My Own Personal Experience with EMDR

I want to share something personal with you. Many of you know that I have dealt with anxiety for most of my adult life. Over the years I have done a lot of work - therapy, yoga, meditation, journaling and I reached a place where anxiety was no longer a constant disruption. I felt like I had it managed. Then the panic attacks started again.

I knew in those moments that what I was experiencing did not match the situation in front of me. Something from the past was still active. After a lot of reflection, I realized there were memories and experiences I had never fully processed - things that talk therapy had helped me understand intellectually but had not fully resolved at the level of my nervous system. I decided it was time to try EMDR therapy as a client. I am trained in EMDR and had undergone some during my training, but I had never gone through a full course of treatment. What happened next changed how I understand both the therapy and my own history.

Being on the Other Side of the Chair

There is something humbling about being a therapist who becomes a client. I spend my days guiding people through EMDR, and I was confident I understood the process. But understanding it intellectually and experiencing it are two very different things. Going through EMDR as a client gave me a depth of understanding I simply could not have gotten any other way.

I also want to say this clearly: seeking therapy as a therapist is not a contradiction. It is part of the work. I believe strongly that the best practitioners are people who continue to do their own healing. I am not above needing support, and going through this process reminded me of the courage it takes to sit in that chair and let yourself be seen.

What I Noticed During Treatment

The first thing I noticed, even after early sessions, was a detachment from memories that had previously carried a strong emotional and physical charge. When I brought those memories to mind, the intensity had changed. This is one of the core effects of EMDR - it does not erase memories, but it changes your relationship to them. They become less like live wires and more like photographs. You can look at them without being pulled back into the experience.

I also noticed a shift in the beliefs I had been carrying about myself without fully realizing it. Some of the experiences from my past had left behind a quiet, persistent voice telling me things about who I was that were not true. EMDR brought those beliefs to the surface where I could actually see them - and then helped loosen their hold. The positive beliefs I had worked hard to build felt more accessible, more real, once the negative ones lost their grip.

The third thing I noticed was something I did not fully anticipate: new insight. EMDR created space for me to see past experiences from different angles. People and events I had understood in one way for years suddenly revealed other dimensions. I could hold more complexity, feel less stuck in a single interpretation. That kind of shift does not come easily from talking alone.

What This Experience Taught Me as a Therapist

Going through EMDR as a client deepened my practice in ways I am still discovering. It gave me a felt sense of what my clients experience - the strangeness of the bilateral stimulation at first, the way memories surface and then soften, the exhaustion that can follow a deep session, and the quiet sense of something lifting that makes it all worth it.

It also reinforced something I already believed but now know in my body: EMDR works. Not as a technique I apply to other people, but as a process I have lived through myself. When I sit with a client who is nervous about starting EMDR or skeptical that it can reach something that years of talk therapy has not touched, I can speak to that from a place of genuine experience.

If You Are Considering EMDR

If you have been thinking about EMDR and are not sure whether to try it, I hope this gives you some encouragement. It is not a dramatic or overwhelming process. It is careful, structured, and paced to what you can handle. And it can reach places that other forms of therapy sometimes cannot.

You do not have to be in crisis to benefit from EMDR. You do not have to have a single identifiable trauma. Many of my clients come to EMDR carrying the weight of experiences they have always minimized - things they tell themselves should not still affect them. EMDR does not judge what counts as significant. If something is still affecting you, that matters. And it can be worked with.

I am grateful I finally gave myself the same care I encourage others to seek. If you have questions about what EMDR looks like or whether it might be right for you, reach out. I am happy to talk through it.