EMDR Therapy
You Understand It. So Why Can't You Move Past It?
You've done the work. You've talked about it, maybe in therapy, maybe with trusted friends, maybe just endlessly in your own head. You understand where it comes from. You can trace the pattern back to its roots. You can articulate, with impressive clarity, exactly why you are the way you are.
And still. It lives in your body like it happened yesterday.
The racing heart before a hard conversation. The shame spiral that takes over before you can catch it. The way a look from your partner can send you straight back to feeling eight years old and completely alone.
This is not a failure of insight. This is not a willpower problem. This is what unprocessed trauma feels like, and it has a home in your nervous system, not just your mind.
EMDR was made for exactly this.
What Is EMDR?
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a structured, evidence-based therapy developed by Dr. Francine Shapiro. It is one of the most researched and effective treatments available for trauma, and it works in a way that talk therapy simply cannot replicate.
Here's the thing about traumatic experiences: when something overwhelming happens, especially when we're young and don't have the support or capacity to process it, the memory doesn't get stored the way normal memories do. It gets frozen. Stuck. And every time something in the present touches that frozen place, your nervous system responds as if the original event is happening all over again.
EMDR works by using bilateral stimulation, typically guided eye movements, tapping, or sounds, to help your brain reprocess those stuck memories. It allows your nervous system to do what it was trying to do all along: digest the experience, integrate it, and file it away as something that happened in the past. Not something that is still happening now.
You don't have to talk through every detail. You don't have to relive the experience to heal from it. Your brain already knows how to heal. EMDR simply creates the conditions for it to do so.
What to Expect
Preparation
Before we touch any difficult material, we take the time to build safety, between us, and within you. You'll learn how to resource yourself, how to stay grounded when emotions arise, and how to signal if something feels like too much. You are in control of this process at every step.
Mapping
We identify specific memories, experiences, or moments that still carry an emotional charge. Sometimes it's a single event. Often, with childhood emotional neglect, it's more of a theme, the recurring experience of being dismissed, invisible, or too much. We identify where to begin together.
Reprocessing
Using bilateral stimulation, we'll move through the memory in a way that allows your brain to reprocess it, to update the story your nervous system has been holding.
Integration
What comes up in session is tended to carefully, and we'll check in about how you're doing between sessions as well. The version of you that is calm, grounded, and capable starts to feel less like an aspiration and more like simply you.
Integrating Internal Family Systems Therapy with EMDR
One of the ways I work that sets our work apart is my training in integrating IFS, or parts work, directly into EMDR reprocessing. Rather than approaching these as two separate modalities, I weave them together so that the parts of you that hold trauma, the younger, more vulnerable parts that learned to feel unseen, unworthy, or too much, can be accompanied and supported as we move through reprocessing. This means you are never alone inside the experience. Your parts are met with compassion before, during, and after EMDR, which creates a deeper sense of safety and often allows healing to go places it simply couldn't otherwise reach.
Book a Consultation
Book a free 15 minute phone consultation and take the first step. I’m here to listen, learn, and see if we’d be a good fit.