Understanding EMDR | Prioritizing Emotional Safety

Hi,

I'm Susan Guttridge.

I'm a master's degree counselor and EMDR clinician.

Thank you for being here.

EMDR is an evidence-based structured therapy that invites deep transformative change,

But because it involves looking at difficult experiences,

It's completely natural to feel a mixture of hope and hesitation when beginning this work.

There is hope that you might finally arrive at healing,

But also some hesitation because the thought of working through past woundings can spark an immediate physiological response,

A sense of overwhelm and fear.

I've often heard people express concern that if they open up the past,

They will feel so emotionally flooded that they won't be able to exit that overwhelm.

In this video,

I'll address those concerns by sharing how your emotional safety is prioritized in EMDR and how you and your therapist work as a collaborative team to ensure you always have a way back to safety.

So EMDR follows a clear step-by-step process.

Before we ever address specific memories,

We focus on preparation,

Which is the phase that equips you with the emotional tools and coping strategies you'll need to regulate your nervous system.

Because your emotional safety is the priority,

We stay in this phase as long as you need to feel ready.

A helpful way to understand this is with the window of tolerance,

Which is just a concept that refers to the optimal zone where your nervous system feels safe and grounded and able to effectively process information.

When you are within your window,

You can feel calm and alert and capable of managing whatever emotion arises.

However,

When we're carrying trauma,

We often come into therapy already pushed outside of this window.

We might be up in hyper-arousal feeling,

Jittery,

Panicky,

Or overwhelmed,

Or we might drop out the bottom into hypo-arousal feeling,

Numb,

Shut down,

Or zoned out.

So part of the work includes assisting you in noticing what it feels like to be within your window and how to anchor there.

When we get to the phase of therapy that includes working through difficult experiences,

It's normal to temporarily spike out of that window.

When that happens,

Your counselor is right there with you,

Holding a safe,

Non-judgmental space and staying attuned to your rhythm.

When you're new to somatic therapies,

It can be hard to notice when your system is shifting or activating up while you're focusing on a painful memory.

Your counselor is ready to help you to gently lean into that noticing,

Not to abruptly cut off the emotion,

But rather to help you learn that you can safely sit with these sensations and emotions and watch them naturally start to shift.

One way that we monitor where you're at in that window is with the subjective units of distress scale,

Which is just a measure from zero to 10,

Where 10 is the most distressed you've ever felt and zero is neutral or calm.

Throughout the session,

We check in on your number.

If it climbs too high,

We pause and use grounding resources to bring the distress back down.

While there are many ways that your clinician guides this process,

Suffice to say,

You are always the one in control of the pace.

Before we work on difficult experiences.

Time is spent building this emotion regulation by creating a resource library.

A collection of mental and emotional tools like a peaceful place or a secure container,

And we develop and practice these together.

I think of these resources as a lifeline.

By strengthening them first,

We ensure that even if things start to feel intense,

You will always have a clear way to shift out of overwhelm.

You could say that by doing this,

We're building the foundation of the house before we ever try to renovate the rooms.

This preparation phase ensures that when you do look to the past,

You are doing so with a full toolkit of skills,

Keeping you securely anchored in the present.

EMDR is a versatile therapy and it isn't always about working on the past.

Whatever brings you into therapy,

The work can feel hard at times because Some experiences were exactly that.

But your therapy is about working through it from a position of strength,

And safety.