🧠 What Is EMDR Therapy?

EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing. It has been an evidence-based therapeutic modality for over 40 years and is considered the gold standard for trauma treatment. Beyond trauma, EMDR can also be used to support healing from anxiety, depression, phobias, addiction, and somatic pain.

Important to Know: EMDR Therapy can only be provided by an EMDRIA-approved, EMDR-trained clinician. You cannot perform EMDR on yourself. It is a complex modality that requires specialized training and co-regulation with your EMDR Therapist.

💡 What Is Trauma?

Trauma happens when someone experiences an event in which they felt trapped, alone, or unable to make sense of it. The brain intuitively tries to process it through what it knows of truth, other experiences, and reality. If it cannot move through the experience, it gets stored maladaptively—away from the adaptive information processing system.

Signs You May Be Experiencing Trauma:

Flashbacks & Nightmares
Insomnia & Sleep Disturbance
Dissociation & Feeling Unattached
Anxiety & Depression
Low Self-Esteem & Self-Blame
Somatic Symptoms & Relational Struggles
Addiction & Unhelpful Coping Mechanisms

🩹 The Adaptive Information Processing (AIP) Model

EMDR Therapy is founded on the Adaptive Information Processing Model (AIP). Our body and brain intuitively know how to heal themselves. But when trauma takes place, the experience can get stuck in our memory network, isolated from the adaptive information processing system within us.

🩹 Think of a cut on your knee: Your body knows how to heal it. But some cuts need additional support to aid the body's natural healing, like Neosporin, bandages, or rubbing alcohol. In the same way, EMDR helps access your Adaptive Information Processing System to connect the traumatic experience to adaptive information. This helps the brain see the past as the past.

🐕 How Memories Work

Memories are connected through association. For example, any time you have interacted with a dog, your brain encodes that interaction in associated channels. These may include both positive and negative experiences with a dog all linked together within your memory network.

✨ The 4 Aspects of EMDR Therapy

👁️ 1. Bilateral Stimulation

Fast bilateral stimulation emulates REM sleep by taxing working memory and decreasing distress, allowing the brain to naturally activate its internal healing system.

⚖️ 2. Dual Awareness

Bilateral stimulation helps enter dual awareness—like having one foot in the present and one foot in the past. You feel grounded and safe in the here and now while accessing past traumatic experiences.

🔱 3. Three-Prong Protocol

Therapists conceptualize distress through the three-prong protocol: working through the Past (childhood experiences), Present (current triggers), and Future (navigating scenarios calmly) to digest material across associated memory channels.

🔄 4. 8 Phases of EMDR

Structured care divided into Part 1: Stabilization, Part 2: Trauma Processing, and Part 3: Integration.

📋 The 8 Phases of EMDR Therapy

🛡️ Part 1: Stabilization

We build stabilization skills and distress tolerance before working through traumatic experiences. We must have felt safety in the here and now before visiting the past.

Phase 1: History Taking & Treatment Planning: Establishing felt safety and rapport, sharing your story through the three-prong protocol, expanding your window of tolerance, and creating a treatment plan list of distressing targets across past, present, and future.

Phase 2: Preparation: Education about EMDR, reviewing and signing the consent form, establishing your EMDR Safe/Calm Place, and building your EMDR Container.

⚡ Part 2: Trauma Processing

Phase 3: Assessment: The client identifies a target to process and activates it through the 4 parts of a memory: image, cognition (negative belief), emotion, and body sensation.

Phase 4: Desensitization: Processing memories using fast bilateral stimulation. The brain intuitively works through memory channels while you remain in complete control. The goal is to bring distress down to 0.

Phase 5: Installation: Strengthening a positive, healthy belief to replace the old negative cognition.

Phase 6: Body Scan: Checking for and resolving any lingering physical or somatic distress while holding the target and positive belief.

Phase 7: Closure: Sharing what came up with the clinician, using containing and grounding exercises to transition safely back to day-to-day life.

🌿 Part 3: Integration

Phase 8: Reevaluation & Future Templates: Assessing disturbance levels of past targets in following sessions. Once fully processed, creating Positive Templates for handling potential future events with confidence.

A Gentle Reminder: Healing is not linear, and you are never alone in the process. Your EMDR Therapist walks alongside you every step of the way—you set the pace, and you remain in control throughout your journey.

Start Your Healing Journey

Ready to process the past and step into life after the storm? Reach out today to schedule your consultation.

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