A whole-person approach to healing from trauma and painful experiences
Trauma is a time traveler. An experience may be over, yet parts of it can continue superimposing onto the present through our thoughts, emotions, beliefs, bodies, relationships, and nervous systems. We may know that we are safe now and still feel an old danger unfolding around us.
EMDR therapy helps the mind and body heal from experiences that still feel unfinished. With enough support, preparation, and connection to the present, a memory can begin to find its place in the past. The history remains. The way it affects the present can transform.
What does EMDR stand for?
EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. Psychologist Francine Shapiro developed the approach in the late 1980s. It has since grown into a structured form of psychotherapy used around the world, with a strong research base for post-traumatic stress disorder.
The name calls attention to eye movements, although they are only one part of the work. EMDR also includes understanding your history, preparing for processing, developing resources, attending to the body, working with memory, and integrating what changes. It is a full therapeutic process held within a relationship.
Why does the past haunt the present?
Human beings are remarkably adaptive. When something overwhelming happens, your system finds a way through with the resources available at the time. You may become watchful, disconnect from your feelings, move quickly into action, freeze, please others, or reach for another form of protection. These responses carry intelligence. They tell the story of a mind and body working to help you survive.
Sometimes the experience cannot be fully processed while it is happening. Pieces of it may remain close to the surface: an image, a belief, a sensation in the chest, a tightening in the throat, an impulse to disappear, or the expectation that something bad is about to happen. A present-day moment can touch one of these older places and bring the whole pattern to life.
EMDR creates conditions for new information to meet what was learned in the past. As my friend Phoenix Jackson says, every age we have ever been lives inside of us. The adult who has choices now can come into contact with the part who had very few. The body can begin to discover that the danger has ended. As the experience becomes more integrated, there is often more space between what happened then and what is happening now.
What happens during EMDR?
EMDR follows an eight-phase framework, although healing rarely moves in a perfectly straight line. The process begins with learning about your history, your present life, your relationships, your strengths, and what you hope will change. You and your therapist build resources for grounding, regulation, connection, and choice. Together, you decide where to begin and what pace your system can use.
When you are ready to process a memory, your therapist helps you bring a manageable part of it into awareness. You might notice an image, a belief, an emotion, a physical sensation, or a felt sense that is difficult to put into words. During brief sets of bilateral stimulation, your therapist pauses and invites you to notice what is happening.
The process may move through memories, emotions, body sensations, insights, or subtle shifts in perspective. Sometimes a change is dramatic. Sometimes it arrives quietly, as more room to breathe, a new feeling in the body, or the realization that an old belief no longer fits. Your therapist follows the process with you and helps you remain connected to the present.
Later phases include strengthening a belief that reflects what you know now, noticing how your body responds, closing the session with care, and returning to the work at the next session. EMDR can also address present-day triggers and prepare for future situations.
For a closer look at how this process translates through a screen, read What Is Virtual EMDR Therapy Like?
What is bilateral stimulation?
Bilateral stimulation is an alternating rhythm that moves from one side of the body to the other. It may involve guided eye movements, taps, sounds, buzzers, walking, arm movements, drawing, fidget toys, or another rhythmic activity that works for you.
The rhythm matters, and so does the larger field around it. Bilateral stimulation happens within a process that includes present-moment awareness, emotional and physical processing, a responsive therapeutic relationship, and contact with the knowledge and strengths you already carry.
Why does EMDR work?
Researchers have several theories about why EMDR helps. Bilateral stimulation may engage working memory, activate an orienting response, support nervous system regulation, or help the brain integrate different parts of an experience. One theory suggests that it may support communication between the brain’s two hemispheres through the corpus callosum.
Each theory may illuminate one part of the process. Like many powerful forms of healing, EMDR also holds some mystery. We can witness meaningful changes while researchers continue to study exactly how those changes unfold. I do not think mystery makes the work less valuable. It reminds us to stay curious about the many ways the mind, body, and relationship participate in healing.
Will I have to tell the whole story?
You can share the amount of detail that feels useful and workable. EMDR often allows people to process an experience without narrating every part aloud. Your therapist needs enough information to understand what you are working with, support the process, and remain connected with you. You do not have to turn your pain into a performance in order for healing to happen.
Consent continues throughout the work. You can pause, slow down, change direction, or decide that a memory belongs to another day. A wish to stop is meaningful information. A protective response does not need to be defeated. It can be listened to, understood, and included in deciding what happens next.
What about complex or developmental trauma?
Trauma can happen in a single event. It can also take shape through repeated experiences, attachment wounds, emotional abuse, oppression, chronic stress, medical harm, or environments where care and safety were inconsistent. These experiences may influence relationships, identity, body awareness, emotional regulation, and the ways a person learned to stay connected or protect themselves.
EMDR for complex trauma deserves thoughtful pacing. Preparation may include strengthening support in your present life, building body awareness, developing internal and relational resources, and finding ways to manage activation between sessions. Processing may begin with something smaller or more contained. Trust in the work can grow through experience.
Healing can be layered and may move like a spiral. We may return to familiar territory with more support, more capacity, or a different understanding of what happened. Each integrated piece can create more room for choice, connection, self-trust, and ease. Your therapist should respect the wisdom of your protective responses and collaborate with the whole of you.
Is EMDR a quick therapy?
Some people experience meaningful change in a small number of sessions. Others benefit from longer-term work, especially when trauma has been repeated, relational, developmental, or connected with conditions that are still present. The length of therapy depends on your history, current support, goals, and what you want to address.
The aim is lasting integration at a pace your nervous system can take in. Progress may look like less distress, fewer intrusive memories, a greater ability to recover after a trigger, more connection with your body, or a stronger sense that your life belongs to you.
What can EMDR help with?
EMDR has been extensively studied as a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. Therapists also use it with anxiety, panic, grief, phobias, painful relationship experiences, medical trauma, emotional abuse, and other experiences that continue to affect the present. A qualified therapist can help you consider whether EMDR fits your needs, goals, and current circumstances.
A whole-person approach
Healing is something that happens within a whole person. We carry our histories in bodies that also hold creativity, instinct, pleasure and strength. We belong to relationships, cultures, communities, identities, places, and living systems. Trauma may be personal, relational, ancestral, or systemic. Often, these layers meet.
In EMDR, I am interested in more than whether a memory becomes less distressing. I am interested in what becomes possible when it does. Perhaps you can remain present during a difficult conversation, feel a boundary before you have to explain it, return to yourself more easily after being activated, or experience more vitality in the life you are living now.
The goal is for painful experiences to become part of your history without continuing to claim so much of your present. Healing can make more of your energy available for relationship, imagination, rest, resistance, pleasure, and whatever you want to grow toward.
Considering EMDR therapy?
If you are curious about EMDR, ask prospective therapists about their training, their experience with the concerns you want to address, and how they approach preparation, pacing, consent, and the therapeutic relationship. Pay attention to what happens in your body as you speak with them. You deserve a therapist who respects your identities, listens to your nervous system, and treats you as a whole person throughout the work.
You can learn more about my approach to weekly EMDR therapy in California.
You can also learn more about my approach to individual therapy and EMDR intensives for clients in California, or contact me with questions.
About the author: Erica Berman, LMFT is a queer trauma therapist, EMDR Certified Therapist, and EMDRIA Approved Consultant. Her work brings together relational, somatic, and trauma-focused approaches.