Emdr therapy
You’ve gone to therapy, probably more than once. You’ve sat across from someone, told your story, cried, made sense of it, maybe even felt better for a while, but then the same thing happens again. You react the same, find yourself in the same relationship with a different face. The same you, doing the thing you swore you wouldn’t do again.
You’re still experiencing flashbacks, nightmares, anxiety and panic attacks – you feel like it will never end.
It’s not because you haven’t tried hard enough, you are and you have. It’s because talking can only reach so far. The part of you that’s still stuck isn’t just living in your thoughts, it’s also in your body.
EMDR works differently. It doesn’t ask you to retell the story. It works with where the experience actually lives – in your nervous system, in your reactions, in the beliefs you have about yourself that no amount of insight has been able to touch.
This is for people who are done talking about it and ready to actually shift it.
Choose Your Therapist
What starts to shift
- Memories that once overwhelmed you stop feeling so raw
- The beliefs you’ve carried about yourself (I’m too much, I’m broken, it’s my fault), they start to move
- You stop reacting on autopilot and have more choice in how you respond
- Sleep improves, the constant chatter at night quietens
- Your body starts to feel safer, less braced and on edge
- Trauma gets processed without needing to relive or retell everything in detail
What is Emdr?
EMDR works differently to talk therapy. Instead of going over your story again, it works directly with your brain and your nervous system, not just your thoughts.
When trauma events happen, they are split into fragments and stored in different parts of your brain. The sights, sounds, smells, feelings and beliefs about yourself all get scattered in both your left and right hemispheres, and your brain treats them like they’re still happening right now. That’s why something today can feel like it’s still happening, even when you know logically that it’s over.
When we use bilateral stimulation, we bring those fragments back together. This allows your nervous system and brain to distinguish between then and now, and your body finally gets the message that it’s over.
You don’t have to retell everything or remember exactly what happened. Your body already knows what happened, EMDR just helps your brain finally file it where it belongs.
What most people get wrong
People think EMDR is just eye movements. The real work starts the moment you walk in the door. The conversations about what happened, feeling into your body, building a plan together, all of that is EMDR too.
For complex trauma, childhood sexual abuse, years of relational harm, the eye movements might not happen for six, twelve, even eighteen months. We need you to feel safe first. That timeline isn’t a delay, it’s part of the process.
If you’ve had EMDR before and it didn’t go well, you can read here for why that might have been.
EMDR doesn’t erase what happened. It doesn’t minimise it. It doesn’t ask you to forgive anything. It helps your nervous system finally understand that it’s over, that you made it, and that you don’t have to keep living like you did.
One process, many pathways
EMDR alone isn’t enough for complex trauma. It needs two things working alongside it, in every session, not as add-ons.
If you’ve seen Pixar’s Inside Out, you’ve already had a glimpse of parts work. We all have different parts of ourselves that hold our memories, our wounds, our beliefs, and drive our behaviour. With complex trauma, some of those parts have been protecting you for a very long time. They’re not going to let anyone near what they’re carrying until they know it’s safe. Parts work is how we build that safety, and without it, EMDR has nowhere to go.
Somatic therapy is about learning to read your body. With complex trauma, the body is usually either numb or all over the place, and most people have spent years ignoring what it’s trying to tell them because it felt too big or too confusing. We pay attention to what’s happening physically during sessions, because your body holds information your mind can’t always access. When we work with it instead of around it, the whole process moves differently.
EMDR, parts work, and somatic therapy together aren’t three separate things. They happen in the same moment, with the same person, in the same room. That’s what makes the difference.
Read more about the ReClaim Model and how it came to be
Neurodivergence
ADHD, autism, aphantasia (the inability to visualise images, which also shows up with complex trauma), none of these exclude you from EMDR, it just means we adapt how we work. We might use more than one type of bilateral stimulation at a time, keep sets a little shorter, and move at a pace that works with how your brain is wired rather than against it. We may even scribble on paper or move your body.
A neurotypical brain processes more like a map – lots of connected pathways. A neurodivergent brain tends to work in more singular networks, which means the process can take a little longer or we have to go over that memory more than once. It’s not a problem, it’s all important information. EMDR can also be genuinely helpful for self-acceptance work around ADHD and autism, not just trauma processing. We know how to work with you.
Fees
$205 (60 min) / $285 (90 min) – Individual Sessions
$320 (90 mins) – Couple Sessions
Intensive sessions of 4-5 hours available, contact for pricing and more information
In-person in Perth and online Australia Wide.
Choose your therapist
