Getting to Know EMDR, the Brain's Job to Keep You Safe, and Why We Love This Work

About this episode

Welcome to the very first episode of Bilateral Banter! We're so glad you're here.

In this episode, we're introducing ourselves, sharing why we started this podcast, and talking about what you can expect in the conversations ahead. We dive into what EMDR actually is, why it has so many myths surrounding it, and why understanding your brain doesn't have to feel overwhelming.

This podcast isn't just about therapy. It's about being human. We believe healing should feel accessible, conversations about mental health shouldn't be intimidating, and it's okay to laugh while talking about really important things.

Transcript

Auto-generated from the episode audio and lightly edited for readability — it may contain transcription errors.

Welcome to Bilateral Banter, a Loma Therapy podcast where we explore the psychology of everyday life and make EMDR easier to understand — with your hosts Dr. Montana Holmes, licensed psychologist and EMDR-trained therapist, and Auriel Campbell, licensed professional counselor, supervisor, and EMDR trainer and consultant. This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for mental health care. Listening does not create a therapeutic relationship. If you're in crisis, call or text 988 or contact your local emergency services. Let's get into today's conversation.

Hey Auriel.

Hey Montana, so good to see you.

It's good to see you too. What people don't know is the 45 minutes we've spent trying to set all this up.

More like almost an hour. This is not for the faint of heart — and maybe not for clinicians either. It's definitely for tech-savvy people. But I'm happy we're here. It feels like we've been talking about this podcast for a while, so I'm happy to be able to arrive in this space and have a good conversation.

Do you want to start off with introductions so people can know who we are?

Absolutely — let's let people know who we are. I'm Dr. Montana Holmes. I'm a psychologist in the state of Texas, and I'm one of the owners of Loma — we can get into what Loma is a little later. Some of my specialties are OCD, trauma, and really the intersections of both of those things. So hopefully in a lot of the conversations we'll have, I can speak to some of the things I've witnessed in practice and help folks out.

And you also do EMDR therapy — so you know a little bit about EMDR.

Just a little bit. EMDR and ERP are both specialties of mine. But I think what brings us to this space is definitely EMDR and what all of that looks like in practice.

I'm Auriel Campbell. I'm in Louisiana, I'm a licensed counselor, and I own a group practice down here with twelve therapists. My background is working with complex trauma and dissociation, and spiritual abuse — and now a big thing that I do is EMDR trainings. I'm an EMDRIA-approved EMDR trainer and consultant. That's how my path has transitioned: really teaching and empowering clinicians. So it's really exciting to be a part of this podcast and nerd out on EMDR.

I'm so happy you're here. We feel so incredibly blessed and lucky at Loma to have you as our trainer and to have all of our providers learn from someone like you, Auriel. I remember when I first met you — when I did my EMDR training, it was a wonderful training, but there was so much I didn't understand, so much I felt like I still needed to learn before I even got started. And then when I met you, interviewing for the training position, I thought: this person is amazing. Because she turns the most complex findings of EMDR into very digestible tidbits of information that feel really easy to apply in practice.

Thank you. You know, something hit me after working with clients for so long: even though I only worked with adults, every adult comes with their inner child. And if you have complex trauma, it's not just that adult sitting in front of you who needs to trust you and know that you know what you're talking about — it's that teen, and it's that kid. So I try to find ways that every age of them can understand it, without making them feel like, why are you talking to me like I'm a five-year-old? Ways that every age can go: okay, this isn't crazy, this makes sense — whatever we're diving into. Like plumbing. Not that I'm into plumbing, but I feel like I'd want a plumber to talk to me that way.

EMDR is written for the clinician, but it's the client who experiences a lot of it in the room. If they can't understand what is happening, or why we're doing what we're doing, it doesn't hit the same. And in order for the clinician to explain it to the client, they have to have that really rich understanding of what it is. That's what I've gotten out of conversations with you — I feel like I really know it, so I can explain it. And if I can explain it to a client, it feels like I'm doing a better job at my job.

I'm so glad. A little bit about my story with EMDR: the program I went to in New Orleans was very trauma-based, and it fits very well in that city — there are just extensive amounts of trauma. They ended up giving us the chance to get trained during our practicum. And I'm incredibly grateful, not only for my career path but for my own healing journey, because at the time I was seeing an EMDR therapist — and my brain was like, this is some woo-woo, I can't understand it. I had these strong subconscious defenses that wouldn't let me do the healing, which is not uncommon for trauma survivors.

It wasn't until I did the EMDR training, and actually read Francine Shapiro — the founder of EMDR — and her book for clients, that I was able to disarm and receive the therapy. And that's a big part of why we want to do this: to inform and empower people in their own healing journey, so they understand — what the heck is trauma? What are mental health concerns? What is EMDR, and what does it look like? How can I advocate for my care? The more people feel like they can understand it, the more they're going to be able to relax and trust the process.

Knowledge is empowering, for sure. I'm so glad you brought this up, because you and I have had so many conversations off-screen — people aren't privy to what led to this desire to do a podcast. There is so much material out there for the clinician related to EMDR, and that's wonderful. What we were noticing is that there's not a lot of information for people receiving EMDR, and there are a lot of misconceptions about EMDR — what it's supposed to do, how it's done. Our hope is to let people feel a lot more informed about the process, demystify some of what EMDR is — and if it's something people have been hesitant to start because they didn't know a lot about it, this podcast can help clear some of that up and bring light to the corners that feel a little dark. I'd love to hear what you've been thinking too, Auriel.

I love all of that. The thing that keeps coming to mind is Bessel van der Kolk — a big papa in trauma work. I love how he defines trauma. He talks about an eight-year-old boy who was in 9/11 who did not get PTSD — and it was because he was not alone. His dad was with him. His dad helped him get out of the situation, so he wasn't trapped — but his dad also helped him make sense of the situation. And what comes to mind, I'm sure you've noticed this: there can be a cross-bridge between OCD and trauma, especially with the brain going, I don't know what just happened — I need to make sense of it so I can prevent it from happening again.

Absolutely. Our brain is designed for safety over intellect, but it uses intellect as a way to help us be safe.

So if you've got somebody who could really benefit from EMDR — it doesn't even have to be for trauma, though it's usually used for trauma — how much more is that precious brain going to long to know: what's the road map? What is this? Am I safe to proceed? Because so much of my experience has been chaotic, I can't make sense of it, and everything feels like a threat.

Right — around every corner, their brain has been programmed to ask itself, what is there? And the default is, oh, it's a scary thing. So we have to be careful, we have to be on edge, we have to be ready for whatever is there.

And I love that, because EMDR — even ERP — creates this sense of safety in knowing there's a guided process to it. It's like teaching your body: we're going to go around those corners, and we're going to prepare you in a way that feels as comfortable as it can in those moments. So you get around the corner, and those things you were doing to keep yourself safe that weren't working anymore — you can get through it in a more helpful way, and teach the body: you can get through that, and you don't have to do those things you were doing. Something that once served you is no longer serving you.

Something that excites me — I often share this with clients, and even clinicians who are considering whether to become EMDR trained — is a pool analogy. There are so many different therapeutic approaches. Some are more theoretical: it's like sitting by a pool and learning the history and theory of the pool, but you never actually go swimming. And some are more like — this is a pool — and they shove you into the deep end before you've ever been in a pool: come on, you can do it! But I find EMDR does this incredible balance of: let me educate you about the pool. I'm going to show you these different steps. I'm going to let you dip your toe in the water — what is it even like to have water on your toes? And now we're going to take one step at a time into the pool, at your pace.

And that's the beauty of it having eight phases. It fits within a trauma model of stabilization, then processing, then maintenance.

Right — you've got your floaties, then I'm blowing my bubbles and I can swim, and now I can just float on my back.

I notice that when clients first come to me and they have a vague idea of what EMDR is, they think that first session is going to be processing. They're like, I came to you because I know you're EMDR trained, I think I want to do this thing called EMDR — and in our first session they say, I'm really, really scared, because I know I'm going to process today. And it's like — no, we have a lot of time until we get there. This is the pool. This is EMDR. This is you. Let's walk around it a couple of times.

And you even learn to trust me with the pool, as your clinician. Kind of like the lifeguard.

Yes — we're here. We have the tools and the experience to help you get through it, and we're just going to get into it slowly. It surprises me every time how often people think that first meeting is going to be the one where they have to go into the deep end and bring up everything they've probably worked really hard at compartmentalizing for a really long time.

What a great metaphor. It makes me think we need to do a whole episode on myths about EMDR — what people have often heard about EMDR or think EMDR is. Is it the same as hypnosis? Can I just do it on myself? Is EMDR just bilateral stimulation? Being able to educate more on that — because it is so much more.

You know, I was doing field work for Loma just yesterday in the Austin area, popping into a bunch of different places — OBGYNs, birthing centers, little boutiques in some of the shopping areas — handing out flyers and letting people know our platform exists. And when I got into some of the explanation of EMDR, a lot of people said, oh, side-to-side eye movement — that's hypnosis, right? And I thought of you, because you and I had talked about how frequently people think EMDR is similar to hypnosis. There's a lot of material there to help people understand the difference between the two — and why it's even the case that those two things get conflated. Is it just the eye movements that people think are similar, or is there something else?

That's a great question. My brain immediately went to one therapist who is very well respected in EMDR, Sandra Paulsen — she actually does hypnosis and EMDR. But as you're talking about this, I almost want to dive more into how this association came about. Was it from a clinical standpoint, or was it just, well, this seems similar, but I'm not really educated on it?

I'm very open about my story as a trauma survivor, someone who has that natural skeptic mentality — I also was fearful that it was like hypnosis. I had a mom who was unwell, and she ended up using hypnosis as a form of abuse toward me. So for me, the thought of being in something similar would have been terrifying. But that was something I loved about EMDR: with hypnosis, the client is in a significantly more suggestible state, relying on whoever's performing the hypnosis to feed the information. In EMDR, that is not the case. You are fully in control. You can stop at any point. All it's doing is accessing — and we'll talk a ton about this in this podcast — the adaptive information processing system in your brain.

It's kind of like saying: hey, white cells, I know we have a little boo-boo on our knee — I'm going to give you some Neosporin to support you. EMDR does the same thing, but for our memories. It's using what's already built into you, and there is very little influence — there's just the co-regulation. I love that language you used, the lifeguard: someone who's journeying with you while you're going through the processing. It can be really, really empowering. Those are some of my favorite reasons why EMDR and hypnosis are so different.

I'll piggyback off something you said. To me, what stands out about EMDR is how in control the client is of the process. I think that sometimes gets lost in the conversation, because there is such a protocol to EMDR that we follow. But that protocol is in place — and you tell me, Auriel, if you think similarly or differently — actually to give more control to the client than the clinician. It puts boundaries around us to stay pretty scripted, and then allows the client and their brain to do what it would normally do if it had processed that traumatic memory adaptively. So much of the language in EMDR puts the control in the client's hands — to say as much as they want to say, to only disclose what feels comfortable. We're really just there like the bumpers on a bowling lane: the ball might go back and forth, and we're keeping it going in a safe direction, but the goal is ultimately to hit the pins at the end of the alley.

I love that, with the bumpers. In EMDR, what clinicians call the goal is to reach dual attention — which sounds kind of woo-woo, but it's not, I promise. It's pretty much where you have one foot in the present that says: hey, I'm currently in my therapist's office, I feel safe, I've got my little mint candy, I know I'm in my adult body. But I also have one foot in the past that can revisit this traumatic experience — enough that it does activate. I need it to activate enough to process. I usually use the example of getting blood work done: they tap the vein to say, come on, vein, I've got to be able to stick you.

Part of what the counselor does — and this is why even EMDR therapists can't do EMDR on themselves — is watch for when your body, because this is how it survived, starts to block the memory and goes all the way with both feet in the present; or when it starts to float back too much, and you're almost experiencing a flashback, with both feet in the past. If you don't have that felt safety and rapport and clinical trust with your therapist to help you here, it's going to be hard for your brain to even want to be in this dance. It goes back to: you have everything you need. That's the heart of what EMDR believes about healing. I'm just walking alongside you where there may need to be some support.

That's another thing I really notice with clients when they've made the decision to start EMDR: out in their life, there have been those moments where both feet are in the past — and it is so freaking scary. That's where we see a lot of the avoidance behaviors come up. Anything that could potentially put both feet back in the past — I don't want to go near any of that, because it's going to throw me back somewhere I hate being.

And what if I never come back? Or what if the memories just stay there?

We see so many of those symptoms come up — panic, avoidance, really uncomfortable sensations in the body. Without making too much of a generalization, if I think about the symptoms clients come in with, what really sparked the motivation to sit down, it's: I felt so uncomfortable, I was in so much panic, and now I can't do certain things because I'm so afraid I'm going to go there again. What brings them into therapy is: how can you help me not go there again — which is kind of part of the problem.

This makes me want to share a little bit of what the heck EMDR does. Whenever you have an experience that has not been able to process — they use the example of identical twins going through the exact same situation, where one of them does not get PTSD and one of them does. The whole theory behind EMDR is the adaptive information processing model. For the person who experienced no PTSD, that experience just moved through the memory network easily — they got to see everything clearly. For the one who experienced PTSD, it gets stuck. It's literally lodged. I told you the first time we met: it's kind of like somebody put a roast down your sink and it's stuck. EMDR is kind of like the garbage disposal — but you also need good coping skills. That's the water. You've got to have both.

When this happens, your brain experiences those PTSD symptoms — avoidance, or a lot of strong symptomology. In EMDR, the bilateral movement, which is accessing all parts of your brain, helps your brain get to what Shapiro called an orienting response. Naturally, when you're interested in something, your brain creates an orienting response — that's how two hours can go by while you're just playing your flute.

Kind of like a flow state.

When that orienting state happens, it increases interest, and it's also accessing other parts of the brain that will see it from a different lens. Naturally, when you're experiencing a traumatic response, you don't have an orienting response — your brain is not going, let me look at this and see what's going on here. But bilateral stimulation, alongside the eight phases, helps turn that on in the brain, where it can feel safe to have some of it activated — through an orienting response where the body feels relaxed and is able to receive information that's adaptive.

A great analogy: I have some autoimmune diseases, and at one point I needed IV therapy — Myers cocktails — to get more vitamins. Because I was so undernourished, when they did the IV it was too much. They had to titrate. Even though it was good stuff, my cells were overwhelmed — they weren't ready for it. That orienting response is almost like preparing the situation to be able to receive the good stuff, the way I had to prepare my cells to receive the nourishment. That's ultimately what's happening in EMDR, and why you're doing this funny thing with bilateral movement, or with your eyes, whichever way you end up doing it. It helps your body feel safe to revisit those spaces — and in the end, it disarms the charge.

I don't know if this is the same thing, but I do a lot of yoga. When I first started, I had no stamina or endurance to get through it — I wasn't doing the peaceful yin yoga, I was doing vinyasa, heated. It took me a while to even be able to do the movements. But more important: it took a while for my mind to develop the strength to tell my body, you can do this. My body probably could always have held certain positions — but it wasn't until my mind was able to acknowledge and hold that I was strong enough that I could get through the flows. I don't know if that's the equivalent of your brain almost having to learn how strong it is, to be able to go to those places.

It's an interesting analogy. What comes to my mind: most people — I don't know if you had this when you personally did EMDR — the first few times, you go, am I doing this right? Am I doing this right? Because there is this level where you have to just let your brain go where it's going to go. It's almost like building a new muscle: how to process and not be fully in control. That makes me think of what you're saying with yoga — after a while, you can just go.

Definitely. Maybe that is the parallel: it's an experience you probably need to allow yourself to have a couple of times, because so much of you fights back sometimes — not for everyone, obviously. But you're right: the first time I was introduced to EMDR, I was like, no. My brain can't go there. I don't know what you're trying to do to me. And then with practice and more exposure, the benefit was there — I just had to relax into it.

And my perfectionism, as helpful as it is, was so not helpful in those moments — I need to do this right, I need to understand it, I need to know what I'm supposed to be feeling in order to do it right. There was so much of having to teach myself: there is no right way. It's like when you start to overthink how to walk, or breathing — I don't have to tell myself how to do this. It knows how to do it. Just pay attention to it.

I know we got into more EMDR meat than we were expecting today. I do hope that whoever listens feels welcome to type in any questions they might have about EMDR — anything we're saying that still feels confusing, or a question it brings up — drop it in the comments. That could be such a beautiful part of this podcast: answering questions from the people who could be experiencing EMDR for the first time, or who have done EMDR — that they feel welcome to drop in and ask or reflect.

I think that's a great idea. What if we share our stories of how we even got to EMDR? I'm sure people would like to hear that — and then we can wrap up for today. You want to go first, Auriel?

Well, I shared a little of it — the program I was in was very, very trauma-informed, and they offered EMDR in the coursework, which was incredible. Actually, the first way I heard about EMDR was in my own trauma healing journey. A dear friend of mine, who was getting her PhD at my program, said: you know, I think you would benefit from EMDR. And I'm thinking — EMD-what?

My favorite is: I want that EDMR.

Oh yes, EDMR. We should just change the name — electric dance music reprocessing. Anyway, that summer they were offering the training, and I was starting my practicum, so I did it — and absolutely fell in love with it once I understood it. I often tell people going through my training, especially community trainings where you get everybody — people who've been practicing twenty years down to people still in practicum — as a new clinician you get nervous, but I encourage them: you're actually in a special spot, because I found that getting trained during practicum completely shaped how I saw everything as a clinician. The population I worked with in New Orleans involved a lot of sex trafficking and complex trauma, and I saw incredible ways to adapt EMDR to help them. Then I went into private practice. A few years ago, a mentor at my program — I was seeking certification — said, you know, I think you should be a trainer. I remember thinking, I don't know why!

Isn't that funny? Sometimes people can see things in you before you can see them in yourself.

And then I started writing the manual, became a consultant, became a trainer, and have never looked back. It's been incredible. It almost feels like it fell into my lap, and I'm very grateful the program I happened to be part of was so trauma-informed and so big into EMDR.

I'm so happy that person saw that in you, because they were very right. How did I get into EMDR? It's kind of a wonky story. My master's program and my doctoral program were wonderful — I loved my school. They did a beautiful job training us in narrative therapy; they emphasized strength-based approaches, and the one they taught us to approach trauma stories with was narrative therapy. So when clients came in with a trauma history, if it was something they wanted to talk about, I would use narrative therapy techniques. But so often I was left with the feeling that there was more to be done. I got to a point in my practice where, if someone came in endorsing trauma, or something I thought could be tied to trauma, I would refer them out — because something inside me said, you're just not doing enough. You can maybe get people to a place where life is tolerable and their symptoms aren't as pervasive as they once were, but it never felt resolved.

So I got to a point where I said, I'm just going to refer out, because I'm not a trauma-informed therapist. And honestly — what did that even mean? At that point in my career, I was like, what does trauma-informed even mean? Then the opportunity presented itself to do an EMDR training. And I was not bought in. I kind of thought, this is that woo-woo therapy everyone talks about being really good for trauma, but I don't get it. People talk about this eye-movement stuff and how it's neuroscience-backed, but I kind of don't believe it. And part of the training I went to was that you had to do EMDR yourself.

It just so happened that two weeks before my EMDR training — I don't think I've ever told you this story, Auriel — we had an attempted break-in. It was so scary. It was the first time anyone had ever tried to break into my home. My husband and I were asleep, around two in the morning, with our little girl. We heard super loud music drive up in front of our house, and that woke me up. Seconds later, we heard someone running up the stairs to our house. My husband jumped out of bed and headed toward the staircase — the bedroom is on the second floor. I'm thinking, someone is going to come through that door. They tried to kick the door in — twice — and my heart was in my stomach, I was so scared. Then they drove off. Everything went silent. We called the police; nothing really came of the whole experience. But I was left with the panic, the anxiety, the fear — are these people going to come back and try again?

For the next two weeks, I was on eggshells in the house. I didn't want to be left home alone. I was checking the locks repeatedly — everything I tell clients I'm working with on OCD, like, don't check the locks — and I'm checking the locks every five minutes. So the EMDR training arrives, we have to go through our own EMDR, and I choose that as my target. I am not a person who cries very often, and I am just bawling in that first session as I reprocess the memory. And that night was the first night I was able to fall asleep like I used to, stay asleep like I used to, and wake up rested. What shocked me was that all the behaviors I'd been engaging in — checking the locks, not wanting to shower if my husband wasn't there, not wanting him to go out to evening meetings — disappeared. I don't know where they went. My body no longer felt the need to engage in those behaviors, and my mind finally felt at peace. That sold me on EMDR. I said, this is magic — I need to learn more about this.

After I went through the training, I realized: this is what was missing. Every time I sat with a client and it didn't feel finished — it was this. It was a piece. So that's my story: what got me into EMDR, what sold me on it. And now I'm so grateful to have it as part of my practice, because when someone sits with me and I hear all of those things, I can say — I've got you. Because I've got it. It's been such a gift to guide clients through that process.

Wow. Montana, I'm so honored to have heard that story, and I feel like people hearing this are going to be incredibly blessed by it. You said you don't tear up easily — I do, and I was tearing up as you were telling it. You know, there's an interview with Francine Shapiro back in 2009 — abroad somewhere — and the client had just terrible trauma, and there was a lot of trauma going on in the city. He disclosed, after doing EMDR, that he had been considering becoming a suicide bomber. With the amount of trauma taking place in his city, his brain wanted to advocate, and that's how it wanted to do it. And after doing EMDR, he said: I'm realizing this is not the way to serve my people. Trauma can distort so much — our sense of self, our sense of the world.

Similar to what you're saying, what I think is beautiful about the gift of EMDR: other therapeutic models are kind of just doing this to the meat in that sink. But EMDR does this finishing thing with what your body already knows how to do. It actually — we'll talk about this in one of our episodes — emulates REM. That's what our brain ultimately tries to do in REM: make sense of things, break down the experiences, consolidate everything. And to see lives transformed — amazing.

What you just said about how it distorts reality — that is so true, Auriel. The experience of my own home was so distorted, because I was safe. It was one episode, and the likelihood of it happening again was so small — but my brain made it the whole story. What it needed was to use what it already had, to reprocess that in an adaptive way, so I could move on with my life and actually see reality for what it was: a perfectly fine and safe place, other than this one thing that happened. It is such a gift. I'm glad we're ending on this note.

It's a good note to end on. Well — how do we want to wrap these up? I don't even know. That's all, folks! Just kidding.

Oh man. "And… go with that." In EMDR they say, go with that. It would be kind of hilarious if we ended with: and go with that, guys.

They can go with that, and it would just end there. We're so grateful y'all listened, and we truly are doing this for you — whoever you are. So please, in whatever way you feel comfortable, reach out to us with questions, or even stories you want to share, that can encourage your own healing — and healing across the world.