What the heck is EMDR?

So you’ve heard of EMDR, and maybe you’ve even read about it on my website. But you’ve also heard whispers of lights, buzzers, and beeps or dream states, eye movement, and brain stimulation, and you’re left wondering…
ok what the heck is this EMDR and how does it work.

EMDR is an intriguing therapy modality that can sound a bit strange, but has proven highly effective for a variety of mental health symptoms.

EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing and is an evidence-based therapeutic modality developed in the 1980s by psychologist Francine Shapiro, Ph.D. No, it is not a form of hypnosis, and no, you don’t have to do anything weird with your eyes!

EMDR is most widely known as one of the most powerful and effective tools we have for trauma therapy and it is! However, it can also be used for transforming a host of other distressing behaviors, patterns, belief systems, and/or mental health symptoms and diagnoses like anxiety, panic, chronic shame, unhealthy relationship patterns, and even pain.

Here’s how:

EMDR is about memory networks.

Our brains store memories—including the emotions, beliefs, body sensations, and behaviors tied to them—in networks. You can think of these like file cabinets. Most of the time, the brain “files” experiences away properly. But when something overwhelming or distressing happens, it can get stuck instead.

When a memory is stuck, it doesn’t fade with time. Instead, it stays “live,” and the nervous system keeps responding as if the danger or shame or fear is happening all over again. Worse, new experiences that even slightly resemble the original one can get linked into that same network, reinforcing our pain and survival strategies.

I like to say, “what’s stuck that’s causing yuck” and “what wires together fires together”

 Here’s an example: 

Say you were pushed off the playground in first grade and told you weren’t wanted. That might have been the first time your nervous system learned the painful belief: “I don’t belong.”

That moment may have felt so overwhelming to your six-year-old self that your brain couldn’t fully process it. Instead, it got stuck—filed under Shame, stored with the belief “I’m not safe with people,” and left to echo in your body. Now, as an adult, when you walk into a new office or try to join a group at a party, your system might light up with anxiety, self-doubt, or dread.

That reaction might feel disproportionate—but to your nervous system, it’s familiar. That’s what we mean when we say: what wires together, fires together.

Science tells us that the way we store, remember, and associate our experiences is much more important than what actually may have happened or didn’t happen. This is why we can also use EMDR for preverbal memories, birth or infant trauma, or for experiences that feel “blocked” from our memory.

EMDR helps unstick the past.

With EMDR, we target those unprocessed memories and the belief systems and nervous system responses or survival strategies wired into them. The therapy uses bilateral stimulation—like eye movements, tapping, or gentle buzzers—to activate both hemispheres of the brain, helping your system reprocess the memory in real time.

The theory is that this mimics REM sleep, the stage of sleep where our brains naturally process emotional information. As your brain does this, it can reorganize the memory, update your beliefs, and free you from the emotional weight it’s been carrying.

EMDR can seem a bit esoteric, and does take a bit of “trusting the process.” But it is also quite manualized, following a specific treatment protocol that is extremely evidence-backed, with thousands of studies to credit its effectiveness. 

Clients often describe this as life-changing. They feel like they’ve finally released something they didn’t know they were still holding.

What can I expect if I decide to start EMDR?

EMDR is completed in phases, and I would argue that the most important phase is the preparation phase.  Especially when working with trauma, it is so important to go slowly to avoid overwhelm or the potential for re-traumatization. This means that before you even start processing present day triggers and past experiences, you’ll first be laying a strong foundation of safety by working together to regulate your nervous system. For those who are worried about revisiting a traumatic experience, it can be relieving to know that in EMDR, your therapist should never jump right into the traumatic experience and that your therapist will always start with resourcing and regulating your nervous system. This often looks like learning exercises and tools that help your nervous system feel safe and calm, and working in sessions to map-out and organize your experiences, resources, and supports.

Once you’re ready to start reprocessing your experiences, we’ll start by taking a look at present-day triggers for a specific issue and then we’ll work together to discover memories or experiences that may be associated with that issue. We’ll work together to figure out what belief systems, coping behaviors, and stuck emotions are tied to that experience. Then, utilizing bilateral stimulation, we’ll manually reprocess this memory to free it from these stuck emotions, beliefs, and behaviors.

The entire process can take several sessions and up to a few months to complete. Clients are usually amazed at the insights they discover that they never had access to in other forms of therapy, and at how effective EMDR is for completely reorganizing the way they feel about the original experience.