By Erica Schwartzberg, LMSW
In the 1980s, Francine Shapiro was a graduate student in psychology facing a cancer diagnosis. While strolling through a park, reflecting on painful memories, she noticed something while hearing and looking at the birds: As her eyes moved naturally side to side, the distress she felt began to ease. The thoughts were still there, but they carried less weight, less charge.
That simple moment of observation became the seed for what is now EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy)—a structured, relational psychotherapy approach that helps people reprocess traumatic or overwhelming experiences using bilateral stimulation (eye movements, tapping or alternating tones).
Shapiro turned that insight into research. Today, EMDR is a sought-after and evidence-based trauma therapy. While EMDR is often associated with PTSD (post-traumatic stress syndrome), it’s also incredibly effective for more everyday—but still life-shaping—issues rooted in distress, shame or stuck beliefs in the form of negative cognitions.
EMDR can target the roots of body image distress, feelings of unworthiness, or early experiences of food and control. Many clients begin to untangle the emotional charge from food behaviors and shift from self-punishment to self-trust. EMDR helps reprocess these core beliefs, which are often rooted in childhood messages like “You’re only lovable when you succeed,” and create space for earned self-worth—not just achievement-driven survival.
When obsessive thoughts or compulsions feel driven by fear, shame or unresolved emotion, EMDR can be a gentle way to address the underlying memory networks fueling those cycles—especially when integrated with other treatments. EMDR helps your nervous system relearn that you are no longer in danger. By reprocessing moments where fear took hold, clients often describe feeling more grounded, less easily overwhelmed and better able to stay in the present.
EMDR isn’t about erasing the past. It’s about helping your brain and body understand that the past is no longer happening now. In a supported, structured setting, EMDR allows clients to revisit what was once overwhelming and finally process it with the safety and perspective they didn’t have at the time.
Whether you’re dealing with anxiety, perfectionism or trauma that doesn’t always “look” like trauma, EMDR offers a way through—not by bypassing pain, but by gently walking alongside it with a skilled practitioner.
A personal share: Before EMDR, I thought my inner critic was me. That voice in my head that said, “You’re too much,” “You’re not doing enough,” or the classic, “Who do you think you are?”—I didn’t even recognize it as separate. It just sounded like honesty. Brutal, helpful honesty. The kind that keeps you safe from failure, rejection or being seen too clearly.
What I didn’t realize was that voice wasn’t born from wisdom. It was built from experiences—some early, some more recent—where I internalized the idea that being lovable meant being small, quiet, perfect, pleasing.
I didn’t go to EMDR for that. Not exactly. I went because my nervous system wouldn’t turn off. Because I felt like I was “holding it together” on the outside and suffering on the inside. I was on a hamster wheel and didn’t know how to hop off.
In EMDR, we targeted a specific memory where I had failed publicly—something small, but humiliating. My body tightened just thinking about it. I felt frozen, like I was still stuck in that moment. My therapist guided me to notice the image, the body sensation and the belief that came with it: I’m incompetent.
Then came the eye movements. (I chose tapping; I liked the soothing rhythm.) Back and forth. Checking in. Staying present. I noticed how that one belief—I’m unworthy—was tangled up in so many other moments: a teacher’s disappointment, a partner’s criticism, a look I interpreted as judgment. One by one, those moments started to lose their grip. Not disappear, but shift.
What emerged wasn’t just calm. It was compassion. It was a tiny, unremarkable thought that felt revolutionary: Maybe that voice was trying to protect me. Maybe I don’t need it anymore.
That’s the thing about EMDR. It doesn’t erase your past. It gives your nervous system a way to realize the danger is over. That you’re not 10 years old or 25 and raw anymore. That you don’t have to keep punishing yourself to stay safe.
Now, when my inner critic shows up (and it still does), I can say: Ah, I know you. I know where you came from. And I know you’re not the whole truth.
That’s not something I could have talked myself into. I had to feel it. Reprocess it. Let it move. That’s what EMDR gave me: not just a quieter inner critic, but a chance to meet that voice with something other than fear—with presence. agoodplacetherapy.com