Hi there,

Without commenting on your individual situation, in my experience, some people are simply more visual than others. They may see things vividly during EMDR and may have a lot of "aha" experiences during it.

Others may simply notice shifts in body sensations, emotions, or thoughts. And of course, many people are somewhere in between and may have some visual moments or sessions and not others.

I don't find that there is any particular correlation between how much visualizing someone does and their level of progress. As long as the level of distress is decreasing and the positive cognition is strongly believed in at the end, then I would consider the EMDR to be "working".

I myself am often not a terribly visual person during EMDR. I may have different memories come up but most of the time they are not visual in nature but rather thoughts about what happened. Occasionally I do have visual imagery, but it is not the norm for me. I don't find any difference as a client in how effective an EMDR was, based on how much visualization happened. I do sometimes leave an EMDR session feeling like it was a little anticlimatic, and I may feel as if nothing happened because it was not particularly intense. I will notice, however, that the targetted issue does feel better and I generally am able to see changes in my behaviour and feelings afterwards.

Just my .02 - hope it helps.