What EMDR Therapy Is Really Like, According to Someone Who Did It

Content warning: This article contains a description of gun violence.

I was at dinner with my two best friends when we heard a few loud pops. At first, we thought it was fireworks. As the sounds got quicker, we realized it was gunshots. Glass shattered; panic ensued. We dropped to our hands and knees, shakily crawling to safety. After fearing for our lives for 15 minutes, the shooter was gone. But our fear wasn't.

Two days later, I had my regular appointment with my therapist. I recounted this traumatic experience to her, and she asked me if I'd be interested in trying EMDR therapy. She explained that this therapy uses bilateral stimulations to activate the left and right sides of the brain—similar to when we're asleep. (EMDR stands for "eye movement desensitization and reprocessing," a technique that's been used since 1987 to help people overcome traumatic experiences.) "It may help you move the trauma through the brain track so it doesn't keep playing on a loop," she said. In between blubbering, I responded, "Sure. Let's do it."

I did five weekly sessions of EMDR to help me move past this active shooter experience. Below, I detail my first-ever experience with this type of therapy.

As an audible learner, hearing myself talk out loud helps my cognition and processing. Plus, I appreciate the professional advice therapists can provide. For those reasons, I usually prefer talk therapy, which I've been in since February 2022.

Around the same time, another friend of mine started therapy. When we caught up on our progress, he told me he was practicing EMDR with his therapist. I asked him what that was, and he outlined the basics. It sounded cool and innovative, but I didn't feel I had the need for EMDR.

Fast forward to the shooting and I believed just the opposite. I wanted to do anything to rid myself of the flashbacks.

Prior to our EMDR sessions, my therapist played a video for me to see what the process was like. Initially, I was turned off by the modality because I could see that the person was distressed. However, by the end of the video, I was more open to it—I could see the noticeable relief on the participant's face. I felt like that was the feeling I needed, so I agreed to try EMDR.

My therapist and I started our EMDR sessions three days after the shooting. Each time, she'd have me start by taking a deep breath. Then, she'd ask me to think of the distressing memory. The key here is to think of a visual that accompanies the stressor. In my case, it was me being balled up on my knees—counting my breaths to stop myself from thinking, "You're going to die."

Once I came up with this image, she asked me how distressing it was on a scale of one to 10. I answered her question, took another deep breath, then set up to follow her quick-moving hand with my eyes. "Let the thoughts come up as they may and we can go from there," she said.

"The world is a bad, scary place," was my first thought. "Let's go with that," my therapist told me. Then, "I'm helpless." "Okay, keep going," she said. "I did something wrong." We'd do this until I looked and felt less distressed, which we'd know if my rating of that feeling was lower.This took five or six minutes, sometimes up to 10.

After the first session, I noticed that I was a little less triggered by the trauma—which is the ultimate goal of EMDR. I also realized that this was even more distressing for me because I'd assigned a negative value to my actions that night. And this meant that I could start doing the work to detach that "wrongdoing" from my actions. This was all from just one session, so by the end of the five sessions, I was feeling even better.

Still, I have to admit that I was a bit surprised by this approach. There's virtually no conversation, especially compared to what I experience in my normal talk therapy. I was also taken aback because EMDR in real-life was much more tiring than I was expecting. I cried and slept a lot on my EMDR therapy days — we're talking 13 hours after my last session.

Once I completed EMDR therapy, I noticed several things. (It's worth noting that while I did five sessions, according to the American Psychological Association, EMDR is typically done once or twice per week for a total of six to 12 sessions. As my therapist explained it, you know you're "done" with EMDR once the memory is significantly less distressing.) For starters, I stopped having so many flashbacks to that distressing image. And the flashbacks I do have are less intense each time. I've also internalized that the world isn't a bad, scary place; I just had one bad, scary experience. I'm not a helpless person; I was just helpless at that moment. I didn't do anything wrong; I did everything I could.

These days, I operate in a good, fun world as a highly capable person who knows exactly what to do—even in high-pressure situations.

If you're thinking about trying EMDR, talk to your therapist about how to start and what to do to prepare. It's been almost three months since my near-death experience. And while I don't wish to ever go through anything like that again, I'm happy to know that I have EMDR in my coping toolbox. Because now, when I see my trauma on the train tracks, I kindly say, "Keep it moving."

Natalie Arroyo Camacho is a San Fernando Valley-based journalist with more than five years of experience in the well-being and lifestyle space. A proud child of immigrants and first-generation Mexican American, Natalie has landed her byline in the Los Angeles Times, GQ, Teen Vogue, Remezcla, PS, and many others.