What Is EMDR, and What Does It Feel Like?
Most people who ask me about EMDR have already done therapy. Sometimes for years. They understand their patterns; they can explain where things started, and they can tell you exactly why they react the way they do. And it still happens anyway.
That gap is the most common reason people end up in my office asking about EMDR. Not because talking didn't help, but because understanding something and being free of it are two different things.
Do I have to talk about what happened?
What people want to know before they book is whether it's going to hurt.
They've read that EMDR works with traumatic memory, and they've concluded, reasonably, that it must involve going back into the worst thing that ever happened to them and describing it in detail to a stranger. That isn't what happens.
You don't have to tell me what happened unless you want to. A lot of the work happens internally, with me guiding you through it. If something feels too big to put into words, we can still work with it. Your nervous system knows what it's holding, and it doesn't require a narrated version to let go of it.
I've had people come in braced for something grueling and say afterward that they didn't expect it to feel so calm.
What happens during the session
During the session, you'll hold the memory lightly in mind while something alternates side to side: your eyes following a moving point, gentle taps, or tones. You pick the one that feels right.
That alternating pattern is called bilateral stimulation, and it's at the heart of how EMDR works. It's thought to occupy the part of your brain that would otherwise pull you fully back into the memory, which keeps you here, in the room, in the present, while the memory gets processed rather than relived.
That's the distinction that matters most. Reliving something is what's already been happening to you, involuntarily, for years. Processing it is different work.
Watch: An Introduction to EMDR Therapy (EMDRIA)
Why talking sometimes doesn't reach it
There's a reason insight alone often isn't enough. Some experiences never finish being processed. They don't fade the way ordinary memories do, so a tone of voice or a certain kind of silence can set your body off years later, even while your mind is telling you you're fine.
Talking works on the thinking part of that. EMDR works on the part that's still reacting. If you want the fuller explanation and the research behind it, I've written about it on my [EMDR therapy in Hermosa Beach] page.
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Trauma is a word that stops a lot of people from reading any further. They picture a car accident, a war, something unmistakable. If nothing like that happened to them, they assume this isn't their door.
The people I see most often for EMDR are functioning well. They're good at their jobs. Nobody around them would guess. What they carry is quieter: emotional neglect that had no single incident attached to it, a childhood where they were the capable one, criticism that shaped how they still talk to themselves, years of feeling unseen by someone whose attention mattered.
EMDR can help with single-event trauma. It can also help with the relational kind, the wounds that come from disconnection rather than catastrophe, and those are the ones people are least likely to name.
If any of this sounds familiar, it's worth a conversation:
A memory that still feels close, as if no time has passed.
A body that won't stand down, even on a quiet day.
Thoughts that loop at night and won't let you rest.
A voice that's never satisfied, however well things go.
Reactions that seem too big for the moment.
The same pattern with different people, even when you see it coming.
Shame, grief, or guilt you've carried for years.
Fine on paper, running on empty underneath.
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The change is rarely dramatic. Nobody walks out transformed.
What people describe is more like distance. The memory is still there, but it's further away. Something that used to set them off doesn't, and they notice it afterward rather than in the moment. A weight they'd stopped registering because it had been there so long is suddenly gone, and its absence is what they feel.
The way one person put it: it stopped controlling me.
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It depends on what you're working with. Some people find real relief in a handful of sessions focused on one memory. Others, working with something older and more layered, use EMDR over several months as part of ongoing therapy. We decide together when to start, and we track whether it's actually moving.
We also don't begin with the hard material. First we build steadiness, the internal resources that keep you grounded when we get there. That part isn't a preamble to the real work. It is the work.
If you're considering it
The people who benefit most from EMDR are often the ones who've tried hardest to think their way out and are quietly frustrated that it hasn't been enough. That frustration isn't a sign you've failed at therapy. It's information about where the problem is actually stored.
I offer a free 15-minute consultation if you want to talk about whether this might fit. In person in Hermosa Beach (preferred), or by telehealth anywhere in California.
