Trauma Therapy
Trauma has a way of living on long after the events that caused it as patterns woven into the body, the nervous system, and the ways we learned to relate to ourselves and others. This is especially true of relational and developmental trauma: the kind that didn't happen in a single moment, but accumulated over time in the context of early relationships, attachment wounds, and environments where it wasn't safe to be fully yourself. Talk therapy alone often can't reach these deeper layers — not because of some personal failing, but because trauma is stored in parts of the brain that language doesn't easily access. The approaches I use are experiential and somatic, working at the level where emotional patterns are actually held and where transformational, lasting change becomes possible.
EMDR Therapy
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is one of the most extensively researched approaches to trauma therapy available today. Originally developed for the treatment of PTSD, it has since been shown to be effective for a wide range of difficulties rooted in adverse or traumatic experience, including anxiety, depression, shame, and relational wounds.
EMDR is based on the understanding that many of the symptoms we experience like hypervigilance, emotional reactivity, the deep-seated beliefs about ourselves and others, are the result of memories that didn't get fully processed at the time they occurred. When an experience overwhelms our capacity to integrate it, it can become stored in an incomplete, fragmented way, continuing to exert influence on how we feel and function in the present. EMDR works by helping the brain return to those unprocessed memories and complete the processing that couldn't happen at the time, updating them at the level of emotional memory.
The way I practice EMDR is relational and attachment-focused. Before any trauma processing begins, we spend time building your internal resources — a felt sense of safety, support, and capacity that you can draw on throughout our work together. Processing happens gradually and at a pace that feels manageable for your nervous system.
EMDR sessions involve bilateral or dual-attention stimulation such as back and forth eye movements, tapping, or audio tones, which support the brain's natural processing capacity while accessing target memories. Many clients are surprised by how little they need to verbalize during EMDR; the processing happens largely beneath the level of language, in the parts of the brain where the experience was originally stored.
Brainspotting
Brainspotting was developed in 2003 by psychotherapist David Grand, who noticed that where his clients looked with their eyes seemed to directly access where they held emotional or traumatic experiences in their brains. At its heart, Brainspotting is built on a simple but profound observation that the visual field is a map of the nervous system. By finding and holding a specific eye position or a "brainspot" that corresponds to a particular emotional or somatic experience, the brain is able to access and process material that is often too deep or too pre-verbal to reach through talking alone.
Brainspotting, like EMDR, works at the level of implicit memory — the stored emotional learnings that shape how we feel, relate, and move through the world — and engages the brain's innate capacity for healing and integration. While EMDR tends to be more structured and uses bilateral stimulation to facilitate processing, Brainspotting is more open and flexible, inviting the brain to follow its own processing wherever it needs to go. Some clients find one approach resonates more than the other; sometimes folks want to start with one but end up choosing the other as they realizew it fits better with how their brains process.
Brainspotting is particularly well suited to relational and developmental trauma, as well as experiences of shame, chronic emotional pain, and trauma held deeply in the body. Because so much of early relational wounding is pre-verbal, Brainspotting's ability to work beneath language can make it especially powerful for this kind of material. It is also remarkably effective for anxiety, performance difficulties, and the kind of chronic dysregulation that can make everyday life feel exhausting.
Sessions typically involve identifying a brainspot together, then holding that eye position while attending to whatever arises internally, such as sensations, images, emotions, memories, impulses, thoughts. This approach makes use of bilateral stimulation through something called Bio-lateral Sounds. The bilateral stimulation aids in integration between the two brain hemispheres and also helps with nervous system regulation. The process is largely internal and doesn't require you to narrate your experience as it unfolds. Many clients describe Brainspotting as feeling simultaneously deep and gentle — a process that goes to places talk therapy couldn't reach, without feeling overwhelming.
What EMDR & Brainspotting Have in Common
EMDR and Brainspotting are different in their methods and their feel, but they share a common foundation and a common understanding of what trauma is and how lasting change actually happens.
Both approaches recognise that trauma is an experience from the past that continues to live in the body and the nervous system in the present. Both work experientially rather than purely verbally, engaging the parts of the brain where emotional memory is actually stored — the parts that talking about an experience doesn't easily reach. And both are grounded in the neuroscience of memory reconsolidation: the brain's innate capacity to revisit emotional learnings that were formed in earlier, more overwhelming times, and update them in light of new experience. What distinguishes them from approaches that manage or cope with symptoms is that they target the root of the pattern and create the conditions for something to actually shift at its source.
The change clients can experience through these approaches is transformational— a genuine shift in how you relate to yourself, to others, and to the experiences that once felt defining. Many clients describe a sense of the past becoming more truly past and no longer something being carried into every present moment, but something that happened and is now over.
The approach I bring to both modalities is relational and attachment-focused. The therapeutic relationship is big part of the healing. For many people, especially those whose trauma is rooted in early relational experience, being accompanied with steadiness, attunement, and genuine care while moving through difficult material is itself a new and transformative experience.
Frequently Asked Questions
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No. Because EMDR and Brainspotting work beneath the level of language, you don't need to narrate your experience in detail for processing to happen. You may share as much or as little as feels right to you. Many clients find this a relief, particularly those who have tried talk therapy and found that retelling their story didn't seem to create any meaningful change.
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These approaches can be helpful for a wide range of experiences, including childhood and developmental trauma, relational wounds, attachment difficulties, anxiety, depression, shame, grief, and chronic emotional or physical pain. They are particularly well suited for people who feel they understand their patterns intellectually but find that understanding alone hasn't shifted how they feel. If you've tried talk therapy and felt like something deeper remained out of reach, these approaches may be worth exploring. That said, we would always begin with a thorough assessment to make sure we're moving in a direction that feels right and workable for you.
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This varies considerably from person to person and depends on the nature and complexity of what you're bringing. Some people notice meaningful shifts relatively quickly; others, particularly those working with complex or developmental trauma, find that the work unfolds over a longer period of time. Rather than working toward a fixed number of sessions, I prefer to check in regularly about how the work is feeling and where you want to go with it.
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Sessions typically begin with a check-in around how the material has been sitting with you since our last meeting. From there we might move into processing, resourcing, or simply staying with whatever is coming up. Not every session will involve active trauma processing — sometimes the most important work is building the internal resources and therapeutic relationship that can make deeper processing possible and safe.
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No. You don't need a formal diagnosis of PTSD or any other diagnosis to benefit from trauma-focused therapy. Many people who find this work transformative wouldn't identify as having "trauma" in the clinical sense — they simply carry experiences, patterns, or a felt sense of being stuck that has proven difficult to shift. If something in how you feel or function is getting in the way of living the life you want, that's reason enough to explore these approaches.
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Yes. Both approaches can be conducted effectively online. Many clients are surprised to find that online sessions can feel just as connected and effective as in-person work. For EMDR conducted online, bilateral stimulation is typically delivered through tapping or audio tones though eye movements can also be used. Brainspotting translates particularly well to an online format, as the core of the work — finding and holding a brainspot while attending to internal experience — requires very little adaptation. If you're unsure whether online therapy would work for you, we can talk it through during a consultation.
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This is a question I get a lot and something I take seriously. EMDR can be a powerful approach, but when it's practiced in a way that moves too quickly, doesn't adequately resource the client first, or doesn't attend carefully enough to the therapeutic relationship, it can feel overwhelming or even retraumatizing. If that's been your experience, it makes complete sense that you'd approach it with hesitation. The way I practice EMDR is relational and attachment-focused — meaning we move at a pace that your nervous system can actually integrate, we build internal resources before going anywhere near trauma processing, and your sense of safety in the process is always the priority. A difficult past experience with EMDR doesn't mean it can't be done differently, and it doesn't have to necessarily mean it isn't right for you— it may just mean it needed a different approach.
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Talk therapy works primarily through insight and understanding, making sense of your patterns, exploring their origins, developing new perspectives. This is genuinely valuable, and for many people it's an important part of the work. But for trauma that is stored in the body and the implicit memory system, insight often isn't enough on it’s own. You can understand exactly why you feel the way you do and still feel it just as intensely. EMDR and Brainspotting work differently — they engage the brain at the level where emotional memory is actually held, creating the conditions for patterns to be updated at their root rather than just understood intellectually. The change that results tends to feel less like learning something new about yourself, and more like something genuinely shifting in how you carry your experience.
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