How Does EMDR Work?
EMDR doesn’t work the same as talk therapy. The process is both simpler and more complex.
1. Establish a Safe Zone
Before EMDR therapy begins, the therapist will help the patient create an emotionally safe zone in their mind. This can be something like a sunny day alone relaxing at a beach or in your dream home reclining on the couch. The location will be used throughout the session as a safe place to return after visiting trauma. We can compare this mental safe zone to a medical recovery room.
2. Identify the Pain Points
The therapist will then ask some basic questions to judge which feelings or memories need to be addressed. Unlike a doctor, a therapist can’t physically see your wounds, so they need to talk with you to better identify where work needs to be done.
Typically, this will include asking you to think about memories or moments throughout your life and give a pain rating from 1–10 for how difficult it is to recall that memory.
3. Question Negative Beliefs
The therapist will ask questions about negative beliefs and work with the patient to determine better alternatives for those beliefs. For example, the patient may come in believing ideas like:
- I am helpless.
- I am unlovable.
The patient and therapist work together to find better phrases to hold onto, such as:
- I am safe now.
- I am in control.
- I am valuable.
These will be used later, during the installation phase of the EMDR process. Think of installation like stitching up the open wound. These positive self-statements help hold together the wound so it can heal naturally and ideally become part of the patient’s mindset.
4. Begin Reprocessing
With the necessary tools prepared, reprocessing can begin. The therapist will help guide the patient from their safe zone into their trauma and back while using eye movement, taps, or tones.
The therapist will work to desensitize the trauma first, which will reduce the amount of pain a traumatic event or memory carries (think of this as cleaning out the wound in the analogy), and then install the new belief (stitch the wound back together).
5. Reevaluate the Pain Points
While the emotional trauma has been stitched back together with positive cognition, EMDR therapy isn’t done. The therapist will ask the patient to go back to the trauma and rate the bodily pain or discomfort they feel around the situation to see if EMDR therapy was successful.
6. Repeat the Process
In most cases, EMDR is not a one-and-done solution because trauma can cause massive emotional wounds that take multiple sessions to successfully reprocess.
Additionally, there may be more than one trauma that has to be addressed. The therapist will only address one trauma at a time and ensure that things are better than when they started before moving on.