Welcome to the first of a series of blogs, describing each of the eight phases of EMDR.

Phase 1 of EMDR is the guiding compass of EMDR, pointing you in the right direction on your journey with EMDR. It is essentially the process by which a client chooses the memory they are going to process with EMDR for the next several weeks.

I’ve noticed that depending on the institution that an EMDR therapist was trained in, phase 1 can look differently for individual EMDR therapists. I was trained at the EMDRIA-accredited Institute for Creative Mindfulness, and I will describe how I guide a client through phase 1 as I was trained.

Identify the theme

A client often will come to EMDR therapy having a general idea of what they hope to get out of therapy. Common themes that come up for my clients are lowering their anxiety, eliminating panic attacks, ending recurrent flashbacks or nightmares, working through childhood trauma, repairing low self esteem, wanting to feel more confident, learning to say no and stand up for oneself, or having stronger boundaries in relationships. Prioritizing the theme you want to focus on is the first step. We can always get to the other themes later on in therapy.

Identify your negative beliefs regarding this theme

For the rest of this example, we’ll assume eliminating panic attacks is the theme we’re going to focus on. Once you pick the theme you’d like to work on, I will guide you through a process of identifying the negative beliefs you have about yourself regarding that theme. We review a list of negative beliefs to choose from, but quite often a client will have their own negative beliefs that come to mind. Common negative beliefs regarding panic attacks might be, “I can’t trust myself”, “I can’t handle it or stand it”, or “I am powerless/helpless.” Once you have your list of negative beliefs for your chosen theme, you will pick the strongest 3-5 negative beliefs.

Identify the memories in your life

Now that we have your strongest 3-5 negative beliefs, I will guide you through a process where you identify specific memories where you have experienced feeling each of those negative beliefs. For example, I might ask you what is the earliest memory where you felt, “I can’t trust myself”, what is the most recent memory when you felt, “I can’t trust myself,” and what is the worst memory you have where you felt, “I can’t trust myself.”

We do this process for each of the 3-5 negative beliefs you chose. By doing this, we create a list of potential memories to work on with EMDR therapy.

Choose the memory you’d like to process with EMDR

Now that you have your list of memories, I will ask you to rate how distressing each one is based on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the worst distress you can imagine. In this case, distress can mean any negative feeling, such as sadness, grief, anger, fear, anxiety, disgust, etc. If this is the first time you are participating in EMDR therapy, I would not suggest picking a memory that has a distress level of 8-10, but rather something between a 5-7. It’s best to choose a memory that is not extremely distressing so that you can get used to the EMDR process, while still making progress with your symptoms. Later on, after you’ve processed a few memories with EMDR therapy and have familiarized yourself with what to expect from each phase of EMDR, you may be ready to work on a memory that has a higher distress level.

How you might feel in phase 1

The process of reviewing memories from your past and present may bring on a bit of distress, which is understandable, as you may have pushed some of these memories down with the intention of never bringing them up. We take time to lower your distress with mindfulness exercises, which I will encourage you to practice in between sessions.

Now that you have chosen a memory to process in EMDR, you’ve completed phase 1! In my next blog post, I’ll describe the next phase of EMDR, phase 2.

Thanks for taking steps to understand the EMDR phases! If you’d like to learn more, feel free to contact me or schedule a free 15 minute consultation with me!