Today’s appointment- the first half was hard. We went into stuff wider than the PTSD and childbirth stuff- it was uncomfortable and I cried quite a lot. Not the place for details here but interesting stuff for me to muse on some more.
Second half of the session was the start of EMDR. That was very weird but really good. I had to visualise a special place (which gets its own blogpost) and really focus on what I was seeing, smelling, hearing, feeling. Then the hand tapping began (we tried it with following fingers but it didn’t work for me). My therapist tapped each hand quite fast whilst I was visualising and then asked lots of questions. Slowly I got better and better at it. Then we linked my safe place image to the word- Meadow. Then we used the word during describing something upsetting me from this week (not childbirth related) and it seriously did dissipate some of the feelings. Magic!
Is a bit hocus pocusy but am totally going with it as I think it could be positive- I definitely felt relaxed and safe during my visualisation and wanted a nap- in fact maybe it will also help with my pregnancy insomnia!
After that I had a midwife appointment- saw my lovely midwife again- she was really pleased to see me all happy and smiley and not stressed and hysterical like our first appointment so that was lovely. Next week I am meeting the head of the delivery suite to discuss options so I am just feeling really positive and looked after at the minute and that can only be a good thing. 🙂
childbirthptsdandme 
I’ve done CBT and thought it was really good, and I still use some of techniques I learned to spot my thought patterns and turn them round, I had 6 sessions on the NHS a few years ago, it was incredibly hard work because it really makes you dig deep inside yourself and think really really hard about your thought patterns.
I found CBT hard but incredibly healing. It really helped me overcome the birth trauma of having Babyzoid prematurely in not very nice circumstances. Indeed the birth trauma tab on my site was written as homework set by my CBT therapist 🙂
Ooooh will go have a look. I love homework! 🙂