EMDR therapy in Denver, CO
Some memories don't stay where they happened. A conversation from ten years ago can still raise your heart rate like it's happening right now.
A certain tone of voice, a specific street, the particular quiet before someone gets angry — and your body reacts as if no time has passed at all. That's how trauma actually gets stored: your nervous system re-living the memory instead of simply filing it away as something that already happened.
EMDR is one of the most effective forms of trauma therapy, and it can help you reclaim your life from trauma. I’m an EMDR-certified therapist, and I’ve helped hundreds of people recover from trauma, including acute and complex trauma, childhood trauma, and more.
Already know EMDR is the right fit? Schedule a free consultation → — or keep reading below.
How EMDR therapy works
While you hold a specific memory in mind — not analyzing it, not narrating it, just noticing it — you engage in bilateral stimulation, usually guided eye movements or alternating taps. This mimics the processing your brain does naturally during REM sleep, when it's sorting and filing the day's experience.
For traumatic memories, that natural filing process gets interrupted; the memory stays raw, easily triggered, stuck in present tense. EMDR reopens that filing process and lets your brain finish what it couldn't finish on its own, so the memory moves from something you're still inside of to something that happened to you, in the past, that you can think about without your whole system going on high alert.
EMDR doesn't erase the memory, and it isn't hypnosis — what changes is your relationship to it, the charge that comes out of it. Clients often describe it as the difference between a memory that used to hijack their whole day and one that's just a fact about their life now.
For the high-achievers and active professionals I see across Denver, that shift often shows up first in the body:
Sleep that actually restores you
A nervous system that isn't perpetually braced
Relationships that stop feeling like you're managing a threat
EMDR — Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing — was developed specifically for helping with recover from trauma. It's one of the most researched, most effective treatments available for trauma, PTSD, and attachment issues.
EMDR is one of the main therapy modalities I use with clients across the Denver metro area who are carrying trauma that talk therapy alone hasn't been able to touch.
The problem was never a lack of insight — you can understand exactly why you react the way you do and still not be able to stop reacting that way. EMDR works underneath that, at the level where the memory actually lives.
What EMDR helps with
How long does EMDR therapy take?
EMDR isn't something I move you through on a fixed timeline. Before we ever process a specific memory, we spend time building the internal resources you'll need to tolerate the work — a sense of safety you can return to, an awareness of what regulation actually feels like in your body.
For some clients that takes a session or two. For people carrying complex or long-standing trauma, it takes longer, and that's not a delay — it's part of the treatment. Rushing this stage is how EMDR ends up feeling overwhelming instead of relieving. I'd rather you leave every session more resourced than you walked in, even on the sessions where we're not actively processing anything yet.
If there's a memory that still runs the show more than you'd like it to, I'd like to help you finish processing it. Reach out for a free consultation to talk about whether EMDR is the right place to start.
Start EMDR therapy
FAQs
Do I have to describe what happened in detail?
1
No. You don't need to narrate the story for EMDR to work. You'll hold the memory in mind briefly while we process it — the details stay yours.
How many sessions does EMDR take?
2
It depends on what you're processing. A single, well-defined incident often moves faster than trauma that built up over years or started in childhood — we'll talk through what's realistic for your situation early on.
Does EMDR work for childhood or complex trauma, not just single incidents?
3
Yes. I work with both acute, single-incident trauma and complex, long-term trauma, including experiences from childhood — the approach adjusts based on what you're carrying.
Can EMDR be done over telehealth or online?
4
Yes. I offer EMDR by secure video session throughout Colorado,.