Maintaining distance

In EMDR therapy, it is not necessary to describe in detail to the therapist every step of what happened in the traumatic event being worked with. Nor is it necessary to relive the event over and over again as an essential part of the therapeutic process.

This is an important difference from some other forms of trauma-focused treatments.

For individual memories that you may find particularly difficult to talk about, it is possible not to tell the therapist anything about that memory at all, and still do an EMDR session on it. This would not perhaps be the best way to work with all the aspects of an entire traumatic event, but it is a possibility for individual memories. This can help to maintain a greater sense of privacy and distance from the trauma.

How long does it take?

It’s really difficult to say how many sessions an individual might need. EMDR is usually a short-term therapy which could be something like six, twelve or sixteen sessions, for example, for single event traumas. Where there is complex trauma it could take considerably longer. Sessions are usually at a frequency of once or twice a week to allow time for processing between sessions. Individual sessions will be 60-90 minutes long, which can be discussed at the assessment stage. EMDR can, however, be embedded in a longer term, open-ended therapy, to be used in addition to other appropriate techniques.