What Happens During an EMDR Session?

The Eight Phases of EMDR

EMDR follows a structured eight-phase protocol developed by Francine Shapiro. Not all sessions involve trauma reprocessing — the early phases are essential preparation that ensures safety and effectiveness.

Phase 1: History Taking and Treatment Planning

Your therapist will take a detailed history — current symptoms, the nature of the traumatic experience(s), how PTSD affects your daily life, your support systems, and any contraindications to reprocessing. They will collaboratively develop a treatment plan, identifying target memories and their order of processing.

Phase 2: Preparation

Before any trauma reprocessing begins, your therapist will teach stabilisation resources — techniques you can use if emotional intensity arises during or between sessions. These typically include a 'calm place' visualisation, containment imagery, and grounding techniques. Adequate preparation is non-negotiable in ethical EMDR practice.

Phase 3: Assessment

The target memory is activated: you bring to mind the image most representative of the traumatic experience, the negative belief it generates about yourself (e.g. 'I am powerless'), the preferred positive belief ('I am safe now'), the emotion and its intensity (SUD score), and where you feel it in your body. This structures the reprocessing that follows.

Phase 4: Desensitisation

This is the phase most people associate with EMDR. You hold the traumatic memory in mind — the image, the negative belief, the body sensation — while following bilateral stimulation (typically the therapist's moving finger). After 20–30 seconds, the therapist pauses and asks, 'What do you notice?' You report briefly — an image, a thought, a body sensation, or nothing specific — and the next set begins. The therapist follows where your processing leads without directing it. This continues until the SUD rating approaches zero.

Phases 5–7: Installation, Body Scan, and Closure

Once distress is reduced, the positive belief is installed and strengthened. A body scan checks for any remaining physical tension associated with the memory. Closure returns you to a calm, stable state before ending the session — this is particularly important if processing is incomplete.

Phase 8: Re-evaluation

Each subsequent session begins with re-evaluation of the previous session's targets and what has occurred between sessions. Processing is checked and continued or closed, and new targets are identified as appropriate.