How EMDR Therapy Helped Me Heal Deep Trauma at 61

Cómo la terapia EMDR me ayudó a sanar traumas profundos a los 61

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I’ve been in and out of therapy since I was 18 for depression, anxiety, and, for a couple of decades, a life-threatening eating disorder.

That’s over four decades of searching, sometimes desperately, for peace in my mind, my body, and my life. Some therapists helped. Others left me feeling more broken than before. I’ve had sessions with a therapist who chain-smoked the whole time, another who couldn’t look me in the eye, and one who told me the only way to be happy was to win back the man who broke my heart. This was all back in the early 90s.

But even with all those disappointments, I never gave up on the idea that therapy could help me. I kept going back, hoping I’d eventually find the kind of support that didn’t just patch things up but healed them.

This year, at 61, I finally found it.

Why I Turned to EMDR

I’d heard of EMDR, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, but I never actually pursued it until my current therapist mentioned it during a particularly rough session in January. I’d just had what she called a trauma response.