What Is EMDR Therapy? What It Treats and How It Works
EMDR therapy is a structured mental health treatment for trauma, and the name is short for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). While you hold a painful memory in mind, a trained therapist guides you through short sets of eye movements, taps or tones, and over a series of sessions the memory loses much of its charge. It’s best known as a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and clinicians also use it for anxiety, depression and other problems that trace back to hard experiences.
At Life Migration Therapy, EMDR is with one clinician, Jamila Kani, LICSW, an EMDRIA Certified Therapist who sees adults by telehealth in Washington DC, Maryland and Virginia.
The short version:
- EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. Francine Shapiro, PhD, developed it, and the first clinical trial was in 1989.
- It runs in eight phases. The eye movements, tapping or tones belong mainly to one of them.
- PTSD is where the evidence is strongest. The VA and Department of Defense grade EMDR “Strong for”, and WHO’s 2023 recommendation is conditional, with low certainty.
- You don’t have to talk through the trauma in detail for EMDR to work.
- Online EMDR is newer, with encouraging early studies and real limits on how much they can prove.
What is EMDR therapy?
EMDR therapy is a psychotherapy that works on traumatic memories directly, so they stop feeling as if they’re still happening. Cleveland Clinic describes it as a method that “involves moving your eyes a specific way while you process traumatic memories.” Francine Shapiro, PhD, created it after discovering the eye movement technique by accident, and worked out a theory to explain it later.
That theory is called the adaptive information processing (AIP) model. It holds that the brain stores ordinary memories and traumatic memories differently. An ordinary memory gets filed and connected to everything else you know. A traumatic one can stay stuck with the fear, images and body sensations of the moment it happened, which is why a smell or a sound years later can bring the whole thing back.
“Reprocessing” is the word that matters in the name. You keep the memory. The aim is for it to stop setting off the same alarm when you remember it. Cleveland Clinic notes there’s still some debate about why EMDR works, and that the debate doesn’t extend to whether it does.
What is EMDR therapy used for?
EMDR therapy is used to treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) more than anything else, and PTSD is where the research is strongest. Cleveland Clinic lists other conditions clinicians use it for:
- Anxiety disorders, including panic disorder, phobias and social anxiety.
- Depression, including major depressive disorder and depression tied to an illness.
- Dissociative disorders, eating disorders and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
- Other trauma-related disorders, such as acute stress disorder and adjustment disorder.
Being used for something isn’t the same as being proven for it. The VA, WHO and APA grades that people quote for EMDR come from PTSD guidelines, so whether EMDR can help with depression or panic attacks on their own is a less settled question.
What these problems share is a root in traumatic experiences or distressing memories. Someone with panic attacks that started after a car crash, or depression that set in after an assault, may find EMDR worth asking about. Traumatic events don’t have to be dramatic to count, either. Repeated humiliation, a frightening childhood or years of feeling unsafe can leave the same kind of stuck memory.
How does EMDR work?
EMDR works through eight phases, set out in order. Cleveland Clinic explains that the first two, history and preparation, usually happen only in the early sessions, while the other six repeat across later ones.
History
The therapist learns about you, your past and the memories you want to work on, and you agree on goals and a treatment plan together.
Preparation
You learn what will happen in sessions and practice ways to calm yourself and feel steady before any memory work starts.
Assessment
You pick a specific memory and name the image, the negative belief about yourself it carries, and the belief you'd rather hold.
Desensitization
You hold the memory in mind during short sets of bilateral stimulation, then notice what comes up. This is the part people picture.
Installation
You focus on the positive belief you chose, so it starts to feel true alongside the memory.
Body scan
You notice any tension or sensation left in your body when you think of the memory, and work with what remains.
Closure
Each session ends with steadying, and you talk about what might come up before the next session.
Reevaluation
At the next session you look at what has changed, and decide together what to work on next.
Bilateral stimulation means stimulating both sides of the body in turn. In the early years of EMDR, the therapist moved two fingers back and forth and you followed them with your eyes. Cleveland Clinic describes newer options too: a light bar you track with your eyes, tones that alternate between speakers on either side of you, or tapping on your hands, arms or thighs if you’re comfortable with touch.
The eye movements are only one part of EMDR. Most of it is preparation, and checking in.
What happens in an EMDR session, and can it be done online?
An EMDR session moves between short rounds of bilateral stimulation and brief check-ins. You bring up the target memory, follow the eye movements or taps for a set, then pause while the therapist asks what you’re noticing. Then you go again. Cleveland Clinic says sessions usually last between an hour and 90 minutes. Sessions with Jamila at the practice are 75 minutes.
EMDR can be done online, and the guidelines allow for it. The VA and Department of Defense PTSD guideline recommends “secure video teleconferencing” for trauma-focused therapies, including EMDR, “when that therapy has been validated for use with video teleconferencing or when other options are unavailable.” It grades that recommendation “Strong for”.
The 2026 chart review by Fairbanks and colleagues compared the telehealth and face-to-face groups above, and found “no differences between groups for treatment completion and achieving reliable change.” The face-to-face group improved somewhat more on PTSD symptoms, and a chart review can’t rule out other differences between the groups. A 2023 systematic review by Kaptan and colleagues called remote EMDR “promising,” while naming “small sample sizes, absence of control groups” as limits.
That review also shows how online sessions handle bilateral stimulation. The studies used eye movements or tapping, and in one of them, eye movements led to bigger drops in distress than tapping. How Jamila sets up bilateral stimulation on a video call is a good question for the free call.
If you’re weighing online EMDR, book a free 15-minute call to ask the practice how sessions with Jamila work on video.
Is EMDR effective? What the guidelines say
EMDR is an effective, evidence-based treatment for PTSD, and the major guidelines agree on that much. They disagree on how strong the evidence is.
| Guideline | On EMDR for PTSD | Grade |
|---|---|---|
| VA and DoD, 2023 | Recommends EMDR, cognitive processing therapy or prolonged exposure | Strong for |
| World Health Organization, 2023 | EMDR “should be considered” for adults | Conditional, low certainty |
| American Psychological Association, 2025 | EMDR is “among the suggested interventions” | Suggested |
The APA summary in the Monitor on Psychology adds that cognitive processing therapy, prolonged exposure and trauma-focused CBT “show the strongest evidence to date.” So the VA puts EMDR in its top tier, WHO is cautious about the certainty of the evidence, and the APA places three other therapies ahead of it. All three include it.
The VA guideline says CPT, EMDR and prolonged exposure “typically require 10 to 12 weekly 60- or 90-minute sessions,” and it describes adverse events across these therapies as “relatively few overall.” EMDR can still stir up strong feelings between sessions, which is what the closure phase is for.
Three guidelines, three different grades, and all three include EMDR.
How is EMDR different from talk therapy and CBT?
EMDR differs from cognitive behavioral therapy mostly in what you do in the room and between sessions. WHO’s 2023 evidence profile for its PTSD guideline puts it plainly: “Unlike CBT, EMDR does not involve direct targeting of thoughts or beliefs and does not typically use daily homework.” CBT asks you to examine and test your thoughts, often with practice between sessions. EMDR works through the memory itself, with less talking and less homework.
Neither one has clearly won. A 2026 randomized trial by Çınaroğlu and colleagues gave 89 adults 12 remote sessions of EMDR or CBT and found “comparable overall efficacy.” Some people prefer working on their thinking out loud, and some find that talking about a trauma at length is exactly what they can’t do.
If CBT sounds like the better fit, the practice offers cognitive behavioral therapy in Washington DC and Maryland with Charika White, LICSW, who also uses TF-CBT, ACT and DBT. EMDR at the practice is with Jamila.
EMDR for complex PTSD, sexual trauma, and trauma from systemic oppression
Complex PTSD. The ICD-11 diagnosis adds three problems to PTSD: “negative self-concept, difficulties in regulating emotions and relationship skills,” as a 2024 case report in the Journal of Clinical Psychology summarizes it. The VA, WHO and APA grades are for PTSD, so they don’t settle the question for complex PTSD, and Cleveland Clinic expects longer-term trauma to take eight to 12 sessions or more.
Sexual trauma. Two trials give a more specific picture. In a 2005 study of 74 people with rape-related PTSD, prolonged exposure and EMDR “did not differ significantly.” A 2021 trial with 57 people tested two sessions of EMDR in the first month after a rape. Early EMDR was “not found to be more effective than watchful waiting.” That second study is about very early treatment, and it doesn’t say EMDR can’t help later.
Trauma from systemic oppression. Racism, anti-immigrant hostility and homophobia can be traumatic too, and for many people that trauma is a long run of smaller moments. The research on EMDR for this is early. One 2025 study of 39 people used a self-administered variant called the EMDR Flash Technique by telehealth, and average distress ratings fell from 5.41 to 3.00. It had no control group, and EMDRIA’s position is that EMDR should only be offered by trained, licensed clinicians.
So the case for working with a clinician who focuses on this kind of trauma rests on fit, not on proof that EMDR works better for it. A therapist who has worked with many Black, Brown, immigrant and LGBTQ+ clients is less likely to need you to explain why a memory still hurts. Affirmative therapy starts from that same place, and breaking generational trauma looks at how trauma passes down in immigrant families.
The right fit means you spend the session on the memory, not on explaining yourself.
EMDR at Life Migration Therapy
EMDR at Life Migration Therapy is with Jamila Kani, LICSW, an EMDRIA Certified Therapist. She focuses on sexual trauma and the trauma of living under systemic oppression, works with Black, Brown and LGBTQ+ adults, and pairs EMDR with somatic, body-based work. Sessions are 75 minutes, online, for adults 18 and over in Washington DC, Maryland and Virginia.
The practice is self-pay and doesn’t bill insurance, and whether a superbill applies to EMDR is a question for the free call. Fees, the intake and how to start are laid out under EMDR therapy in Washington DC, and self-pay mental health services explains how fees and out-of-network claims work across the practice.
To talk with the practice about EMDR with Jamila, book a free 15-minute call. You can also meet Jamila on the team page first.
