What Does EMDR Actually Feel Like? A Client’s Experience
Most people who get in touch about EMDR ask some version of the same question: what actually happens? They've done a bit of searching, they know it involves eye movements somehow, and they're curious but also a little uncertain about what they're letting themselves in for.
It's a completely understandable hesitation. EMDR is genuinely different to other forms of therapy, and that difference is hard to describe from the outside.
So rather than explain it myself, I asked Emma, a former client who completed EMDR with me, if she'd be willing to share her experience. What follows is drawn from a conversation we had after she finished therapy.
What Emma expected and what she found instead
Emma came to therapy not specifically for EMDR, but for support with anxiety and work-related stress. She'd tried talking therapy before but found it didn't quite land. "It felt so uncontained," she told me, “Whereas with CBT and EMDR, there was a process to it. I knew there was an arc."
When we moved into EMDR, Emma described having to adjust to something that felt quite different from anything she'd experienced before. "It took me some getting used to. I was worried I was doing it wrong, because I felt so disconnected from my body. I didn't know what I was looking for or feeling."
This is one of the most common experiences clients describe in those early sessions. EMDR asks something unfamiliar of us: not to think our way through something, but to feel our way through it. For people who live largely in their heads, particularly those with anxiety, that's a significant shift.
The moment things started to shift
What surprised Emma most was how processing one memory affected others she hadn't yet worked on directly. "Things that had felt really seismic just... diminished. And now, having processed those memories, I don't think about them at all anymore. They don't stay with me."
She also described something I hear often but which is genuinely difficult to convey in advance: the felt sense of movement during processing sessions. "With anxiety, you're just chewing on something. It gnaws away and makes a bigger hole. With EMDR it was completely different. There was a real sense of moving through something, peeling back the layers."
This is, I think, one of the most important distinctions between EMDR and more traditional approaches. Anxiety thrives on rumination, on thinking about the thing. EMDR sidesteps that loop entirely by engaging the body rather than the analytical mind.
What's different now
When I asked Emma what had actually changed day to day, she didn't describe dramatic transformation. She described something quieter and more sustainable. "I find it so much easier to pause, notice, and re-evaluate my response to things. I recognise when I'm triggered and I have something to do with that."
She also still uses the safe place visualisation we established at the start of therapy, something she described as feeling "within my own power." That quality of self-agency, of having tools that belong to you long after therapy ends, is one of the things I find most meaningful about this work.
What Emma would say to anyone considering EMDR
"Go into it knowing it will feel a bit odd and a bit strange, but it's a place where you can meet yourself without judgement. You're supported the entire time. And it's a really helpful way to give your brain a bit of a rest and approach a problem slightly differently."
She put it better than I could.
If you're curious about whether EMDR might help you, I offer a free 15-minute consultation with no obligation, just a quiet and confidential conversation about how you're feeling and whether EMDR might be the right fit.
Thulasi is a BABCP Accredited CBT Therapist and EMDR UK Accredited Practitioner based in Epsom, Surrey. She offers EMDR therapy in-person and online.
