EMDR therapy is a structured approach to treating trauma and other distressing life experiences. This overview covers what EMDR is, what it treats, how a session is put together, and how you can deliver it remotely — written as a clear reference you can revisit or share with colleagues.
What EMDR therapy is
EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. It is a structured, phase-based psychotherapy in which a client briefly focuses on a distressing memory while attending to a form of bilateral stimulation — most classically, the therapist’s fingers moving back and forth across the field of vision.
The idea is that reprocessing a memory in this way helps it lose its emotional charge, so that the client can recall the event without the same intensity of distress. EMDR is a full treatment approach with its own protocol, not a single technique bolted onto talk therapy. You already know the details from your training; this article is meant as a plain-language map of the territory rather than a how-to.
If you want a short definition to hand to a client or a referrer, our FAQ entry on what EMDR is keeps it to a couple of sentences.
What EMDR treats
EMDR is best known as a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and that is where the strongest evidence sits. Several major bodies recommend it for PTSD: the World Health Organization’s 2013 guidance advises that “referral for advanced treatments such as cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) or a new technique called eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) should be considered for people suffering from PTSD” (WHO, 2013). The UK’s NICE guideline (NG116) recommends offering EMDR to adults with PTSD who present more than three months after a non-combat-related trauma (NICE, 2018).
Beyond PTSD, clinicians also apply EMDR to a range of experiences that leave a distressing imprint — anxiety, grief and loss, panic, and specific phobias among them. The evidence base outside PTSD is thinner, so how far you extend the approach is a clinical judgment that rests on your training and the individual case.
How an EMDR session is structured
EMDR is delivered in eight standard phases, from history-taking and preparation through to the reprocessing work itself and later reevaluation. Rather than repeat them here, we cover each one — with a practical note on remote delivery — in our guide to the eight phases of EMDR.
The heart of the work is the desensitization phase, where the client holds a target memory in mind in short sets while following the bilateral stimulation, checking in between sets on what shifts. A single session is usually paced so the client returns to a calm, present state before it ends, whether or not the memory is fully reprocessed.
One quick clarification
EMDR is a clinical treatment delivered by a trained therapist. It is not something a client works through alone with an app, and nothing here is a substitute for your EMDR training or your practice's protocols.
Bilateral stimulation in one paragraph
The distinctive ingredient in EMDR is bilateral stimulation: rhythmic, left-right input that the client attends to while holding a memory in mind. It can be visual (eyes tracking a moving point), auditory (tones alternating between the ears), or tactile (alternating taps). The visual moving dot is the most familiar form, and it is the one that translates most directly to a screen. For a fuller breakdown of each type and the thinking behind it, see what bilateral stimulation is.
A brief history
EMDR was originated by psychologist Francine Shapiro in the late 1980s. She has described noticing, during a walk in 1987, that certain eye movements seemed to reduce the intensity of distressing thoughts — an observation she went on to develop and test into a structured protocol. From those beginnings, EMDR grew into one of the more widely studied trauma treatments, which is how it came to feature in the WHO and NICE recommendations above.
How remote EMDR works today
The mechanics of EMDR don’t require an office. Because the bilateral stimulation can be delivered on a screen, you can run a session over any ordinary video call — Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, Skype, Doxy.me, and others all work.
CloudEMDR runs in your browser and gives you the moving dot, speed and size controls, and bilateral sound. In the free version you share your screen on the call so your client can see the dot. With Pro, you send your client a link and they see only the moving dot — smooth and full-screen, with none of your controls in view — while you keep the controls and a session timer on your side. Our remote session guide walks through the setup step by step.
Remote delivery has made EMDR reachable for clients who can’t easily get to an office, and the early research on video-conference EMDR is encouraging, if still a smaller literature than the in-person base. We look at that evidence in detail in is online EMDR effective.
Try the moving dot for free
You can explore CloudEMDR's moving dot, bilateral sound, and speed and size controls without an account. When you're ready to send clients a distraction-free link, Pro's Remote Sessions add that plus more patterns, sounds, and backgrounds — the first three weeks are free.