EMDR Changed My Life. It Wasn't the Whole Story.

ashleyavaogilvie

Sep 10

9 min read

Some thoughts on trauma, therapy, healing….. and why I'm having a little arghhhhh about EMDR. (Eye Movement Desensitisation Reprocessing)

“Should I go and do EMDR?”

Four clients have asked me some version of this recently. For one, it had been suggested by their psychiatrist. For another, their GP. And I've noticed the same question appearing more and more online:

Does anyone know a good EMDR therapist?

And every time I hear it, I have a little internal arghhhhh.

Which is slightly ridiculous.

Because I love EMDR.

I mean, I really love EMDR.

I had around 20 sessions myself about twelve years ago. I'd already seen four psychologists who, for various reasons, hadn't helped me. Then came psychologist number five.

And something changed.

EMDR was transformative for me.

There were experiences I'd carried with an enormous amount of responsibility and blame. EMDR helped me reach something I desperately needed to know:

“It wasn't my fault”.

That mattered.

It still matters.

So this isn't an EMDR-bashing blog. Quite the opposite.

I am actually really glad we're talking about trauma differently

For a long time, so much of the public conversation about therapy seemed to focus on our thoughts and changing the way we think.

CBT has been around forever and has a place. (don’t get me started) But over the last few years, I've watched something begin to shift.

People are talking about trauma differently.

We're talking about nervous systems. Bodies. Safety. Attachment. Bottom-up approaches. We're beginning to understand that a lot of the time you can't simply think your way out of something your whole body has learned.

And I am here for that.

(CBT people, don't come for me. I have thoughts. Many thoughts. That's another blog)

“CBT: I Said I Won't Get Started, But Apparently I've Got Started.” (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy)

So I'm genuinely glad people know about EMDR.

I'm glad GPs and psychiatrists are talking about trauma therapies. I'm glad clients know there are different ways of working. And I'm especially glad people are becoming curious about approaches that involve more than sitting in a room trying to reason themselves out of their distress.

My little arghhhhh is about something else.

I wonder whether, in finally learning more about trauma processing, we might sometimes miss just how much bigger trauma healing can be.

Because processing a traumatic memory can be incredibly powerful.

But healing has a whole life to happen in.

So… what have we been doing all this time?

Sometimes when a client asks me whether they should go and “do EMDR to work on my trauma”, there's a wee part of me that feels that familiar RSD wobble — wait, am I not helping?

Another wee part gets confused and wants to say:

“But… that's what we are doing.”

Not EMDR, obviously.

And then a louder part of me goes straight into protection mode at the thought of someone inadvertently causing harm to a client I've watched work so hard to build safety.

Which, of course, then sends me into an hour-long evening rabbit hole trying to understand exactly what's bothering me, because I need to make sure my reaction is about thoughtful care and clinical judgement, and not my own stuff getting in the way of someone's choices.

Yes, my clients are 100% correct: I'm not sitting across from you wagging my two fingers while we work through your Top Ten Trauma Hits.

But we are doing trauma work.

We might be learning what happens in your body when something doesn't feel right.

We're noticing the moment you disappear from yourself.

We're understanding triggers rather than judging them.

We're learning grounding, regulation and self-care.

We are building on your tool kit.

We're making sense of shame.

We’re practicing your voice.

We’re discovering your authentic self.

We're exploring relationships.

We're noticing patterns.

We're learning what your nervous system does when it senses danger; and what helps it begin to feel safe again.

We're exploring what you need, how you know you need it, how you communicate it, who you can communicate it to and what happens when someone doesn't notice or listen.

Sometimes we're grieving.

Sometimes we're angry.

Sometimes we're laughing.

Sometimes we're making art.

Sometimes we're feeling.

Sometimes we’re moving our bodies around.

Sometimes we're sitting quietly because there aren't words yet.

Sometimes we're looking at something you've believed about yourself for twenty plus years and pondering:

Is that actually mine to carry?

That and more is all trauma work too.

EMDR gave me something. Then life asked me to live it.

One of the most important shifts EMDR gave me all those years ago was:

It wasn't my fault.

But here's the interesting part.

Knowing that didn't magically reorganise my entire life.

There were still relationships connected to those experiences that I had to navigate. There were boundaries I didn't yet know how to hold. There was grief I hadn't finished grieving. There were things I understood intellectually long before I was able to live them.

Years later, I found myself doing things I couldn't have done back then.

Standing differently in relationships.

Allowing people to be responsible for their own behaviour.

Letting go of responsibilities that were never mine.

Trusting myself.

And more recently still, I've felt another shift, almost like getting another piece of myself back.

Does that mean the EMDR didn't work twelve years ago?

God, no.

It means healing kept going and I am sure it always will.

EMDR was an important stepping stone in my healing.

Amazing therapists brought other things.

EFT brought something. Arts therapy brought something. Somatic work, narrative therapy and other ways of working brought things I didn't even know I needed at the time.

Relationships brought things.

Life brought things.

My environment brought things.

Different developmental stages — and simply getting older — brought things.

Grief brought things.

Time brought things.

And I brought many things too.

Growth was happening even when there wasn't some enormous breakthrough announcing itself.

That's one of the things I love about good therapy.

Different therapeutic relationships can meet us at different points in our lives. Different approaches can reach parts of us that perhaps weren't ready; or accessible before. And sometimes life and the journey itself becomes part of the work.

We grow in ways we couldn't possibly have predicted when we first walked through the door.

Maybe no single thing healed me. Maybe healing happened through all of it.

So when a client asks me about EMDR…

I'm not thinking no.

Sometimes I think it could be a wonderful addition to the work they're already doing.

Sometimes another practitioner, another relationship or another way of working may offer something I can't - and that's 100% okay. I don't believe one therapist needs to be everything for someone. Actually, I believe the opposite.

But I do notice a protective part of me appear.

Because I know how much courage it can take to finally tell another human being about something you've carried alone.

I know how carefully safety has to be built.

And the thought of someone taking those incredibly tender parts of themselves into a therapeutic relationship where they don't feel heard, respected or safe makes something in me want to wrap them in bubble wrap.

That's mine to notice.

It isn't mine to make the decision for them.

In fact, I think there's something much more useful we can do together.

Instead of simply answering “Should I do EMDR?”, we can get curious about the question.

What are you hoping EMDR might give you?

Is there something you feel we aren't reaching in our work?

Is there a memory that continues to feel very present?

Do you feel stuck?

Are you hoping to understand something differently?

Did someone recommend it and now you're wondering whether it's something you're supposed to be doing?

And if you decide to explore it, we can think about the person you're choosing too.

Do you feel heard by them?

Do you feel safe enough to say you're not ready?

Can you ask them to slow things down?

What tools and supports have you collected along the way? Do you feel able to reach for them if something feels overwhelming?

Can you say, “I don't want to do this today”?

And perhaps most importantly:

What does your body tell you when you're sitting with them?

Because my job isn't to decide who is safe for you.

Part of our work is helping you learn to recognise what safe-enough feels like for yourself.

And before you embark on that journey, there's something else I'd want you to know:

Choosing to work with someone else doesn't mean you lose this space.

If you need to come back, make sense of something, ground yourself, integrate what's coming up, or simply need the familiarity of someone who already knows your story - I'm still here.

Healing doesn't have to happen with one person, in one room, using one modality.

Sometimes good care is having more than one safe person in your corner.

Maybe healing is bigger than any modality

I still love EMDR.

If someone asked me whether it can be transformative, my answer from my own experience would be an enormous yes.

But I don't think any modality gets to claim the whole healing journey.

Sometimes healing happens while we're deliberately processing a traumatic memory.

Sometimes it happens six months later when you recognise a trigger before it takes over.

Sometimes it's asking for what you need without apologising.

Sometimes it's noticing you're walking on eggshells and, instead of immediately asking “What's wrong with me?”, becoming curious about the environment you're standing in.

Sometimes it's experiencing a relationship where you can say no and discover the other person is still there.

Sometimes it's finally telling someone what happened and watching them stay.

No disgust.

No blame.

No rushing to fix it.

Just another human being willing to sit beside you in something you've carried alone for far too long.

And sometimes healing is much quieter than all of that.

Sometimes you don't even realise something has changed until life brings you back to an old place and you notice:

Oh.

I'm different here now.

There is definitely no race to healing quickly

I think we can become impatient with healing.

We want the breakthrough. The insight. The therapy. The thing that finally makes everything click into place so we can put it behind us and get on with our lives.

And of course we do.

When something hurts, we want it to stop hurting.

But I'm not sure healing likes being rushed.

Some things I have understood in one therapy session.

The other things have taken years for the rest of me to catch up with.

I've understood something intellectually long before I could live it relationally.

I've known a boundary was reasonable long before I could hold it without guilt.

I knew 12 years ago that what happened wasn't my fault.

And yet there were still parts of my life where I behaved as though other people's feelings, choices and behaviour were somehow mine to carry.

That took longer.

A lot longer.

And that doesn't mean the EMDR failed.

It doesn't mean the therapy that followed failed.

And it doesn't mean I was failing at healing.

Growth was happening all along.

Maybe healing isn't something we complete.

Maybe it's something we keep growing into.

We understand something. We live a little more. We meet another part of ourselves. Life inevitably pokes the sore bit again. And perhaps this time we meet it with a little more awareness, a little more support, a little more capacity, a little more choice.

Sometimes something we thought we'd 'dealt with' comes back.

That doesn't necessarily mean we're back where we started.

Sometimes we're simply meeting it from a different place.

And I think that's where self-compassion matters just as much as any therapeutic technique.

You don't have to process everything at once.

You don't need to urgently find the next therapy that's finally going to 'fix' you.

You don't need to be disappointed in yourself because something still hurts.

And you don't need to turn healing into another thing you're somehow not doing well enough.

Like most good things in life, it needs patience.

Not passive waiting. Not staying somewhere that is hurting us and telling ourselves we just need more time.

Patience with ourselves.

Time to understand.

Time to feel.

Time to practise.

Time to grieve.

Time to experience something different.

Time to discover who feels safe.

Time to learn that we can trust ourselves.

And sometimes, time for our bodies to learn what our minds understood years ago.

There is no rushing your way into safety.

EMDR changed my life. It wasn't the whole story.

Perhaps that's ultimately what I want my clients to know when they ask me whether they should go and do EMDR.

I'm not saying no.

I'm not even saying not yet.

I'm saying:

Let's be curious about what you're looking for.

Let's talk about what you hope it might give you.

Let's make sure the person you choose feels safe enough for you.

Let's think about how it fits alongside the work you're already doing.

And if EMDR becomes another important stepping stone in your healing, I'll be right here cheering you on like the legend that you are.

Because I don't need to believe that my way of doing therapy is the way.

I don't think there is one.

EMDR gave me something extraordinary at a time when I needed it.

Other therapists gave me other things.

Relationships taught me things.

Life taught me things.

And slowly, I learned to give some of those things to myself.

Maybe that's the bit we sometimes lose when we talk about finding the right therapy.

Healing isn't owned by a modality.

It happens in therapy rooms and relationships. In our bodies and our boundaries. In what we understand and what we eventually learn to live. In the moments we fall apart and the moments, years later, when we realise something that once had enormous power over us doesn't quite hold us in the same way anymore.