The 8 Phases of EMDR: What Actually Happens (and How Long It Really Takes)

The 8 phases of EMDR describe the formal structure of the work. That structure is useful. It tells you the shape of the work. It doesn’t tell you how long each part actually takes, and that phases 1 and 2 aren’t a warm-up for the “real” work. For many people, especially those with childhood trauma or complex trauma, it’s most of the work.

Phase 1: Evaluation

This is where I get to know you and your situation: your strengths, the broader context of your life, what’s brought you here, and how things have developed over time. We create a list of the worst things that happened to you. Not the story. Just a label. The age at which it started. The age at which it ended. How intense it feels today — not back then.

You can even choose to give it a label that has nothing to do with the event. So you choose what you want to disclose and what not. Though you need to remember what the label referred to, since I won’t. Sometimes, clients choose to break down the list into smaller pieces each session to make it more digestible. Taking breaks and grounding while creating the list are always an option.

We will define what you want out of our work together, both long-term and short-term, and identify what might get in the way.

We’ll explore your capacity to stay within your window of tolerance and watch for signs of dissociation or inner fragmentation — because these shape everything about how phase 2 needs to go.

By the end of this phase, we agree on how we want to work together. That plan isn’t fixed. It gets reviewed and adjusted as we learn more.

Phase 2: Preparation

This is the phase most explanations of EMDR compress into a paragraph. It deserves more than that.

When I used EMDR in my own healing from childhood trauma, I barely lived through a preparation phase. I’d already built the skills it usually requires — through years of other work first. Whether that’s your experience too depends on where you are in your own healing when we start. If you’ve already done significant work elsewhere, preparation may be brief. If you’re earlier in the process, it usually isn’t — and that’s not a problem to fix; it’s just where you are.

Preparation is where we build the capacity that makes memory processing safe. It’s not a formality to get through; it often is the work if you have experienced childhood trauma or complex trauma. We built the foundation on which everything else depends. This includes:

• Skills for tolerating emotion without becoming overwhelmed or shut down — grounding, self-soothing, and understanding your own trauma responses and also the capacity to know when to stop.
• Enough connection with your body to notice what’s happening in it during processing and be able to be in your body when we start to process memories.
• Capacity to set boundaries: The skill to say no when parts don’t want to do emdr or the skill to assert the need for grounding.  Sound simple? It often isn’t due to the power dynamics in the therapeutic relationship, especially after relational trauma.
• Consent from all parts of you — not just the part that shows up to sessions and follows instructions, but the parts that would actually be affected by what we’re processing
• The capacity to voice a boundary or say something feels off — harder than it sounds if compliance has always felt safer than honesty

How long this takes varies enormously. For a single discrete event, it might be a few sessions. For anyone with a longer or more relational experience of trauma, it can be considerably longer — and that’s not a delay before trauma recovery starts. It is trauma recovery. Read more: What is trauma?

Phase 3: Assessment

When we follow the standard process, we agree on a memory to work with. That’s most likely if you have experienced a single incident trauma or relational trauma as an adult. The memory can be one event or the complete relationship. Alternatively, we can work with an activated part in the present – that’s more likely for adults with childhood trauma and complex trauma and reduces the risk of dysregulation.

Before we start with the processing, I guide you to connect with an inner resource of safety, a skill built in phase 2. Then we identify the specific components of the memory: the image that represents the worst part of it, the negative belief you formed about yourself, what you’d rather believe instead, and the emotions and body sensations connected to it. You’ll also rate the intensity of the emotion and the current believability of the positive belief.

Phase 4: Reprocessing (Desensitization)

This is the phase most people picture when they think of EMDR. You hold the memory in mind while following bilateral stimulation. I either use my finger or butterfly tapping to guide clients as a visual cue, or we use sounds.  After each set, we pause, you tell me what came up, and we continue. You can choose how much you want to disclose. Some clients share more; others choose to just share emotions like “shame” or “anger.”

We repeat this until the memory’s emotional charge drops to zero, or as close to it as we can get. This might happen in one session. More often, especially for anything beyond a single clear incident, it takes several. If a memory or part isn’t shifting after a number of sessions, that’s not a sign EMDR “isn’t working” — it usually means something in phase 2 needs more attention, or a part hasn’t fully consented to what we’re doing.

After each memory processing session, we’ll return the memory in an imaginary container, or we’ll invite the part to use a safe place. Both are skills that I guide you to develop in Phase 2.

So, here’s where it sometimes isn’t that straightforward. EMDR usually assumes that we use a complete session for processing. Especially for adults with childhood trauma or complex trauma, this may not fully work. Not because there’s something wrong with you, just because your body has its limits. In this case, we do EMDR memory processing for maybe 10 min or 30 min and then focus on something else in the session. The rule is: if you use dual awareness, it’s time to ground and bring yourself back to the present.

Phase 5: Installation

Once the memory’s charge has come down, we strengthen the positive belief you’d rather hold — concentrating on it alongside the memory until it feels true in your body, not just true in theory.

Phase 6: Body Scan

With the memory and the positive belief both held in mind, we check the body for any remaining tension or discomfort. If something’s there, we return to eye movements to work through it.

Phase 7: Closure

Every session ends with closure, whether or not full reprocessing happened. If we’re mid-processing, I’ll guide you to contain what’s been opened — often through visualization — so you leave regulated rather than activated. A memory is considered fully processed when its emotional charge is at zero, the positive belief feels fully true, and the body scan is clear.

Phase 8: Re-evaluation

At the start of each new session, we check in on what’s shifted since the last one and adjust the plan if needed. If a memory was fully processed previously, we confirm it’s still at an emotional intensity of zero and look at what’s next.

What the 8 Phases of EMDR miss

One thing the EMDR protocol doesn’t include is the relationship you have with the person guiding it. That matters — especially if relational trauma is part of what you’re healing. It starts before we even begin working together, often with how someone experiences an intake call, or what they read on a page like this one. A healthy, honest and predictable relationship is the container that makes co-regulation and self-trust possible. The phases of EMDR can’t capture that. That’s why I use EMDR within the Integrative Trauma Recovery Model™, my approach to trauma counselling, which treats these 8 phases as one part of a larger process rather than the whole of it. Read more: Warning signs of therapy harm.

These 8 phases of EMDR describe the structure of memory processing. But this structure isn’t the same as your experience of it. Many clients don’t follow the structure as straightforwardly as the protocol says. What phases 1, 2, and 3 actually require depends heavily on what you’re healing from:

If you’re processing a single, discrete event, or relational trauma as an adult that isn’t rooted in childhood trauma, an accident, a specific assault, an abusive relationship, or workplace bullying, this structure will likely map fairly closely to what you go through. Preparation may be relatively brief, and processing can move efficiently. Read more: EMDR Therapy for Trauma Recovery.

If you’re an adult with childhood trauma, phases 1 and 2 usually aren’t a few sessions. They’re the foundation everything else depends on. Most survivors don’t have explicit memories to target, which can make EMDR feel out of reach, but we can bridge the gap. We work with what’s actually there: activated parts, body sensations, present-day triggers that carry the implicit memory. Standard EMDR alone still typically isn’t enough on its own; it misses attachment wounds, but the absence of a clear memory isn’t what stops it. Read more: EMDR for Childhood Trauma.

If you have experienced complex trauma, ongoing, relational, without a clear beginning or end, EMDR by itself has real limits. The recommended approach is multimodal, drawing from several trauma-focused modalities. I use EMDR alongside parts work and somatic approaches, and we’ll also work with dissociation and attachment wounds. Read more: IFS or EMDR for Complex Trauma.

Not sure which of these describes you? That’s perfectly normal. Trauma exists on a spectrum, and the boundaries between a painful experience and trauma are often blurry. That’s worth bringing into a conversation. I work with a wide spectrum of experiences, and you don’t need to identify with having ‘trauma’ to reach out.

Book a free consultation online — let’s explore whether working together makes sense

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