EMDR Therapy — What It Is and What to Expect

EMDR — Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, is a structured therapy for the moments your body hasn't quite let go of, even when your mind has moved on. Trauma doesn't always live in the story we tell about what happened. Often it lives in the nervous system, in how quickly your heart rate climbs when something reminds you of it, in the tightness in your chest that arrives before you've consciously registered why. EMDR uses bilateral stimulation, usually eye movements, sometimes tapping or tones, to help the brain do something it got interrupted from doing on its own: fully process and file away an experience so it stops intruding on the present.

Think of an overwhelming or traumatic memory like a piece of food we start to chew, but never actually swallow. Something in us, a fight-or-flight reflex, a critical inner voice, a wave of shame, or some other defense, makes us spit it back out, or avoid taking that bite again altogether. So the morsel never gets swallowed. It never gets digested. It just sits there, undigested, unable to move through us and out the other side. EMDR gives us a way to finally take that bite all the way through, to chew, swallow, digest, and let it pass through and out of the system, rather than holding it, half-processed, in the body indefinitely (I have found it personally helpful to imagine Bill Nye the Science Guys voice here, or Ms.Frizzle, your choice). I'm EMDRIA-trained, and I work with EMDR through a somatic and parts-informed lens, which means we're not just processing an event, we're paying attention to what's happening in your body and which parts of you show up around it.

Does EMDR mean I have to describe the trauma in detail?No. This is one of the most common misconceptions, and often a relief to hear: EMDR doesn't require you to narrate the full story of what happened. You'll identify a target memory and the belief attached to it, but the processing itself often happens with far less verbal detail than talk therapy requires.

How many sessions does it take?It depends, on the nature of what you're processing, how long it's been held, and how your system responds to reprocessing work. Some single-incident memories move in a handful of sessions. Complex or developmental trauma is a longer arc.

Is EMDR only for "capital-T" trauma? No. EMDR is effective for single-incident trauma, but also for the accumulated weight of smaller, repeated experiences, the kind that don't always get named as trauma but still shape how you move through the world. If something keeps showing up in your body before it shows up in your thoughts, it's worth asking whether EMDR could help.

Is virtual EMDR as effective as in-person? Research supports remote EMDR as effective, and I've built my entire practice around delivering it well virtually, including adapted bilateral stimulation methods that work through a screen.