I specialize in complex PTSD and attachment trauma. EMDR works on the root of the symptoms you are dealing with, rather than only reducing the symptoms themselves, and it does that by giving the brain the conditions it needs to process an experience it never finished processing.
I am a Certified EMDR therapist. That is a further credential beyond basic EMDR training, requiring additional clinical hours and consultation, and it is worth asking any therapist about before you begin.
What EMDR actually does
Some experiences get stored differently from ordinary memories. Rather than settling into the past, they stay live: the same beliefs, the same body responses, triggered by things that only faintly resemble the original. That is why you can understand exactly why you react the way you do and still react that way.
EMDR uses bilateral stimulation, most commonly guided eye movements, while you hold the memory in mind. You keep one foot in the present and one in the past at the same time. The work is not re-living the event and it is not talking it through again in more detail. Most people describe the memory becoming less charged, more finished, more clearly something that happened rather than something happening.
If you have a PTSD diagnosis
Post-traumatic stress usually arrives as some combination of intrusive memories or nightmares, being permanently on alert, avoiding anything that might set it off, and a flattening that the people around you often notice before you do. It can follow a single event: a car accident, an assault, a medical emergency, a birth that went badly, combat.
EMDR is a first-line treatment for precisely this, which is not a marketing claim but the position of the World Health Organization and of the meta-analysis cited further down this page. Where there is a clear event to work from, EMDR has a clear target, and that tends to make the work more direct than it is with trauma that has no single starting point.
Direct does not mean easy, and it does not mean fast for everyone. But you should know that this is among the best-supported things psychotherapy can offer, and that you are not committing to years of it to find out whether it helps.
Complex PTSD is a different shape
When the trauma was not one event but years of them, particularly in childhood and inside relationships that were supposed to be safe, there is no single memory to aim at and the symptoms are bound up with how you understand yourself. Many people carrying this were never diagnosed with anything, because nothing that happened would sound serious said out loud.
That work has its own page: therapy for attachment trauma, which covers how the pattern shows up in adulthood and why insight-only therapy so often stalls on it. If you are not sure which of the two describes you, that is a good thing to bring to a consultation rather than something to settle on your own.
What it helps with
EMDR is not only for people facing severe traumatic events. I use it for relationship struggles and attachment wounds, anxiety, feeling stuck in life, creative blocks, and the negative beliefs that quietly set a ceiling on what someone will attempt.
Those beliefs are often the real target. Not the memory itself but what it taught you about yourself: that you are too much, that you will be left, that you have to earn your place. Those are the things that follow people into adulthood, and they are reachable.
Why attachment-focused
Standard EMDR often begins from a single identifiable incident. A great deal of what people bring is not that. It is years of a relationship that was unpredictable, or absent, or required constant management, laid down long before there was language to record it.
Attachment-focused EMDR adapts the protocol for that: more time building safety in the therapy relationship itself, more attention to what was missing rather than only to what happened, and a slower approach to material that has no clear beginning. Where useful I bring in Internal Family Systems, because attachment wounds tend to produce protective parts that have strong opinions about being approached at all.
Whether it will overwhelm you
This is the fear that keeps most people from starting, and it is a reasonable one. The concern is usually that the work will crack something open and leave you with it.
We do not begin processing until you have reliable ways to settle. I teach grounding and resourcing skills from the Trauma Resiliency Model first, and we test them in session so you know from experience, not from my reassurance, that you can come back down. Only then do we approach anything difficult. That is what makes it possible to move through trauma safely and still relatively quickly.
You are also in control of the pace throughout. Nothing is forced, and stopping is always available.
What the research says
EMDR is among the best-evidenced treatments for post-traumatic stress. The World Health Organization recommends it, alongside trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy, as a first-line treatment for PTSD in adults, children and adolescents.
A 2025 systematic review and meta-analysis in the British Journal of Psychology pooled 29 randomised controlled trials. It found EMDR comparable in effectiveness to trauma-focused CBT, with a large effect against waiting list or usual care, and typically achieved in a shorter course of therapy. One modelling study within it found EMDR the most cost-effective of eleven interventions compared.
The same authors were careful about the limits: most of the trials were small, only one met their criteria for low risk of bias, and the patient groups and measures varied considerably. Strong evidence is not the same as certainty, and no honest account of it should imply otherwise.
EMDR online
I do a good deal of EMDR by video with clients across California. The telehealth page covers how bilateral stimulation is handled remotely, what the research currently supports, and what I do differently in an online session.
Practical details
Sessions are $260 for 50 minutes, in person in Los Angeles or by video anywhere in California. See the rates page for fees, superbills and reduced-fee places.
Talk to me first
We can speak at no cost before you commit to anything, and it is a fair conversation to use for asking whether EMDR is the right fit at all. Call (310) 926-4001 or send a note through the contact page.