EMDR Therapy

EMDR therapy actually heals trauma because it is nervous system-informed.

Experience our somatic (“soma” is ancient Greek for “body”) and mindfulness-based approach to EMDR therapy, which is effective, non-shaming, and collaborative.

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The EMDR Therapy Process

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How Does EMDR Therapy Work?

Developed in the late 1980s and first introduced in 1989 by Dr. Francine Shapiro, EMDR has amassed countless individual practitioners in the time since. Significant institutions, like the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, and the World Health Organization have recognized the effectiveness of EMDR as well. 

EMDR has also received repeated academic studies indicating its efficacy. According to the EMDR International Association (EMDRIA), for example, EMDR therapy was assessed as “the most cost-effective intervention for adults with PTSD” (1) (2). 

In this way, EMDR offers a practical, accessible, and affordable treatment option for various trauma-related challenges. EMDR is also particularly versatile because it can be done both in person and virtually with the same positive results. Whether you experienced complex PTSD (repeated exposure to trauma) as a child or one significant event that has impacted you since, EMDR can help you reprocess, heal, and move forward with your life.

Although the EMDR process advances through eight distinct phases each session, it’s also a creative treatment process that can be tailored for individual needs and adjusted along the way. By applying bilateral eye stimulation, your EMDR therapist invites you to recall troubling memories, emotions, and sensations—and then desensitizes these triggers by stimulating both sides of your brain while you connect with feelings of safety and calm in the present moment. 

EMDR is often supplemented with somatic interventions, mindfulness-based practices, and occasional talk therapy to process what has arisen. Once a treatment plan has been developed around your specific needs, you will proceed through the eight phases of EMDR.

 
 
 
 

The Eight Phases of EMDR Therapy

  1. Preparation

    You will learn and practice several resourcing skills for the difficult emotions that may arise during the reprocessing phase. 

  2. Assessment

    You will be invited to actively recall negative beliefs, memories, images, or sensations relating to the trauma. 

  3. Desensitization

    Your EMDR therapist will employ bilateral eye stimulation techniques as you explore and reprocess your thoughts and emotions. 

  4. Installation

    You and your therapist will identify a positive belief to replace the previous negative belief and install it. 

  5. Body Scan

    Your EMDR therapist will invite you to do a body scan to identify any lingering negative feelings or sensations relating to the trauma. 

  6. Closure

    You will be invited to return to a state of relaxation while assessing the progress of the session. 

  7. Reevaluation

    At the beginning of the following session, your therapist will review your overall progress and together you will readjust your goals moving forward.

The purpose of this process is to desensitize your internal triggers from past trauma while creating real change in the way your nervous system responds to present or future triggers.

When practiced in combination with somatic therapy, ketamine therapy, and the tenets of Polyvagal Theory, EMDR helps you calm your own nervous systems and create a place of safety within yourself. This, in turn, allows you to manage habitual fight, flight, or freeze responses, which can help improve relationships, build confidence, and reduce emotional reactivity.

What Is EMDR Therapy?

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy is an evidence-based, research-driven therapeutic approach that has gained widespread practice in recent decades. The structured, eight-phase therapeutic process works to reframe traumatic experiences, distressing memories, and other negative emotions. 

EMDR serves as an effective treatment option for a variety of mental health issues rooted in past trauma, including anxiety, PTSD, substance abuse, and more. Through the use of bilateral rapid eye movement stimulation techniques, EMDR therapy creates a sense of safety within the nervous system. It allows the client to reopen and reprocess these past traumas by shifting toward more positive associations.

Who Benefits From EMDR Therapy?

Since EMDR focuses on reprocessing past negative experiences, it can be applied to a wide range of mental health struggles. In addition to trauma and PTSD, we can also use EMDR to effectively treat anxiety, depression, eating disorders, substance abuse, grief, chronic pain, and nightmares, among others. 

We work with clients who have tried talk therapy before without seeing any significant shift. For many of these individuals, EMDR has proven to be the missing link. In contrast to the “top-down” method of talk therapy, EMDR allows us to practice a “bottom-up” approach that is at once mindfulness-based, somatic-oriented, and trauma-focused.

What to Expect

 

Getting Started

Schedule a Consult Call

We offer complimentary 15-minute consultation calls to all new clients. We’ll ask you about issues you are currently experiencing and describe our therapeutic style and modalities. If for some reason we determine that it’s not the best match, we’ll provide other recommendations. If it feels like a good match, we’ll go ahead and schedule your intake.

Preparing for Your Sessions

Complete Paperwork

All paperwork and payment methods will be filled out electronically. It’s a quick process and should take no more than 10-15 minutes. Please fill this out before we meet for the first time. If we’re meeting virtually, you’ll get a separate email with a telehealth link (from SimplePractice) 10 minutes before each session.

Creating a Container

Your Intake

Intake sessions are 60 minutes and cover as much of your history as possible. Intakes are more structured than other sessions; we take detailed notes to focus on where you’ve been and the direction you’d like to go. Sharing so much of your history within a short amount of time can feel like a lot, so be sure to schedule some time for self-care following the session.

 
 

How Does EMDR Therapy Help?

Cumulatively, our team has over 15 years of experience providing EMDR therapy to clients, with each of our team members already certified or on the certification path. Our team of skilled clinicians have all received somatic, mindfulness-based training, which they blend into all of their EMDR work with clients. 

Our team primarily uses EMDR to treat trauma and PTSD, but we believe in its versatile application to a wide variety of mental health challenges. Typically, we utilize EMDR in conjunction with other somatic, mindfulness-based therapies, as well as ketamine therapy, when appropriate. 

We believe in a unique orientation to the therapeutic journey that applies evidence-based principles with creativity and play. Combined with EMDR therapy, somatic therapy, and ketamine therapy work, we incorporate Polyvagal Theory and its unique ability to help stabilize the nervous system. 

By cultivating this sense of safety within your own nervous system while tapping into the emotional and somatic channels, you will get to live an embodied and present life.

Discover Nervous System Healing.

If you would like to learn more about EMDR therapy for processing and integrating trauma, you may wish to check out our blog.

(1) https://www.emdria.org/blog/emdr-therapy-indicated-as-the-most-cost-effective-trauma-treatment/

(2) https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0232245

 

EMDR Therapy FAQs

  • We accept credit, debit, and HSA cards. We will request that you provide your payment information in a secure client portal before our intake so that we can charge you upon completion of our session. We will provide an invoice each time a payment is processed and are happy to provide a Superbill upon request.

  • We’re an out-of-network provider, which means we do not bill your insurance company directly but can provide a receipt for the sessions you paid for called a Superbill, upon request. You can submit this to your insurance provider for any out-of-network benefits you may have and they may issue a reimbursement check. We recommend contacting your insurance company before beginning therapy to find out what your out-of-network benefits are.

  • We request at least 48 hours advance notice for 50 and 60-minute sessions if you wish to cancel or reschedule your session. We request 5 days advance notice for 180-minute ketamine sessions. In the event of a no-show or late cancelation, we will charge the full amount of a canceled 50 or 60-minute session, and half the full amount in the case of a canceled 180-minute ketamine session.

  • It is hard to give a prescriptive recommendation to everyone, but we have found that EMDR/trauma therapy usually requires a minimum of 12 sessions to target less complex traumas. In order to create a safe and secure container (e.g. the therapeutic relationship), we need enough time to cover the full 8-phase process of EMDR. In the beginning, we will cover skills and practice resourcing techniques for you to try at home. We will cover your trauma history and intentionally choose trauma “targets.” As we complete each target we move to the next one. The length of the course of treatment depends on trauma history and the number of targets to cover.

  • $150-200 for a 50-minute session

    $180-225 for a 60-minute intake

  • We return inquiry emails within one business day, Monday through Friday. Inquiries received Friday late afternoon or evening are addressed on Monday. Please check your junk mail or spam folders if you have not heard from us within that time frame.

  • We are happy to provide a Good Faith Estimate for you upon request. Under the law, healthcare providers need to give patients who don’t have insurance or who are not using insurance an estimate of the bill for medical items and services.

    • You have the right to receive a Good Faith Estimate for the total expected cost of any non-emergency items or services. This includes related costs like medical tests, prescription drugs, equipment, and hospital fees.

    • Upon request, you can expect a Good Faith Estimate in writing at least 1 business day before your medical service or item. You can also ask for a Good Faith Estimate before you schedule a session.

    • If you receive a bill that is at least $400 more than your Good Faith Estimate, you can dispute the bill.

    • Make sure to save a copy or picture of your Good Faith Estimate. For questions or more information about your right to a Good Faith Estimate, visit www.cms.gov/nosurprises or call (303) 894-7499.

  • That’s entirely up to you! Some people thrive on accountability and targeted interventions; if that sounds like you, great! Homework is never a requirement, nor is it something we’ll push on you if it’s not your style. Regardless, we’ll work on building up coping skills in sessions together, which you can practice as much as you like at home. If you are engaged in EMDR therapy, your therapist will follow an 8-phase process. During the second phase, your therapist might provide additional skills and practices for you to do at home (e.g. visualizations, mindfulness, and breathing practices).

  • EMDR is designed to work directly with the nervous system to re-pattern habitual responses to stress and challenge negative beliefs. This process supports neuroplasticity and allows the brain to make new connections while old pathways crumble. Talk therapy tends to stay in one channel - the “cognitive” channel - and tends to exclude the others, the “somatic” and “emotional” channels. When we stay in our heads, we do not give the body an opportunity to move trauma through and out. Research shows that trauma is stored in the body, so it is key in effective trauma therapy that we engage the body and nervous system. When we continue to talk and use the same old pathways in our brain, we are not allowing the body to release stored trauma and the brain to change.

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