What's EMDR therapy - and how can it help?

27-08-2026

We’re now offering EMDR therapy to some of our counselling clients at LionHeart – but what is it, and who and how does it help?

Most people these days have heard of counselling or talking therapy. But not everyone will know much about EMDR, which stands for eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing, and is a type of psychotherapy that can be used to treat people with post traumatic stress disorder and other mental health problems – often to very good effect.

Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is commonly linked with veterans and victims of war or terrorism. In fact, EMDR therapy was initially developed and used to treat war veterans but research and evidence later showed it to be highly effective for many other presenting mental health issues.

People can suffer trauma following all kinds of varied circumstances, the most obvious being a nasty road accident or sexual abuse or assault. But it can equally apply to someone who has been assaulted, bullied, lost their job or suffered a painful relationship breakdown or bereavement.

I first heard of EMDR when I was at a CPD event for working with trauma and a few people were sharing their knowledge of EMDR and the positive results of using this technique.

When I began my training in EMDR, I was struck by how the client doesn't necessarily have to go into detail about their trauma like some other therapies: as you can imagine, it can be a very big ask of clients to re-live their trauma again in the here and now, in full colour. But this is not required for EMDR, clients only have to share quite minimal detail and the results can be quite profound quite quickly.

Since qualifying to use EMDR alongside my other counselling qualifications, I’ve used it with a number of counselling clients at LionHeart. There have been some really interesting results. As a therapist it’s a great thing to have in my toolkit when I carry out an initial assessment with a new client and begin to work out what might be most clinically effective in helping them to work through the issues they are facing or struggling to move past. And, for the people who come to us through the LionHeart counselling service, it is a bonus to be able to access EMDR, which isn’t widely available yet even though it is endorsed by bodies like the NHS, National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and the World Health Organisation (WHO).

So, how does it work?
When someone experiences something traumatic, they might feel so overwhelmed that their brain cannot fully process what has happened, like it gets stuck. The memory of the event can remain very vivid almost as if the person is re-experiencing what they saw, heard and felt at that time.

EMDR aims to help the brain get out of that loop and reprocess the memory so it is no longer so intense, and so the person can think about the event without experiencing the same vivid feelings.

It does this by asking the person to recall the traumatic event while they also move their eyes from side to side, following an object or the therapist’s finger, or feel a tap on each hand alternately. These side-to-side motions – called bilateral stimulation – seem to effectively stimulate the “stuck” processing system in the brain so that it can reprocess the information more like an ordinary memory, reducing its intensity.

The effect may be similar to what occurs naturally during REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep, when your eyes move rapidly from side to side as the brain processes the events of the day.

EMDR myths
There’s sometimes confusion when people think EMDR is like a kind of hypnosis, but it isn’t. During an EMDR therapy session, the client is fully awake and conscious and the session can be stopped or paused at any time.

It doesn’t make you forget a difficult memory, or remember it differently; rather, it is about reprocessing those memories so they are no longer as distressing or paralysing when you recall them.

You don’t need to go through every detail of a past event for EMDR to be effective. And it is not necessary to have been diagnosed with PTSD in order to benefit – in fact research has shown EMDR to have been successfully used with many common issues including depression, phobias, anxiety or feeling ‘stuck’ in life.

How it's helped
These are just two examples of how I have used EMDR to support some recent clients:

Client A came to us after some big changes in his family was impacting his mental health and work. In his own words, “life had become unmanageable”. We offered a course of EMDR therapy which Client A later said was the key to him being able to keep his job as a surveyor.
He gave this feedback: “EMDR I found to be absolutely brilliant. I got very clever empathy and understanding. I’m (now) clear about things that were affecting me and I can relate it to my past. I’m able to focus on finances better and am able to take time for myself without guilt now.”

Client B cared for an elderly parent through a terminal illness, describing the experience as “brutal”. Having struggled with PTSD some years before, she was concerned her mental health was regressing.
LionHeart offered support with some other issues that Client B was facing and I used EMDR with her in our counselling sessions.
She gave this feedback: “EMDR worked quite effectively. We also looked at the different triggers I was encountering and techniques to better safeguard my mental health. I’m now feeling much better and not too worried that I will suffer with PTSD again. I should also say, this experience has reminded me that we should all act early to stay on top of health issues.”

How can I get EMDR through LionHeart?
Like any of the services we offer to surveyors at LionHeart, the first port of call is to make contact with our support team. Your support officer will take time to listen and understand the issues you are struggling with and work out how we might be able to help, including making internal referrals to the counselling team and external referrals to our other partners (such as legal advice or support with unemployment). If you have counselling through LionHeart we are fortunate to be able to keep our waiting lists relatively low, and your support officer will offer regular contact in the meantime, so you are getting help from the moment you pick up the phone.

What's EMDR therapy - and how can it help?

Latest Posts

Sign up to hear from us!