Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)

Jeff is EMDR Trained through the EMDR International Association (EMDRIA) approved training consultants at Intuitus Group in Cedar Park, TX led by Jennifer Madere, LPC-S, co-author of EMDR, Dissociation, and Beyond: Reexamining and Expanding the Frame for Impactful Trauma Treatment (2026).

EMDR is a gold-standard treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, phobias, panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), depression, personality disorders, addictions, and somatic conditions in adults and children.

Research and broad clinical experience indicate that most pathologies are forged by early experiences that threaten or distort one’s sense of safety, value, power, responsibility, and freedom.  These memories leave one with a negative sense of self in the realm of deep-seated beliefs and feelings of insecurity, inadequacy, inferiority, low self-worth, and loneliness and accompanying unwanted emotions often paired with distinct sensations in the body when recalling the experience itself.

These memories range from easily identified traumas such as violence, sexual assault, abuse, combat, and accidents through the more subtle negative interactions with family and peers that leave one with a lasting negative impact on one’s sense of self – especially when in similar situations.

EMDR invites a client to revisit a memory not in reliving it, but to observe it from a third-person perspective with all of one’s faculties present to the moment to process accurately and rationally the experience that were likely arrested during the shock of the experience itself.

The theory is that the body keeps the score of our past experiences to protect us from similar threats in the present and future.  This processing renders as neutral or even positive a negative or painful memory from the past that eclipses one’s ability to be fully present to an encounter given its potential triggers rooted in one’s experience and memory.

The “eye movement” of EMDR sets the treatment apart from regular “talk” therapies in that the client is invited to sit with the memory, mindful of the accompanying negative self-belief, unwanted emotions, and disturbance in the body, while engaging in a similar system of information processing that one experiences during rapid eye movement sleep (REM) with the use of left-right bilateral stimulation that actively engages the prefrontal cortex and related systems our brain possess for digesting subjective experiences into the broader objective reality. 

EMDR engages the client in the brain’s natural ability to resolve past memories by actively employing its ability to process past experiences rationally, therefore bringing restoration to the nervous system’s responses to present day situations that appear similar to past painful experiences.