When trauma overwhelms the brain, memory does not file itself like a story. It fragments. Sensory shards get sealed off because survival matters more than coherence. Faces, sounds, bodily sensations, fear responsesβthose pieces get stored without timestamps or explanations. That is not weakness, it is triage.
EMDR works by loosening those sealed compartments gradually. And βgraduallyβ does not always feel gentle.
I was attacked in 2022. I have not remembered anything from the assault.
Today I saw a face.
Seeing a face without context is actually very typical. Brains often release recognition before narrative. Familiarity comes first. Meaning comes later. Sometimes much later. Sometimes only partially. And that is okay. You do not need to force recall. Forcing is how people get flooded.
After heavy EMDR sessions, the nervous system is raw. Old threat circuits have been stirred. That can make the world feel subtly unsafe, unreal, or hyper-vivid. That does not mean danger is present. It means your brain temporarily turned the volume up.
In the session I knew who it was. Later, it faded like waking up from a dream.
Fear has been lingering all day. I know fear does not mean that something bad is happening now. It means something bad happened then, and your system is renegotiating it.
Unfortunately, it is something I have to muscle through alone.
