What is EMDR?
EMDR is a therapeutic approach designed to help people recover from experiences that feel unresolved—especially those that continue to affect your emotions, body, or beliefs long after the event is over.
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At its core, EMDR therapy helps the brain do what it was wired to do: process and integrate experiences in a way that feels safe and adaptive. When something overwhelming happens, especially if it feels sudden, isolating, or unsafe, that experience may not get fully processed at the time. Instead, it becomes “stuck,” leading to ongoing emotional reactions, body memories, or distorted beliefs about yourself and the world.
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Unlike traditional talk therapy, EMDR doesn’t require you to relive or retell what happened in detail. Instead, it works by using bilateral stimulation—like guided eye movements, tapping, or alternating tones—to activate both sides of the brain while you briefly focus on a memory, image, or belief.
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This process allows your nervous system to reprocess the experience and shift how it’s stored. The goal isn’t to forget or erase. It’s to help your brain recognize that the event is over. The emotional charge softens. The intensity fades. The memory becomes something that happened, rather than something you’re still reliving.
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Though EMDR is best known as a trauma treatment, it’s also effective for issues like anxiety, chronic shame, body-based symptoms, or deeply held beliefs like “I’m not safe” or “I’m not enough.”
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EMDR therapy at our Westmount location can take place either in-person or online as is tailored to your goals and pace. Whether you’re recovering from a single incident or untangling more complex trauma, our clinicians can help you move toward healing with care and skill.
EMDR and Complex Trauma
Insight and reflection aren’t always enough to shift patterns that were wired into your body and nervous system early on. EMDR offers a way to reach the parts of your experience that words don’t always access.Using a structured process and bilateral stimulation, EMDR helps the brain return to memories or patterns that feel “frozen in time.” But instead of staying stuck there, the brain begins to reprocess and release what couldn’t be resolved at the time.
Complex trauma doesn’t come from one single event. It’s the result of repeated or prolonged experiences that left you feeling unsafe, powerless, or emotionally alone—often during childhood or in key relationships. This might include:
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Growing up with emotional neglect, unpredictable caregiving, or frequent criticism
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Long-term exposure to instability, violence, or unsafe environments
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Repeated experiences of rejection, shame, or betrayal
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Situations where your needs were ignored—or punished—for too long
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Over time, these experiences shape the way you see yourself, relate to others, and respond to stress. You might find yourself:
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Getting stuck in self-blame or shame
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Feeling numb, disconnected, or hypervigilant
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Repeating relationship patterns you don’t want but can’t seem to change
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Struggling with a constant undercurrent of anxiety, sadness, or confusion
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Knowing that the past still affects you but not knowing how to access or change it
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Can EMDR Help With Eating Disorders?
While eating disorders often involve visible behaviours, like restricting, bingeing, or purging, the roots usually run much deeper. Many clients living with disordered eating also carry underlying trauma, attachment wounds, or long-standing beliefs about safety, worth, and control.
EMDR therapy can be a powerful addition to eating disorder treatment by targeting these emotional and relational roots. Rather than focusing solely on behaviour, EMDR helps reprocess the core emotional experiences that drive the eating disorder forward.
These beliefs aren’t just cognitive—they’re held somatically and emotionally, often outside of conscious awareness. EMDR works by helping the brain safely revisit and reprocess those moments using bilateral stimulation, reducing the emotional charge that keeps them active.​
Eating disorders can serve as protective strategies, especially for those who’ve never felt safe in their body or environment. The behaviours offer a sense of control, relief, or numbness. But that relief comes at a cost—and doesn’t resolve the pain underneath.
That’s where EMDR becomes valuable. It doesn’t aim to fix behaviour directly. Instead, it:
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Helps the nervous system stop reacting as if past danger is still present
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Makes space for the client to reconnect with their body in a safer way
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Softens the emotional intensity of past trauma that fuels shame, perfectionism, or control
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Allows for integration of new, self-compassionate beliefs like “I can care for myself,” or “My body is not the enemy”
