You can be fully aware of the impact your dad yelling at you has on you — and still not be able to calm your racing heart when someone yells at you today. The tears come. Your breath gets short. The panic, the racing thoughts. Your head knows you're safe. Your body did not get the message.
Awareness and insight can be helpful, but especially after trauma, they only get us so far. You can understand exactly why you react the way you do and still react like the scared seven-year-old who didn't have the words, the experience, or the resources you have now. That gap — between what you know and what your body does — is usually where EMDR comes in.
Why talking about it isn't always enough
Memories get stored in memory networks — not just the facts of what happened, but the images, the sensations, the emotions, and the beliefs about yourself and the world that got attached to them.
Your brain is wired to sort through that information, learn what it needs to learn, and register that the situation is over. But sometimes it can't finish the job. The memory gets stuck — frozen, like a river in winter, or like dirt left in a wound. And because it's stuck, anything similar today can touch it off. A sight, a smell, a sound, a feeling, a time of day, even a date on the calendar can hit one of the little flags your brain planted as a marker: the last time we smelled that smell, we got hurt — so if we're smelling it again, we must be in danger.
That's why you can talk about a memory for years and still feel it at full volume. Talking reaches the thoughts. It doesn't always reach where the memory is actually stored.
What EMDR actually does
In an EMDR session, we start by activating that memory network — identifying the images, sensations, emotions, and beliefs that are stuck. Then we add bilateral stimulation, also called Dual Attention Stimulation — in my office, that's a small buzzer in each hand. It helps your brain and body access the past while staying right here in the present. One foot in the memory, one foot in the room.
Every so often, we pause. You notice what's happening, and we check in on how things are moving. It's a very experiential process, and it can be a gentle one — you're looking at the past in a removed way, like sitting on a train and watching the images and scenes pass by. Sometimes we follow a feeling, a thought, an image. Sometimes a new memory comes to mind. Sometimes we meet a younger part of you who needed something in that moment, and we notice what that part needs now.
What we're doing, underneath all of it, is melting the ice. Your brain gets to finish the job it started — and update the memory with the resources you actually have today: a calming breath, a voice that can speak up and advocate for you, the ability to leave a situation. The memory doesn't disappear. It just stops arriving like it's still happening.
What to look for in an EMDR therapist
Someone who is actually trained in EMDR. This is the first question to ask, in the consultation, out loud. Certification means a therapist has gone further — more training, more supervision — and it's a good sign, but it isn't always necessary. Training is.
Someone whose style fits what you're looking for. EMDR therapists work differently, and neither way is wrong. Some stick closely to the protocol, full stop — if you want one old issue resolved as directly as possible, that might be your fit, and it's also the style behind EMDR intensives. But strict protocol doesn't leave much room for talking things through, which can feel hard when things are coming up in your day-to-day life. Other therapists — I'm one of them — do talk therapy and EMDR, weaving it in and out of sessions like a tool. It honestly depends on what you're looking for and what you need.
Someone you feel safe with. This one matters more than the credentials. The most healing thing in any therapy is the relationship. EMDR used from a relational point of view is what makes it feel safe enough to explore the deep and hard stuff.
And the red flags, plainly: anyone who says they do "EMDR" but hasn't been trained in it. And anyone who tells you this is the only way to heal trauma, or pushes you toward it when you're uncertain. EMDR is a tool. It is not the tool.
You're the expert of you
At the end of the day, you get to decide what works for you. The reality is that no treatment for trauma will be comfortable or easy — you went through a hard thing, or hard things. But that doesn't mean your story is over. And a big part of healing is learning to trust yourself again, which includes learning to listen when something becomes too much.
EMDR is weird. I'll just say it. But it can be very helpful. And like I tell all my clients before we get started: you're in charge. If something becomes too much, we can stop at any point. The goal is to never leave you more traumatized than when you came in. Much like surgery, it can hurt to clean out the wound — but when it's cleared out, that's when the real healing begins.
If talk therapy has helped you understand your story but your body hasn't caught up, that's worth a conversation. I offer a free 15-minute consultation — bring your questions, including the ones from this list. And if you want the shorter version of how EMDR works in my practice first, it's on my EMDR therapy page. If you want the step-by-step version, I walk through all eight phases of EMDR here.