How EMDR Helped Me Heal From Birth & Postpartum Traumas

TW: birth and postpartum trauma

Prior to becoming a parent, I prided myself as being a strong, unshakable person… and then birth and postpartum trauma (including experiencing intrusive thoughts) shook me to my core.

I felt broken.

I felt powerless.

I masked it well. Until I couldn’t anymore.

And Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy helped me find hope and healing.

It was in my EMDR sessions where I realized:

All the positive things that happened in during birth and my postpartum: 

How my husband and I had so many laughs together while binge-watching Brooklyn 99 during labor.

How, despite having an induced labor with pre-eclampsia, I was still able to have a vaginal birth.

How, because I was very healthy at birth, I didn’t require a blood transfusion after the hemorrhage.

How supported I felt by my chosen family during and after my postpartum hemorrhage, when our friends rallied around us.

How much I loved being a mother, and how I became a version of myself I never thought was possible.

I was also able to imagine my current self going back to myself in labor and postpartum, letting her know she will live and she will have a beautiful life with her baby.

Doing this practice helped me update my memory, letting it know that all the traumas were over, and I am healthy and SAFE.

I was also able to thank my past self for listening to her intuition and advocating for herself by having her blood pressure checked - because she *knew* she had pre-eclampsia.

I validated how hard my past self worked to get heard in postpartum, and validated the anger she felt. I also let her know she has continued to advocate for herself since.

I tended to negative core beliefs from my childhood - the ones that my OCD fed off of - and provided evidence for all the ways that they are NOT true. 

EMDR also helped me connect a lot of other things in my life, and how my birth and postpartum traumas echoed other traumas in my life; but those are stories for another day.

I went on to get certified in perinatal mental health and in EMDR.

I now help other people overcome their birth and postpartum traumas, and - in many cases - reclaim their birth and postpartum experiences.

I also help people recognize how worrying about food choices and body changes during pregnancy and postpartum could actually be their negative core beliefs being triggered.

If any of this resonates with you, and you are interested in learning more about EMDR, click HERE!