat in front of my T. We started with a memory of an early childhood trauma. For me, it was my dad's death. She held a figer up in front of my face and moved it from side to side. I had to follow the finger with only my eyes. She would stop moving her finger, bring it down, and I would close my eyes. I would then describe what I was feeling or thinking. I just went from one image to another. From one feeling to another. At the end of the hour and a half (which literally felt like 30 minutes!), I had a bigger picture view of my childhood. It was amazing to me how many different events where actually tied together. Seeing the connect between the events helped lessen their impact for me.

My second EMDR session was focused on my mom, who I suspect has BPD. It's funny. My first one was extremely emotional. My second session was very thought-oriented. At the end of it all, I came away with compassion for my parents. And a realization that I was holding on to anger and blame that wasn't going to lead me to anything but more problems for ME. My father's dead. I can't get anything from him anymore. My mom is in denial. I'll never get what I need from her. Once I accepted that and was realistic as to what I could actually expect from my parents, things became easier. And then I was able to move on and work on MY issues. The years and years of maladaptive behavior I'd learned from my mom. Still working on that... .

Gamegirl, It did help the pain lessen. A LOT. I think that's what allowed me to feel compassion toward my parents. I was able to see what they went through without my anger and pain overshadowing it. It doesn't excuse the things they did, but it helps me to understand they were so ill-equipped themselves to deal with life. How can YOU learn to deal with life if your parents couldn't teach you?

EMDR is not magic bullet that makes everything all better, but man, if it didn't help me get there a lot quicker than I might have otherwise.

Jaes, I get the tearing up part. I always felt so bad for myself. I never had a dad. My mom was so horrible to me my whole life, while at the same time giving me everything. So I felt guilty for even thinking she had done anything wrong.

Anyway, I get the powerful thing too. I never thought of it in that way, but I guess when I was able to accept that my parents were never going to give me what I needed, I got my power back. You might want to take a look at TOOLS: Radical Acceptance for family members It's a concept named radical acceptance. I think radical acceptance can be a good thing to strive for.

There is some Buddhist thought attached to the concept. John Kabat-Zinn (one of the people I quoted in the post I linked to) is a teacher of mindfulness.

I did a little research on this several months ago when it was mentioned at bpdfamily.  I can't find my bookmarks anywhere - may have been before I reformatted.  If I find them I'll post.

What I understood was that it has to do with where and/or how traumatic memories are stored.  They have found that they are stored differently than regular memories.  The eye movements somehow help bridge the gap and let you process the memories in a way that links them to adult functions of the brain so that the previous responses like fight or flight, flashbacks etc. are lessened.  When a child endures a traumatic experience, they can't process it so it gets stored for processing later. 

When I was being treated for PTSD in the early 90's a big part of treatment was reprocessing those memories, feeling all the feelings I wasn't able to feel at the time, reexperienncing them the way they occurred from a child's viewpoint, and then putting them into an adult context.  It's hard to explain in words, but I kind of had to relive some of them and "feel" them as a child, then see them as an outside observer and "feel" what an adult would feel seeing the event.  In order to do all that I had to be at a place in my life where I felt safe, and strong enough.  I went NC at the beginning of treatment and it took about 2 1/2 years.  I remember a T telling me the average for someone like me was to start dealing with it at about age 30 and it would take 3-5 years at least.  I was lucky because I started at 23.

EMDR interested me because it seems to be a way to greatly reduce one of the steps in healing.  The hardest part for me was reliving the memories - the flashbacks, all-consuming feelings of anger, rage, grief etc.  Going through that - facing it head-on was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life.   Any technique that could help speed up that process is a big step forward for treatment of PTSD in my opinion.  I think they are using EMDR with war veterans too.

You might try googling some PTSD sites and then looking at info on treatment options, especially ones geared towards vets, for more info.  If I find some good links, I'll post. 

Fresabird

My first session of EMDR is Monday.  I'll let you know how it goes. 

Some tidbits that might need some more explaining: 

most of the issues I'm dealing with are centered around my uBPD mom;

the idea of EMDR, as I understand it, is not to prevent emotion but to allow it to process effectively, which I have not been doing.  When these surges come over me, first the painful thought comes up, then the emotion, then rather than allowing that emotion to get out and feel a little better about things, my brain stops at the emotion.  Thus no progress in processing. 

The session itself starts by bringing up very painful matter and then reprocessing it.  The goal is to lessen the negative feelings associated with it.

Stina, I hope that this will be something I can remember and use when the actual events come up.  I'm glad to hear that they teach you how to do that, even if it's not always easy to do.

www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMDR

Interesting... .