Children and teens may experience it through playful, creative techniques that feel safe and engaging.
Mind Body Healing
What is EMDR
Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) is an evidence-based therapy that helps the brain process and integrate distressing experiences that have become “stuck”, continuing to affect the nervous system. These unresolved experiences can contribute to symptoms such as anxiety, emotional distress, overwhelming emotional triggers, and unhelpful beliefs about ourselves.
By bringing the painful memory into awareness and pairing it with bilateral stimulation — such as guided eye movements — EMDR helps the brain reconnect with its natural healing processes.
What EMDR can help with
Originally developed for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), EMDR is now used to support a wide range of experiences, including:
- Birth trauma and perinatal distress
- Complex trauma and childhood experiences
- Anxiety and Panic
- Phobias and OCD
- Grief, loss, and relationship stress
- Emotional regulation difficulties, including those related to ADHD
- Depression and low mood
- Chronic stress and burnout
Because EMDR is memory-based, not diagnosis-based, it focuses on the root cause of distress rather than the label attached to it.
How memories get stuck
EMDR is not about forgetting difficult experiences — it is about helping your brain and body make sense of them.
When something stressful or traumatic happens, the brain doesn’t always file that memory away in a fully processed way. Instead, it can remain stored in a more emotionally reactive system, which can make it feel as if the experience is still happening in the present. This is why certain moments, sounds, sensations, or memories can suddenly trigger strong emotions or body responses, even years later.
EMDR helps your brain gently reprocess these experiences and move them into long-term, integrated memory storage, where they no longer drive present-day reactions. The goal is not to relive the past, but to help it become part of your story rather than something that continues to shape your present.
Learn more: EMDR explained
The video below, from Dutch public broadcasting, offers a clear explanation of EMDR based on current research and clinical practice, including recent developments in the field such as EMDR 2.0 (developed by Prof. Ad de Jongh and Dr Suzy Matthijssen).
What happens in session
We begin by gently bringing to mind small parts of a memory, thought, or feeling, while noticing what comes up in your body and mind.
At the same time, you engage in bilateral stimulation — such as following a moving light with your eyes or using cross-body tapping. This helps the brain integrate emotional and cognitive processing, allowing the memory to become less emotionally charged and more clearly stored as part of the past.
As processing continues, the emotional intensity and body sensations linked to the memory gradually soften. What once felt like a current crisis becomes something that happened in the past, no longer defining how you feel or respond today.
How Dr Annie uses EMDR
I often weave EMDR into psychological medicine, combining it with other therapeutic approaches and medical insight.
Other Therapies I Use
While EMDR is one of my main approaches, it’s rarely the only one. Depending on your needs, we might integrate:
Relational-Integrative EMDR (RI-EMDR)
A gentle, flexible approach that integrates standard EMDR with parts work, imagery rescripting, attachment-informed practice, and nervous-system regulation.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
Builds awareness, compassion, and flexibility in how you relate to thoughts and emotions.
Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) skills
Provides practical tools for emotion regulation, mindfulness, and resilience.
Circle of Security
An attachment-based framework that helps parents and caregivers strengthen connection and confidence.
Reconsolidation Therapy
A neuroscience-based method using a beta-blocker medication to help the brain re-store distressing memories without their original emotional intensity.
These approaches complement one another, combining the structure of medical insight with the depth of psychological therapy.
Myth Busting:
Common Misunderstandings About EMDR
Many people have heard of EMDR but aren’t quite sure what it involves.
Hear a few common myths:
Myth 1: EMDR is unsafe or overwhelming.
Myth 2: You have to re-live your trauma.
Myth 3: It only works for big traumatic events.
Myth 4: EMDR is experimental or unproven.
Myth 5: EMDR replaces the need for medication
Myth 6: EMDR replaces other therapies.
Want to learn more?
If you’re curious about whether EMDR might be right for you, contact Catherine’s House Private Practice, Mater Hospital, South Brisbane, to schedule an appointment.
