What EMDR Therapy is and How it Works Online

Even without Anxiety and Trauma…The World is a Stressful Place

Even when only considering the messages we receive from our family as we grow into adults, the messages we receive from the media about who we "should" be, and the messages we receive from peers, the world can be easily overwhelming. Add in a global pandemic, social justice, and a world that never seems to stop, and it's easy to hit overwhelm status. Then if we add in memories of trauma or even just constant ongoing stressful situations, it's understandable why our brains might have difficulty and feel triggered in our day-to-day lives. 

What is EMDR Therapy and How Does it Work 

EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing. It helps work through those old out-played messages and stressful life events that bring up feelings of anxiety, frustration, sadness, stress, and overwhelm. The video below explains what is happening in our brain as we go through life events and how trauma can get stuck. Quick trigger warning here - at the beginning and end of the video, there are brief snippets of material that could be triggering (ex. two people arguing, natural disasters, a person firing a gun, car accidents, etc.) The video further explains how and why EMDR therapy helps the brain process traumatic or stressful material. It is a longer video, about 10 minutes, but it really does help to explain the process. 

There you have it; through bilateral stimulation, we activate the brain's memory network, which helps you reprocess the memory. Before getting to this stage, we do A LOT of groundwork. We get to know one another, build an understanding of what you want to see different in your life, and how you want to feel after therapy is done! We also work to build resources for you and skills so that way when you feel overwhelmed or stressed out, you have real-life skills to put into place so those moments can become less stressful and can be stored for us to process in session.

When processing a memory, different people experience a range of things. It's normal for strong emotions to come up, to see the memory playing in your mind's eye, and even to have different thoughts about the event. While processing, your only job is to just notice these things, kind of like watching the video above. You might have seen the colors, heard the narrator's voice, or maybe some of the messages. After we stop eye movements, I typically ask what came up for you and share any observations. Then I will typically say something like "go with that" and have you continue eye movements. If you notice that you're getting too overwhelmed with emotion or maybe even that you've started to "tune out," – that's okay too, just let me know, and we will come back to help you feel grounded. 

What EMDR Sessions Look Like with Me and What Does This Look Like Online

I conduct all of my EMDR sessions through a secure online platform, so for the first several sessions, we are really spending time getting to know each other and laying that groundwork, as I mentioned above. When we start to process with eye movements, I will check in with clients to discuss how they feel as we move forward. For the eye movements, we have a couple of options, one is to work off of a shared screen that will look something like the picture below.

The dots will move back and forth, and you follow them with your eyes. Other options for eye movements can include finding two spots in your environment where you can do the eye movements or use tapping (don’t worry, we will discuss and figure out which one you feel works best for you and go from there.)

We'll check in every 30-45 seconds and pause the eye movements, and you'll share what came up for you. We'll also work together to intensify positive feelings and messages using eye movements or bilateral stimulation. And since I am also a Registered Yoga Teacher, for my clients that are interested in incorporating yoga-based movements, I will have them envision or go into a yoga posture when appropriate and when it can feel empowering for them. We can then process this through eye movements, and it becomes a resource and a felt sense of confidence and empowerment.

If you have any questions I didn’t get to in this article, I would love to hear from you.