Post-traumatic stress
The most researched use of EMDR. Intrusive memories, flashbacks, nightmares, hypervigilance, and the avoidance that builds up around them. More on EMDR for PTSD.
EMDR Therapy in NYC
Online EMDR therapy across New York State
Trauma therapy for adults across New York, delivered online. Available in-network and out-of-network, with your benefits verified before the first session.
In-network and out-of-network
Benefits verified before your first session
Why People Come To Us For EMDR
You understand what happened. Your body has not caught up.
Most people who ask us about EMDR have already done therapy, and done it well. They can explain their history clearly. They know which experience shaped which pattern. And the reaction still arrives on schedule, in the meeting, in the relationship, at two in the morning.
That gap between understanding something and no longer feeling it is not a failure of effort. It is one of the most consistently reported experiences in trauma treatment, and it is a large part of why EMDR was developed as a separate approach.
EMDR works on the memory itself rather than on your insight about it. For a lot of people, that is the difference between managing something well and being finished with it.
It tends to be a fit when you recognize some of this:
- A memory that still feels present tense, however long ago it happened
- Reactions that outsize the situation in front of you, and that you cannot reason your way out of
- Insight that has not translated into relief, even after years of good therapy
- Subjects, places or people you route around to stay steady
- Fatigue that rest does not resolve
- The private sense that you should be past this by now
Understanding why something happened and no longer flinching when it comes back are two different pieces of work.
In Plain Language
What EMDR therapy actually is
EMDR/ ee em dee ar /
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing
A structured, eight-phase psychotherapy developed for trauma, in which you hold a distressing memory in mind while your attention is guided back and forth through eye movements, alternating sounds or taps, so that the memory can be processed and stored differently.
The theory is more ordinary than the name suggests. Most experiences get processed and filed away: the details fade, the charge drops, and the thing becomes a memory you can describe without reliving. When an experience is overwhelming enough, that filing does not finish. The memory stays stored with the original images, sensations and beliefs attached, which is why recalling it feels less like remembering and more like being there.
EMDR is an attempt to help that unfinished processing complete. You bring the memory up in a contained, structured way while doing something that occupies your attention on both sides at once. Over a set of short rounds, most people notice the memory becoming less vivid and easier to hold in mind.
What tends to surprise people is how little explaining is required. EMDR does not ask you to narrate the event in detail or make a case for why it affected you. You bring the memory to mind and report what you notice. How much you say out loud stays your decision throughout.
It is worth being precise about what it does not do. EMDR does not erase memories and does not make you forget. Nothing about it is hypnosis, and you stay awake, aware and in control throughout. The goal is not that the event disappears, but that it settles into something that happened to you rather than something still happening to you.
EMDR has its strongest research base in post-traumatic stress, where it is recognized as an established treatment. It is not a cure and it is not right for every person or every problem.
Sessions run online, with adults across New York State.
The Shape Of The Work
What actually happens in EMDR sessions
The eight phases sound clinical written down. In practice they move at whatever pace you can hold, and nothing happens that you have not been walked through first.
Phases one and two
History, planning and preparation
The first sessions are conversation. What brought you here, what your history looks like, what you hope changes, what has already been tried. Then comes preparation, the part good EMDR therapists refuse to rush. You learn grounding skills and practice them while nothing difficult is happening, so they are there when something is. Nobody touches a traumatic memory until this part is solid.
Phase three
Choosing a target and taking a reading
Together you pick a specific memory, often a single image that stands in for the rest of it, along with the belief about yourself that came attached to it. You rate how disturbing it feels right now on a simple scale, so you both have a baseline to measure against later.
Phases four to six
Processing, and what that is like
You hold the memory in mind while following a form of bilateral stimulation, a rhythm that moves your attention from one side to the other. It runs in short sets. Then you stop, your therapist asks what you noticed, and whatever came up starts the next set. Your mind tends to move on its own during this, and there is no right answer to produce. When the memory settles, the work turns toward strengthening a more accurate belief and checking whether your body still holds any of it.
Phase seven
Closing the session properly
Every session is closed deliberately, whether or not the memory finished processing. You use the grounding skills from the preparation phase and talk about what to expect over the coming days, because processing often continues quietly. You leave with a plan for the week rather than with something left open.
Phase eight
Checking in, then deciding what is next
The next session begins by revisiting what you worked on. Has the charge stayed down. Did anything new surface. From there you keep going, move to the next memory, or step back and stabilize if that is what the week showed. There is no fixed number of sessions.
The Format Question
Does EMDR actually work over video?
Every session here runs online, so this is usually the first thing people want settled. Bilateral stimulation is the part they ask about, and it is the part that adapts most readily. The rest of the protocol is conversation and skills work, which telehealth carries without alteration.
Of the eight phases, most are history taking, preparation, assessment, closure and review. The phase people picture is desensitization, where you hold a memory in mind while your attention moves rhythmically from one side to the other. That rhythm is the bilateral stimulation, and it comes three ways.
Route One
Eye movements on screen
You follow a moving target with your eyes: your therapist moving a hand in the camera frame, or a dot moving across a shared screen. Eye movements are the form used most often in the research, and they transfer to a screen without much adjustment.
Route Two
Tapping you do yourself
Alternating taps on your own knees or shoulders, sometimes called a butterfly hug. This is standard in EMDR whether or not anyone else is in the room, so it is not a workaround invented for telehealth. Plenty of people prefer it.
Route Three
Alternating tones
Sound moving between your left and right ear through headphones. Useful if your eyes tire, or if you would rather close them for the processing itself.
The honest limits of what we know
EMDR has a strong evidence base for post-traumatic stress, built mostly on in-person delivery. The research on EMDR over video is younger and smaller. What exists is encouraging, and telehealth psychotherapy has held up well under study, but anyone telling you the two are proven identical is going further than the evidence does. What we can say is that the protocol is fully deliverable online, and that if it is not working for you we will say so.
Inside The Hour
How a session runs over video
Not the first session, which is mostly history and questions. This is a processing session, once the preparation phase is done.
First ten minutes
Checking the week, then agreeing a stop signal
How the days since the last session went, then a deliberate check that you are steady enough to work today. Some weeks the answer is no, and that is a legitimate session too. If you are steady, you return briefly to the resources built in preparation: a calm place, a steadying image, a breath that works. Then you agree on a stop signal, usually a raised hand or a word, so you can pause any set at any point.
The processing itself
Short sets with a pause between them
Sets run roughly half a minute each. After each one you stop, breathe, and say what came up in a few words. No analyzing required, and nothing you need to perform. Then the next set. Those frequent pauses are also the natural places to stop, which is part of why the format works as well as it does over video.
Last ten minutes
Closing before you log off
Grounding again, orienting to where you actually are, naming what you will do next. This matters more online rather than less, because closing a laptop returns you to your day without the commute that would otherwise give a session time to settle.
Your End Of It
What you need to do this from home
Less than people expect. Nothing to buy, nothing to install beyond a browser. The first list below is the whole requirement. The second is preference.
The one thing worth real thought is privacy: a room you can close and an uninterrupted hour.
What is actually required
The short list
- A private hour somewhere you will not be interrupted.
- An internet connection steady enough for video. A hotspot usually works.
- A device with a camera, propped up rather than held, so your hands are free.
- Headphones, which matter more than the device does.
- To be physically in New York State, where your clinician is licensed to treat you.
Helps, but optional
Small things people end up glad of
- Water and tissues within reach.
- A blanket or a sweater, since processing can leave you feeling cold.
- A dropped-connection plan agreed in advance. If the video cuts out, your clinician calls you within a couple of minutes and you either carry on or close the session by phone.
Where It Is Used
What EMDR is used for
EMDR was developed for trauma and that is where its evidence is strongest. It is used more broadly, and it is worth knowing which is which rather than being told it works for everything.
Single-incident trauma
A car accident, an assault, a medical emergency. One clear event your system has not been able to put down.
Childhood and repeated trauma
When the harm was a long pattern rather than one event. This is slower work, and it needs considerably more preparation before anything is processed.
Grief that stays stuck
Where mourning has caught on one moment and stayed there. EMDR can work on that stuck point without asking you to stop grieving.
Anxiety attached to a specific event
Panic or dread that traces back to something that actually happened, rather than free-floating worry. Fear of driving after a crash, of hospitals after a scare.
Distressing memories that keep resurfacing
Experiences that meet no diagnostic threshold and still take up room. You do not need a diagnosis to be carrying something worth treating.
One caveat
EMDR is one good option, not the only one. Trauma-focused cognitive behavioral approaches have strong evidence too, and for some people a different therapy or a combination is the better route. The question worth raising at a consultation is whether EMDR is right for you.
Not sure whether this is the right approach for you?
Fit And Timing
EMDR may not be the right fit if you are...
Trauma processing asks something real of your nervous system, and starting at the wrong moment can leave you worse off. These are the situations where we would usually recommend a different first step.
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In crisis right now, or not safe today
If you are having thoughts of ending your life, are in danger from someone, or are in an acute emergency, memory processing is not the first job. Safety comes first. If you are in immediate danger, call 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, or 911.
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Using substances to get through the day
When drinking or drug use is the main way the day is being managed, processing trauma can raise distress faster than your current coping can absorb. That usually means building support around substance use first.
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Experiencing significant dissociation
If you regularly lose time or feel detached from yourself, EMDR can still be appropriate, but it calls for much more preparation and pacing, and sometimes for a clinician with more advanced dissociation training than we hold.
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Living with unmanaged psychosis or severe untreated mania
Active psychosis or an unstable bipolar picture calls for psychiatric care and stabilization before trauma processing is considered, and the most useful thing we can do is say so.
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Still living inside the situation
If the situation is ongoing, processing it as past is not yet possible, because it is not past. The work then is safety, support and practical change, and that is real therapy too.
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Without a reliably private hour at home
Because sessions run online, the room is yours to arrange, which suits most people well. It does not work if there is nowhere you can reliably be alone for an hour. That is usually solvable, and it is worth solving before processing starts rather than during it.
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Hoping for a small number of sessions and a clean ending
EMDR can move faster than people expect, and it often does not. A single incident in an otherwise steady life is a different project from something that ran for years. If you need a guaranteed timeline in order to commit, no honest clinician can give you one.
A note on sequence
None of this is a rejection. Most of it is order of operations. A consultation is where we work out whether EMDR makes sense for you now, later, or not at all. Read more about how the practice works.
Coverage
Using your insurance
EMDR is billed as psychotherapy like any other session, so most plans treat it the way they treat the rest of your therapy.
How verification works
Magenta Therapy is available in-network and out-of-network. When you contact us we take your insurance details and check your plan before anything is scheduled, so you know what you are responsible for before the first session rather than after it. If we are out-of-network for your plan, we provide superbills you can submit toward out-of-network reimbursement.
Which plans we work with, and how billing is handled, are set out on our insurance page. There is also a longer piece on EMDR therapy and insurance coverage in New York.
Who You Would Be Working With
Your EMDR therapist
EMDR at Magenta Therapy is provided by clinicians who have completed EMDRIA-approved training, working online with adults across New York State.
Keep Reading
More on EMDR in New York
Common Questions
Questions people ask about EMDR
Is EMDR therapy covered by insurance in New York?
EMDR is delivered as psychotherapy by a licensed clinician, so under most plans it is treated like other therapy. Coverage still depends on your specific plan. Magenta Therapy is in-network with many major plans and verifies your benefits before the first session. If we are out-of-network for your plan, we provide superbills you can submit toward out-of-network reimbursement.
Does EMDR work over video, or do I need to be in the room?
EMDR is delivered online routinely, and the bilateral stimulation is adapted rather than dropped. Over video that usually means following a moving visual on screen, listening to alternating tones through headphones, or a tapping method your therapist guides you through. Magenta Therapy is an online practice serving adults across New York State, so all of our EMDR is provided this way.
Do I need to live in New York City to work with you?
No. Magenta Therapy is an online practice and works with adults anywhere in New York State, from the city to the Hudson Valley, Long Island, the Capital Region, Central and Western New York and the North Country. What matters is being physically in New York during your sessions.
What if I do not have a private space at home?
It is solvable more often than people expect. Parked cars are the most common answer. Headphones make a shared home workable, and some clients use an empty room at work or a library study room. If there is genuinely nowhere, say so in the consultation and we will work out what is possible.
How many EMDR sessions will I need?
There is no honest fixed answer. A single distressing event in someone whose life is otherwise stable can move in a handful of processing sessions. Trauma that ran for years, or started in childhood, needs a longer preparation phase and more time overall. Any clinician who promises a number before meeting you is guessing.
Do I have to describe what happened to me in detail?
No, and this is one of the reasons people choose EMDR. The processing phases ask you to bring the memory to mind and report what you notice, not to narrate the event in full or justify why it affected you. Your therapist needs enough history to plan safely, but you control how much detail you say out loud.
Is EMDR safe, and can it make me feel worse?
EMDR is a well-established trauma treatment, and it can also be temporarily uncomfortable. It is common to feel tired afterwards, to notice emotions surfacing during the week, or to have more vivid dreams while processing continues. That is why the preparation phase exists and why every session is closed deliberately with grounding. If distress stays high between sessions, the pace changes.
When is EMDR not the right treatment?
Trauma processing is usually not the first step if you are in acute crisis or not currently safe, if substance use is the main thing holding the day together, if you experience significant dissociation without substantial preparation, if psychosis or severe mania is unmanaged, or if the harm is ongoing. Safety comes first. It is a question of sequence rather than a permanent no.
Who provides EMDR at Magenta Therapy, and what is their training?
Isabelle Randall, LMSW, provides EMDR at Magenta Therapy, working online with adults across New York State. She has completed an EMDRIA-approved basic training in EMDR. She does not hold the EMDRIA certification that sits above basic training.
Getting Started
Start with a consultation
A free consultation is a conversation about whether EMDR is the right approach for you at this point. We will take your insurance details, verify your benefits, and answer any questions you have, including the ones about cost.
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