Empowering You To Process, Heal, and Thrive

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a type of therapy that helps people work through and heal from tough or traumatic experiences.

It’s designed to help with the way past events—like accidents, abuse, combat, natural disasters, or other stressful situations—still affect your feelings and daily life. These memories can cause a lot of emotional pain, negative thoughts about yourself, or symptoms like anxiety, depression, flashbacks, or trouble handling stress.

Here’s how EMDR usually works, broken down into eight steps:

 Your therapist will start by learning about your life and what you’re struggling with, including the specific events that have been hard for you. 

 They’ll explain how EMDR works and what you can expect. You’ll also talk about ways to handle tough emotions during and between sessions. 

Together, you’ll choose the specific memories or events you want to work on. 

 This is the main part of EMDR. You’ll focus on those memories while doing something called bilateral stimulation—like following your therapist’s hand with your eyes, listening to sounds that switch sides, or feeling gentle taps. This helps your brain process the memories differently so they don’t feel as upsetting. 

 Your therapist will help you replace negative beliefs about yourself (like “I’m not safe” or “I’m not good enough”) with positive, healthier ones (like “I’m safe now” or “I’m worthy”). 

 You’ll notice if there’s any leftover tension in your body and work on releasing it. 

 At the end of each session, your therapist will make sure you feel calm and okay before you leave. You’ll talk about any feelings or thoughts that came up. 

 In future sessions, you’ll check how things are going and decide what to focus on next. 

 EMDR is known for helping people make big improvements in a fairly short time, making it a powerful way to heal from trauma.