Has something ever happened that just stuck with you—a traumatic event, a stressful change, or what appears to be a defining moment that seems to echo in your mind? Maybe it’s those negative thoughts that keep getting louder, making everyday life harder to manage. EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) offers a way to gently work through those difficult memories and emotions. Whether you’re dealing with trauma, anxiety, or the challenges of daily stress, EMDR can help you find relief and feel more connected to yourself.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy is a structured, integrative trauma therapy that helps people process and heal from the lingering effects of distressing experiences. Whether you're dealing with a "small t" or a "big T" trauma, EMDR offers relief by reducing the emotional intensity tied to those memories. It doesn’t matter how big or small the event was; what matters is how it affects you now.
Through EMDR, the distressing experience no longer controls your life, but instead becomes part of your narrative. Often, these experiences get “stuck” in our brains, creating memory networks filled with images, beliefs, emotions, and physical sensations that trigger feelings of anxiety, depression, or overwhelm. EMDR therapy focuses on targeting these memory networks, which can interfere with everyday life and contribute to emotional distress.
By using a combination of techniques like guided eye movements, EMDR helps you tap into your brain’s natural healing process. This allows you to understand why certain memories or situations still feel distressing, why you might feel more emotionally reactive than you'd like in certain situations, and how you can change those patterns. As these stuck memories are gently reprocessed, you can begin to experience relief, let go of the weight of past experiences, and move forward with more ease. EMDR not only helps to heal trauma but also can support those struggling with anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, unprocessed anger, and emotion regulation issues.
In short, EMDR therapy works to “unstick” these memories, so they no longer trigger the fight, flight, or freeze response in your brain. This powerful, whole-mind and body approach helps you gain insight into why something is challenging for you and offers a path forward toward healing and resilience.
As you progress through EMDR therapy, you may begin to notice a shift in how you experience distressing memories. Many individuals describe feeling more distant from their past experiences, as though they can remember the event but it no longer carries the same emotional weight.
These changes can help you live more fully in the present, free from the emotional burdens of the past.
Just like most counseling modalities, EMDR therapy isn’t a quick fix—it’s a process. Healing takes time, and that’s why it’s important to build a trusting, supportive relationship with your therapist before diving into the deeper work. Your therapist will take the time to understand your history, your unique experiences, and how they’re impacting you today.
Together with your licensed EMDR therapist, you’ll work at a pace that feels right for you, ensuring that you're equipped with tools to manage distressing emotions, regulate your nervous system, and feel more in control before starting to reprocess difficult memories.
We know that EMDR therapy can deeply affect your emotional, mental, and physical well-being, and our EMDR therapists are attuned to each of your needs as you process your trauma with compassion, curiosity, and support.
EMDR therapy follows a structured process that helps you work through distressing memories at a pace that feels right for you. Once you’ve developed the skills to manage distress, you and your therapist will begin the reprocessing phase. This is where you start to process the memories and feelings that are holding you back.
Our Denver EMDR therapy intensives are longer sessions scheduled between you and one of our EMDR-trained therapists. An intensive approach to EMDR therapy may mean longer sessions, more frequent sessions throughout a shorter or longer period, or another combination of length and frequency.
Some people will schedule a day-long intensive to work through more traumatic material in a shorter period. Others may have more frequent, longer sessions 2-3 hours and up to 6 hours to give more time to their trauma work than the traditional 50-75 minute EMDR therapy session.
If you are curious about EMDR intensives, we encourage you to schedule a consultation with one of our EMDR therapists to learn more and to decide whether you might be a good candidate.
Doing good trauma work takes a careful, thoughtful approach that is navigated between you and your therapist. The intention of intensive EMDR therapy is not to rush through, but rather, to spend more time in one setting on experiences that could benefit from this approach.
The cost of an EMDR intensive session is pro-rated at each clinician's 60-minute clinical rate. Each clinician's rates are posted on their bio.
You and your EMDR therapist will decide together and ahead of time the length of each session and you will be notified of the cost of each session before scheduling.
At the end of the first meeting, you and your therapist will know your therapy goals and establish a method to achieve them.
Ongoing sessions are variable and the cost is based on the clinician and certifications. During these sessions, you will share more of your story and learn tools along the way to help manage your trauma symptoms and learn to thrive again.
At DMC our initial appointments are 90 minutes for individual EMDR therapy.
During this first session, we want to get to know more about you and how your trauma is affecting your journey.
We are careful not to make this too overwhelming and won’t get into anything too deep this first meeting.
Once you've scheduled a consultation with one or more of our EMDR therapists, you make a decision whether you feel they may be a good fit.
This is your opportunity to learn about the therapist's approach and their opportunity to learn more about you.
If the two of you decide to move forward, you will schedule your first and possible ongoing appointments at that time.
Each clinician at DMC is trained in EMDR therapy, so you have several options to choose from. If you have questions, our intake coordinator can provide some assistance in helping you choose an EMDR therapist that most aligns with your needs, wants, and availability.
When you reach out to our intake coordinator, she will walk you through the process of getting onboarded with therapy and scheduling your free consultation.
EMDR therapy is designed to help you process traumatic memories in a way that feels safe and manageable. By using bilateral stimulation—such as eye movements, tapping, or alternating sounds—your brain is guided to reprocess these memories, reducing their emotional charge. Instead of being overwhelmed, you’ll find that past experiences are no longer as triggering. By working through the experience with the guidance of a therapist, the memory can be brought up in a safe, controlled way. This helps identify the memory, the distressing thought in the memory, as well as where that is felt within the body. Because trauma and its effects can be complex, EMDR helps reprocess the emotions that are brought up by the memory. Over time, EMDR therapy can help alleviate anxiety, intrusive thoughts, and emotional distress, allowing you to heal and live more fully in the present.
If you’ve been struggling with trauma, anxiety, or other emotional challenges and traditional talk therapy hasn’t provided the relief you need, EMDR might be the right fit for you. EMDR therapy is particularly beneficial for those who feel stuck in patterns related to past experiences. By reprocessing traumatic memories, EMDR helps reduce emotional distress, boost self-esteem, and improve overall well-being. A consultation with an EMDR therapist can help determine if this approach aligns with your personal healing journey and goals. At Denver Metro Counseling we offer complimentary initial consultations to find a therapist and treatment modality that aligns best with your current struggles.
EMDR is different from traditional talk therapy in that you don’t need to discuss your trauma in depth right away. Although some work will be done to get familiar with your therapist and find the parts of your story that need to be reprocessed, EMDR allows your brain to do the work without the barrier of forming those thoughts into words. Traditional talk therapy often involves verbalizing your experiences, which can feel overwhelming for some, especially if those experiences seem fuzzy, unclear, or hard to explain. EMDR, on the other hand, uses bilateral stimulation to help your brain process and heal from trauma without needing to relive the details. It focuses on how your brain stores the memory, allowing healing to happen without extensive discussion of the event itself. As you build trust with your therapist and develop emotional coping strategies, EMDR helps you move through the process in a way that feels safe and controlled.