A question I get often is: “How do I know if EMDR might be right for me?”

In this episode, we break down what EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) actually is, who it can help, and what a session really looks like.

Originally developed to treat PTSD, EMDR is now used to support people struggling with birth trauma, childhood experiences, anxiety, panic, phobias, depression, parenting triggers, and more. You do not need a formal diagnosis to benefit from it. Many parents come in simply feeling reactive, overwhelmed, or triggered in ways they do not fully understand.

We discuss:

• How trauma and intense experiences are stored in the brain
• Why certain parenting moments can feel disproportionately triggering
• What “reprocessing” actually means
• The science behind bilateral stimulation and REM sleep
• The phases of EMDR therapy
• What safety and preparation look like before starting
• What a session may involve, including eye movements, tapping, or tones
•Why EMDR is about healing, not retraumatizing

Want more? Listen to the full, ⁠original episode⁠.

Our podcasts are also now on YouTube. If you prefer a video podcast with closed captioning, check us out there and⁠ ⁠subscribe to PedsDocTalk⁠⁠.

Get trusted pediatric advice, relatable parenting insights, and evidence-based tips delivered straight to your inbox—join thousands of parents who rely on the PDT newsletter to stay informed, supported, and confident.⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠Join the newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠!

And don’t forget to follow⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠@pedsdoctalkpodcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ on Instagram—our new space just for parents looking for real talk and real support.

We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on the⁠ ⁠PedsDocTalk Podcast Sponsorships⁠⁠ page of the website. 

00;00;00;02 – 00;00;25;01

Dr. Mona

Welcome back to the follow up. I am Doctor Mona, pediatrician and mom, and this is where we revisit a favorite conversation of the PedsDocTalk podcast. In less time than it takes you to sit down in therapy thinking you’re just going to be talking about your week, and then suddenly you’re unpacking things from ten years ago. I’ve been there, and honestly, that’s part of why today’s episode feels really meaningful for me to bring back.

 

00;00;25;04 – 00;00;59;19

Dr. Mona

Over the past two years, I’ve been doing eMDR therapy, which stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. It’s a form of therapy that helps the brain process experiences that may still feel stuck. Whether that’s trauma, anxiety, difficult life events, or patterns that keep showing up in our lives. I recently graduated from eMDR. I didn’t get like the ceremony or anything, but you realized me and my therapist that we were done with all of the major processing we needed to, and we’ve moved from intense weekly sessions into monthly check ins with my therapist.

 

00;00;59;21 – 00;01;20;19

Dr. Mona

That transition feels really big for me, and I’m so proud of myself, because when I first started this work, there were a lot of moments that were very emotional, intense and deeply healing. And I’m so grateful for the process and for the support I had along the way. And due to patient therapist confidentiality, I can’t thank my wonderful therapist by name, but you know who you are.

 

00;01;20;23 – 00;01;48;07

Dr. Mona

Thank you. You have made my life what it is through the work that we do, and I’m just so grateful for you. So in honor of this chapter, I wanted to bring back my conversation with Doctor Cassidy Freitas. She’s a licensed marriage and family therapist who also practices eMDR. And in this episode, we talk about how eMDR works, who might benefit from it, and why this approach has helped so many people process experiences that still affect how they feel and respond in the present.

 

00;01;48;09 – 00;02;15;09

Dr. Mona

And even if you don’t feel like you need eMDR, the point of these conversations is to normalize therapy. Whatever way you get it. If this episode resonates with you, make sure to download it, subscribe to the show, and just set up those automatic downloads and make sure you share it on social media. Remember tag at the PedSDocTalk podcast app, PedsDocTalk, and at Doctor Cassidy Dr. Cassidy so we can see that you’re listening.

 

00;02;15;10 – 00;02;21;24

Dr. Mona

Let’s get into this week’s follow up.

 

00;02;21;26 – 00;02;26;22

Dr. Mona

To a lot of the questions I get asked on my social is, how do I know if I may need eMDR?

 

00;02;26;25 – 00;02;54;28

Dr. Cassidy Freitas 

Yeah, yeah, there’s been a ton of research to showcase that eMDR is highly effective for, so. It originated with Francine Shapiro, who is the originator of eMDR and was initially created. And the initial studies are all really focused on PTSD. So post traumatic stress disorder now a traumatic birth experience can someone can experience PTSD from that. It can also be experienced from childhood traumas.

 

00;02;55;01 – 00;03;30;26

Dr. Cassidy Freitas 

It can be experienced from also, you know, an acute event like a car accident or an assault. Right. And now they’ve also done some research to look at its effectiveness with anxiety disorders such as OCD, generalized anxiety, panic disorder. We’ve also seen its effectiveness with eating disorders, phobias, mood disorders like depression. And you know what’s been really interesting, though, for folks that come in, people don’t always have that like diagnosis.

 

00;03;30;26 – 00;04;03;02

Dr. Cassidy Freitas 

Right? Or they don’t always get this box, but they come in and I just think that’s because we’re human beings. We don’t always fit into a box that like, matches all the criteria for a diagnosis. And so sometimes I have folks come in and they are maybe struggling with triggers is related to parenting. Right. And so I have parents come into my practice and they’re like, I feel like becoming a parent has made me fall apart and I feel like I can’t control things anymore, or I’m feeling super triggered by my kid’s behavior.

 

00;04;03;05 – 00;04;42;13

Dr. Cassidy Freitas 

And it doesn’t just automatically mean, oh, I think injuries can be a great fit for you, but it does lead me to explore. Okay, there’s this approach, right? It’s called eMDR. Have you heard of it? I’ll explain it to them and we’ll potentially explore it as an option, as a tool in my therapeutic toolbelt. And I have had folks who have found eMDR to be so supportive and just them understanding their triggers and being able to not feel so triggered in these moments, or feel like they have tools and insights to be able to actually create more space between a trigger and their response, to make a choice of how they’re going to respond.

 

00;04;42;13 – 00;05;05;23

Dr. Cassidy Freitas 

Right. And like, I think eMDR and the work and the insight that gets built through that in the healing, I think that there’s so much healing, like so much compassion, that we can begin to have for ourselves when we understand more of our context. And I think that eMDR has a way of going into our brain, like pulling out files and experiences that we’ve had that do affect us, and being like, look at this.

 

00;05;05;23 – 00;05;25;02

Dr. Cassidy Freitas 

And to be like, wow, gosh, this makes sense. And with that compassion, we can bridge just so much healing to so much more presence in these moments. Right? And to not just react out of this part of us. It’s just trying to keep us safe. Right? There’s a guard in our brain that’s like, oof, this feels like this feels familiar.

 

00;05;25;02 – 00;05;59;00

Dr. Cassidy Freitas 

And we get triggered and we react right. And our brains is doing its job. EMDR is really about like memory storage. It’s about going back into some of these memories and being able to reprocess them. Right. That’s the reprocessing part of eMDR to desensitize, right, to be able to go back to them and then to not feel so activated and triggered around these sort of memories, and then to store it now in a more functional way, in a way that feels more aligned with our values and that is more comprehensive of what was also real.

 

00;05;59;00 – 00;06;06;23

Dr. Cassidy Freitas 

Right? So it’s just it’s so remarkably healing, yet so good place. So now let’s.

 

00;06;06;23 – 00;06;16;10

Dr. Mona

Go over the phases of eMDR. Where do people begin with it? Where does it go? And maybe even an example of what a session may look like when they’re actually, actively going through it.

 

00;06;16;13 – 00;06;38;04

Dr. Cassidy Freitas 

Yes. Yeah. Wonderful. Okay. So it is a protocol therapy model, right? Which was also kind of tricky for me when I first was like shifting gears and including this tool in my tool belt. And so I was like, okay, this is evidence based because there’s a protocol to it. There are different phases and really specific steps that we take in the eMDR process.

 

00;06;38;06 – 00;07;07;26

Dr. Cassidy Freitas 

And it actually, I think, creates a really like safe environment for the client to because you kind of it’s like you’re being held, you’re being held by these phases in these steps and this protocol. So the first phase is history taking. So at this point in time we are doing an intake. We’re assessing the client. In terms of you know they’re presenting issues and also their resources.

 

00;07;07;26 – 00;07;28;13

Dr. Cassidy Freitas 

And so tools that they have, you know, in terms of when they get triggered and are they able to kind of come back and feel like rounded. Do they have those resources? Do we need to do some resourcing work where we support them in getting resources? And yeah, so we’re kind of just doing like a history taking just kind of getting to know the client.

 

00;07;28;13 – 00;07;54;14

Dr. Cassidy Freitas 

And we’re looking for, the other presenting issues as well as their resources. And then phase two is the preparation. And so at this phase we are explaining eMDR. One of the ways that I love to explain it is when we experience something really intense, right? Our brains job is to try to keep us safe at all costs, you know, like that’s its number one job.

 

00;07;54;14 – 00;08;24;05

Dr. Cassidy Freitas 

So we experienced something intense and this could be an intense moment. When I was a child and I was in this car and my grandmother said this thing, and my brain takes that information. And the way that our brain stores memory and information tends to be through an image, a belief. Right? So cognition, emotion and physical sensations. And if something’s really intense, our brain is going to kind of store that in a way that, you know, keeps it almost like at the forefront.

 

00;08;24;05 – 00;08;48;04

Dr. Cassidy Freitas 

Or another way of looking at it is like with a little guard that’s like kind of stationed in front and like looking for anything else that’s related to that emotion or that physical sensation or that belief because it’s like, ooh, that was really intense. So that was really scary. So let’s be on the lookout for other things that might be similar to this, so that we can wire those together and be on the lookout for threats, for danger.

 

00;08;48;06 – 00;09;09;18

Dr. Cassidy Freitas 

And our brain wants to heal, just like when somebody, when a child, you know, breaks an arm, or when we get a cut on our body and, and, you know, you see these, you know, this more than anything like the body knows how to heal. It’s geared towards healing. So when we break an arm, basically the doctor’s like, we’re going to put this cast on it.

 

00;09;09;18 – 00;09;31;23

Dr. Cassidy Freitas 

So you just don’t move it to the body. Can do what it needs to do. But when it comes to trauma, when it comes to these experiences, we keep having more experiences like we can’t we can’t put the brain in a cast and be like, we just hold still for us. So, we keep experiencing things and that can get blocked, right?

 

00;09;31;23 – 00;09;53;28

Dr. Cassidy Freitas 

Or the brain can get overwhelmed. It doesn’t get a chance to process and store the memory in a really functional way. Right. To process the experience, to learn from it, to heal and then to store in a way that doesn’t keep it with that little guard in front for forever. Right. And so what they found during with eye movement or this bilateral stimulation.

 

00;09;53;28 – 00;10;16;24

Dr. Cassidy Freitas 

So the eyes going left to right or bilateral stimulation. So taps back and forth or tones in your ears back and forth. What they found was that when that happens, which is also something that happens during REM sleep, right. Rapid eye movement time of our sleep, which is kind of our body brain’s way of kind of holding space, right to be like, okay, now we’re going to kind of process what we experience throughout the day.

 

00;10;16;27 – 00;10;37;05

Dr. Cassidy Freitas 

What they found is that that supports our brain in these moments of our holding a memory or processing a memory to tune into the mind, the body, the emotions, and to kind of what we’re doing. EMDR is holding the space for you to do this work that your brain has just so desperately been wanting the space to process.

 

00;10;37;10 – 00;11;03;16

Dr. Cassidy Freitas 

But in our busy day to day lives, we don’t have that space to do that. And in addition to that rapid eye movement or that by little simulation supporting the processing, it has this other benefit of this dual attention. So while I’m having to also move my eyes as I’m thinking about something that might be really intense or was really traumatic, that dual attention supports me in getting retraumatized right.

 

00;11;03;17 – 00;11;28;19

Dr. Cassidy Freitas 

Like I’m holding this memory or and flowing through like a different memories, while also focusing on something else. And that dual attention can support that kind of regulation and that groundedness while you’re kind of going there with something really intense. So all explain eMDR to them in this way. I’ll sort of showcase, you know, if I’m in person, I’ll showcase this is like I would be sitting this close to you.

 

00;11;28;21 – 00;11;46;26

Dr. Cassidy Freitas 

We would be moving your eyes at this pace. I might show them some of the different methods of bilateral stimulation, so we can use buzzers that you hold in your hand, that buzz back and forth. We could use headphones that do these tones in your ears, back and forth. We could do this, tapping on your hands.

 

00;11;46;29 – 00;12;10;15

Dr. Cassidy Freitas 

You know, if I’m doing it virtually. Because this can be done virtually. I’ll open up the software that on the computer where they will be doing the eye movement. I might show them how the eye movement can go back and forth horizontally. It might shift to diagonally. There’s also the butterfly hug. I know that the listener can’t see me, but I’m giving myself a hug with my arms crossed and I could tap my shoulders back and forth.

 

00;12;10;15 – 00;12;28;15

Dr. Cassidy Freitas 

So this could be your sort of self bilateral stimulation with the tapping. And then we’re also going to talk at that point in time about having a stop signal. So if at any point in time they feel like I’m feeling too distressed, too dysregulated, like I just feel like I’m too stuck in this memory and feeling kind of retraumatized, right?

 

00;12;28;15 – 00;12;52;12

Dr. Cassidy Freitas 

Like they have like a stop signal because we want to make sure that they have that as well. Yeah. And that we are also, you know, doing some resourcing here. And so we might walk through some tools and exercises. So the client has resources that they can in session and then outside of session. Right. Because once you open it your brain might say, oh we’re doing this now finally.

 

00;12;52;12 – 00;13;14;09

Dr. Cassidy Freitas 

And then like, you know, in between sessions you might have other memories or thoughts come up, or you might notice that your dreams, you know, your brain’s like, oh, we’re doing this. So like, even the dreams might get a little bit more intense, right? Yeah. And so just sort of, preparing people for those sort of things and giving them resources like the calm place, a safe place exercise is, is one.

 

00;13;14;09 – 00;13;34;13

Dr. Cassidy Freitas 

There’s also, containment exercises so that at the end of a session you can contain, the experience to that session. And then in between sessions, it, it starts to feel like it’s coming up and you’re like, oh, this feels like too much. You have containment tools to be able to say, okay, I’m going to contain this in this way with this tool.

 

00;13;34;15 – 00;13;57;00

Dr. Cassidy Freitas 

And now I’ll bring it back up in session. I’m reminding my body that I have a safe space, that I can do this work. And right now, while I’m sitting down with my kid, playing like is not the time, right? To kind of, yeah, get swept up in that. So we’re making sure that folks feel really resourced before we before we dive in.

 

00;13;57;02 – 00;14;18;13

Dr. Mona

And that’s your follow up. Just a small dose of the real relatable and eye opening conversations we love to have here. If you smiled, nodded or had an moment, go ahead and download, follow and share this episode with a friend. Let’s grow this village together for more everyday parenting wins and real talk. Hang out with us on Instagram at the Peds Doc Talk podcast.

 

00;14;18;20 – 00;14;34;03

Dr. Mona

Want more? Dive into the full episode and more at Peds Doc Talk.com. Because parenting is better with support. And remember, consistency is key. Humor is medicine and follow ups are everything. I’m Doctor Mona, see you next time for your next dose.