In order for EMDR therapy to work, the therapist must follow 8 research-based phases of therapy:

History & Treatment Planning: We think the most important factor of EMDR therapy is to establish a strong and emotionally safe relationship with your EMDR therapist. In this phase we don’t just learn about your mental health history, but we learn what negative beliefs you have about yourself you’d like to change and we discover how to ensure we don’t trigger these negative beliefs during therapy.

Preparation: You might expect to dive right into eye-movement reprocessing, but it’s important we first help you learn coping skills that will make therapy effective. You will grow a mental muscle that allows you to tolerate distress that your trauma triggers.

Assessment: Once you feel secure in therapy and have learned ways to soothe yourself when distressed, your therapist will help you identify moments in your past or feelings in your body that you’d like to desensitize. You’ll also decide on positive beliefs you’d like to instill in your mind. For example: maybe sometimes when your trauma is triggered you think “It’s my fault,” but instead you’d like to believe “I can trust myself.”

The EMDR model of therapy is one of the most researched, effective forms of trauma therapy. EMDR isn’t practiced by all trauma therapist because it requires many hours of in-depth training with a certified EMDR trainer. 

Our founder trained in EMDR over 10 years ago because she was frustrated that traditional talk therapy methods learned in graduate school didn’t go deep enough to foster healing in her trauma clients. Once she started using EMDR at Love Heal Grow, clients not only got better–they got better quicker.

EMDR training is expensive for therapists so Love Heal Grow invests thousands of dollars a year training our tenured therapists. Since doing so, we’ve seen hundreds of clients who thought they would never be able to heal, find hope and happiness in life again.