Healing Through the Eyes: How EMDR Transformed My Life After the War in Afghanistan

From Battlefield to Peaceful Nights: Overcoming PTSD with EMDR Therapy

In 2006, I was deployed on a mission to Afghanistan as an Anesthesiologist and Resuscitation Specialist at the Warehouse Field Hospital in Kabul. For three months, we received numerous wounded, often young fighters, and some of them did not survive. The terrorist threat was omnipresent: a rocket had fallen on a Portuguese camp before our arrival, and a German bus transporting soldiers had been hit by an IED, killing nine soldiers and injuring twenty-eight others. This experience left an indelible mark on me, shaping my life in ways I could never have anticipated.

Returning home, I thought I could leave behind the horrors of the battlefield, but I soon realized that the war had followed me back. Nightmares, pervasive and terrifying, woke me up every night. Despite numerous psychotherapy sessions, these persistent nocturnal visions refused to disappear. It was then that I discovered EMDR, a method that would change my life forever.

The Descent into Hell: Unrelenting Nightmares

Back in France after my mission, I quickly realized I had left a part of myself in Afghanistan. The images of…