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Setting Targets

Today I had what I really consider to be day one of EMDR.  EMDR is a type of therapy for trauma.  It uses your own eye movements to take the emotional charge out of traumatic moments.  I've had two sessions with this therapist, and today we worked on setting targets.  Targets are the emotionally upsetting moments of the client's (my) life that EMDR is going to focus on.  We start at the beginning and build a timeline of my life staring every upsetting thing that ever happened in my life. 

I have... a lot.  I think most people have several upsetting events, even traumatic.  Not everyone can get diagnosed with PTSD.  The difference between being diagnosed with a mental disorder and not getting diagnosed comes down to one question: Is it interfering with your life? 
This is true when it comes to ANY diagnosis really.  I've heard lots of people say "I think everyone is a little ADD sometimes."  What they probably mean is everyone has a little difficulty focusing sometimes.  There is a big difference between that and having a diagnosable mental disorder.  Diagnosable is when you are getting in trouble at work and/or school, problems with your social life and having problems with family members because of the symptoms of the disorder.  As for the symptoms of the disorder, there is a lovely little manual (not little actually) that has been organized by leaders in the field of psychiatry that literally lists the symptoms of each disorder. 

I have a lot of respect for my counselor because she won't diagnose me with depression.  You may be saying to yourself "Trina, you've been diagnosed with depression for a long time, why would you respect a counselor for ignoring that?"  The answer to your question is that depression and PTSD have a lot of overlapping symptoms.  If you treat the DSM critera like they are lists to be checked off, I definitely can be diagnosed with both. This therapist obviously does not treat the DSM criteria like that.  She isn't comfortable diagnosing people with both depression and PTSD.  As a therapist who refuses to diagnose ADD in a person who has an untreated emotional disorder because of the overlap, I really dig it. She also has enough training to beat me, and is willing to do education with me despite what my training is/ should be. 

Despite all of the things going for my therapist, the targets session sucks.  Even with the exercise at the end of it to make sure I'm leaving the session okay, the session sucks.  I also really miss having my own home and the ability to put up my grief and loss tree.  My grief and loss tree is a huge (like... half a wall) painted and carved tree where the leaves are pictures of the people in my life that died and listed out events. I used it as a focus for when I was struggling with my grief reaction.  It could make this session a little easier too because I forget key things (fruedian slip anyone?).  I literally forgot to say "the horrible illness stuff."  I'm doing sessions over the internet because I'm recovering from surgery and she had to bring up my illnesses.

I also had my first post-op follow up appointment with my OB.  That went really well.  She is giving me a pill instead of patches for hormone replacement because the patches are literally burning my skin.  We shall see how that works, but I'm not having any hot flashes or other menopause symptoms right now.  Good luck me.


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