There’s a moment that comes up surprisingly often in therapy. Someone sits across from me and says a version of “My head knows this logically… but I just don’t feel it.” They know their partner loves them, but they still brace for rejection. They know they’re safe now, but their body still reacts as though something bad is about to happen. They know they are good enough, competent enough, worthy enough—and yet some deeper part of them remains unconvinced. It can feel like a battle between the head and the heart. Between what we know intellectually, and what the nervous system still expects emotionally. And this is often the point where I reach into my bag of slightly magical therapy tricks and pull out EMDR.
I say “magical” because, honestly, it can feel that way at first. EMDR has always had a slightly mysterious reputation. If you watched Grey’s Anatomy or The Affair, you’ve probably already come across a version of it: someone following a moving light or a therapist’s fingers whilst revisiting painful memories. At face value, it sounds improbable. Even a bit ridiculous. How could moving your eyes from side to side possibly help with trauma, anxiety, grief, or painful relationship patterns? I was (very) sceptical of it myself when I first encountered it! But over time, particularly when sitting with clients who understood their difficulties perfectly well and yet still felt trapped inside them, EMDR started to make increasing sense to me. Because sometimes insight alone is not enough. Sometimes the thinking brain has already caught up, but the nervous system hasn’t. And that’s the gap EMDR seems to work in unusually well.
What EMDR is—and why the name doesn’t help!
EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing. It’s not an especially elegant name. It sounds technical, slightly obscure, and tells you very little about what actually happens. It also tends to give the impression that the eye movements are the main event, which they aren’t. At its core, EMDR is a way of helping the brain process experiences that, for one reason or another, got “stuck”.
Typically, when something happens—whether mildly stressful or deeply distressing—the brain processes it and stores it as a coherent whole. It becomes part of your story. You can think about it without being pulled back into it. A useful way of thinking about this is as a completed jigsaw puzzle. The pieces have come together. The image makes sense. You can step back from it and see where it fits within the wider picture of your life. But when an experience feels overwhelming—too intense, too sudden, or too much to take in at the time—that process can become disrupted. Instead of forming a complete picture, the experience can remain more like the loose pieces of a jigsaw—held in separate parts. An image here. A body sensation there. A surge of emotion that doesn’t quite link up with anything else. Not fully connected. Not fully processed. Not fully in the past. And then, when something that happens in the present reminds the body of the past—for example, a tone of voice like someone’s in an earlier moment, a look of disapproval, or a familiar sense of being dismissed—and resembles just enough of the original experience, the system reacts as though it’s happening now, in the here and now. Not remembered. Relived.
EMDR helps the brain bring those pieces together—so the experience can be processed as a whole, and held as something in the past, rather than something that keeps reactivating in the present. EMDR helps move experiences from reliving…into remembering.
Big T trauma, little t trauma, and why both matter
EMDR is often associated with trauma, but trauma is broader—and more subjective—than people sometimes realise.
In therapy, we sometimes talk about “Big T” trauma and “little t” trauma. Big T trauma refers to experiences we would all recognise as overwhelming: serious accidents, abuse, violence, medical trauma, sudden loss. Little t trauma is quieter, but not necessarily less impactful. It can involve repeated criticism, emotional neglect, growing up walking on eggshells, never quite feeling safe, seen, or enough. Often, it is not one dramatic event that shapes us most, but the accumulation of smaller experiences over time.
The nervous system does not particularly care whether something “should” have affected you. It responds to what felt frightening, overwhelming, shaming, emotionally unsafe, or simply too much to process at the time. And those experiences can continue to live in the body long after the thinking mind has moved on.
Why insight isn’t always enough
This is often the part people find most frustrating. Because by the time they arrive at therapy, they’ve usually done a great deal of thinking. They know the relationship wasn’t healthy. They know they’re not in danger now. They can challenge the thought, reframe the belief, hold a more balanced perspective. And yet the physical reaction comes nevertheless. The body still tightens. The nervous system still prepares. It can feel like a disconnect between the head and the heart—between what you know intellectually and what your body still expects emotionally.
Talking therapies like CBT tend to work primarily with the “knowing” part—helping you examine and reshape patterns of thought. EMDR works more directly with that disconnect. It helps the brain and body come back into alignment, so that what you feel begins to reflect what you know.
What actually happens in an EMDR session
EMDR is a structured therapy that works across past, present, and future experiences.
Broadly speaking, the process helps people revisit experiences from the past that still feel emotionally “alive”, work with the ways those experiences are showing up in the present, and then build new ways of responding moving forward.
The therapy itself happens across eight phases, although in practice it rarely feels as clinical or mechanical as that sounds.
It begins with history-taking and planning. This is the stage where you and your therapist begin identifying patterns, significant experiences, present-day triggers, and the goals for therapy. A large part of this phase is simply understanding your story and how your nervous system has learned to respond to it.
From there comes preparation—arguably one of the most important parts of EMDR, and one people often don’t realise exists. Good EMDR is not about throwing someone into traumatic memories and hoping for the best. Before any processing begins, the work focuses heavily on safety, grounding, stabilisation, and trust. Clients are taught ways to regulate their nervous system and return to a sense of safety if things begin to feel emotionally intense.
Only then do you move into the processing phases themselves. Typically, you are sitting in the therapy room with the therapist slightly beside you rather than directly opposite—almost a little like ships passing in the night. EMDR uses something called bilateral stimulation—most commonly following a therapist’s hand or a moving light from side to side, or using alternating taps or gentle pulses. At first glance, it can sound slightly odd. Even scepticism-inducing. But the eye movements themselves are not the therapy. They are simply part of a larger neurological process.
And this is usually the point where people expect something dramatic to happen. But often, EMDR feels quieter than that. A thought shifts. A body sensation changes. A new memory suddenly links itself to an old one. Something that previously felt sharp and immediate begins to soften.
The therapist checks in regularly throughout the process:
What are you noticing now?
What is coming up for you?
The goal is not to erase the memory, but to reduce the emotional distress attached to it and strengthen more adaptive beliefs in its place.
Later phases focus on noticing whether distress still remains in the body, helping the nervous system settle before the session ends, and revisiting the work in future sessions to see what has shifted.
Because EMDR is not simply about revisiting the past. It is about helping the brain and body finally process what they were unable to process at the time. One way we understand EMDR is through its similarity to what happens during REM sleep—the stage of sleep where our eyes naturally move back and forth whilst the brain processes and integrates emotional experiences. EMDR appears to tap into a similar mechanism. By briefly bringing a memory to mind whilst engaging in bilateral stimulation, the brain begins linking emotional, sensory, and cognitive information in a new way. Experiences that were previously “stuck” begin to move. In simple terms, EMDR nudges the brain to do what it already knows how to do—but couldn’t complete at the time.
Research on EMDR is now substantial enough that it is considered an evidence-based treatment for trauma and PTSD internationally. Some studies have found that up to 90% of people with more straightforward traumatic experiences no longer met criteria for PTSD after relatively brief EMDR treatment. But in reality, the length of therapy depends enormously on the person and the experiences involved. A single frightening event is very different from years of walking on eggshells, chronic criticism, emotional neglect, or repeated relational hurt. Complex experiences usually require slower, steadier work. Because often the goal is not simply symptom reduction. It is helping the nervous system learn, gradually, that it no longer has to stay in survival mode.
What EMDR can help with
Although EMDR is best known for trauma, its use is much broader than many people realise. It can be helpful for:
– Anxiety that feels immediate or difficult to regulate
– Persistent beliefs such as “I’m not good enough” or “I’m not safe”
– Experiences that continue to feel emotionally charged long after they’ve passed
– Relationship patterns that repeat despite insight
– Panic, shutdown, or strong emotional reactions that seem disproportionate to the present situation
– Grief, burnout, shame, and difficult life transitions
In many cases, these difficulties are linked to earlier experiences that haven’t been fully processed, even if they didn’t seem significant at the time.
One client once described the process of EMDR to me this way: “Before, it felt like my body hadn’t realised it was all over. and would react like is was happening now. But today it feels like a memory instead of a warning.” That is often the shift people notice. Not that the memory disappears. Not that it suddenly becomes pleasant or insignificant. But the emotional immediacy changes. The body no longer responds as though the past is unfolding in the present moment. People rarely leave EMDR saying, “I’ve figured it out.” More often, they say something simpler “It doesn’t feel the same anymore.”
You move from reliving…to remembering.
A final thought
EMDR isn’t about erasing the past. It’s about helping the nervous system recognise that the past is, in fact, past. So that what you know intellectually, and what you feel emotionally, are no longer working against each other.
And sometimes, that shift can feel a little bit like magic…