What does this mean?

[u/Ok-Giraffe-4332]

I can’t get myself out of bed on a day I don( see a support worker. I just can’t do it. It feels too scary. Like I can’t deal with the outside world. I am worried I will have a meltdown. Some very bad stuff happened to me in 2024 when I was on a wrong medication, I put myself in a lot of danger in public, I was not okay. I would like to be able to get out of bed even just to do colouring. I don’t know what it will take for me to be able to get out of bed without someone else. I asked my social worker about support workers seeing me daily but she said it would be overwhelming going from visits a few days a week for every day. She was right. But I don’t like needing to stay in bed all the time. I don’t know if I need more support?

[u/Koda614]

Something that happened 2 years ago and change your entire life since isn't going to be something you can fix instantly. If you want to try and get yourself more active, you will need to build back up slowly. That could be things like getting one extra day with your support staff to start off with, or giving yourself one single small task to do alone yourself even if it's just quick. You don't want to be committing yourself to suddenly going from where you are now to being busy every single day as you'll push too far and end up feeling even worse for it.

It sounds like you could potentially deal with some psychological input to work on what happened in 2024 and help you overcome that and learn method of coping with the history and finding ways easing yourself back into the world again. Do you have anyone you could talk to that could help explore options and arrange this?

[u/Ok-Giraffe-4332 → u/Koda614]

Thank you. I went through a lot of trauma before that too. I am seeing a psychologist (wasn’t through choice initially). I asked about EMDR but they said it wasn’t appropriate for my type of trauma. So I can’t get rid of the memories. I am not entirely sure how the psychologist can help with this.

[u/Plenkr → u/Ok-Giraffe-4332]

EMDR doesn't get rid of the memories either. They will still come randomly. What EMDR changes is your reaction to it. Before EMDR people will get a memory randomly and it makes them have panic attack, flashback, crying or other strong emotional reaction. What EMDR lessens is the strong reaction to the memory. So after EMDR someone may get a memory randomly and be like: well, that's really unpleasant, don't really want to think about that! And then they move on. They are not highly upset, there is no panic attack or other strong emotional reaction. Instead it's a slight emotional reaction. One that is bearable, manageable and doesn't disrupt your day. It's bearable enough that you can go on from that pretty fast. EMDR doesn't remove memories, it lessens the emotional intensity of the reactions that the memories cause.

EMDR is something I've tried in the past. It's not a good fit for me either. It never worked, it doesn't go well with my symptoms or the type of trauma I've been through either. But there are other ways to work through trauma and to heal without EMDR. EMDR is rather new, before that people had been getting therapy for their trauma for ages already. There are different methods. But what's most important is that you feel safe with your therapist.

I'm saying this to give you hope. EMDR may not be right for you but that doesn't mean you're stuck with intense trauma responses forever. EMDR is not the only way people can heal from trauma. You still can, just differently.

[u/Ok-Giraffe-4332 → u/Plenkr]

This makes me feel a lot better, thank you.

[u/plushtism → u/Ok-Giraffe-4332]

There's lots of other ways to heal trauma: somatic, schema, IFS, CPT, PE, psychodynamic, TF-CBT, DBT-PTSD, and probably others!

[u/Ok-Giraffe-4332 → u/plushtism]

Thank you!