EMDR & Sensorimotor Therapy

You might have spent time in therapy, developed real insight into your patterns, made sense of your history. And yet something persists. A reaction that feels out of proportion, a way of responding in relationships that you can see but can’t seem to change, a physical tension that shows up in certain situations and won’t let go.

That’s often because what needs to shift isn’t held in thought or narrative. It’s held in the body and nervous system, in responses that were formed through experience and haven’t yet had the chance to update.

EMDR and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy work directly with this. They’re approaches I draw on within individual therapy when insight and reflection haven’t quite been enough, helping the nervous system process what the thinking mind already understands, so that change becomes possible at a deeper level.

Where these approaches are useful

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These aren’t only tools for people who identify with trauma. They’re useful wherever there’s a gap between what someone knows and what they feel and do, which often includes:

– Relational patterns with deep roots that haven’t shifted through talking alone

– Attachment wounds and the ways early experience shapes present relationships

– Strong physical or emotional reactions in particular situations, conflict, closeness, criticism, abandonment, that feel hard to manage or explain

– A sense of being stuck at a level that insight hasn’t reached

– Trauma and its aftermath, including complex or developmental trauma, and experiences that other therapy hasn’t quite touched

The approaches I draw on

Two distinct pathways – both grounded in neuroscience, both focused on lasting change.

EMDR – Reprocessing the past so it stays there

Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) is one of the most extensively researched treatments for trauma and PTSD, and its applications are increasingly broader than that.

Part of why certain experiences, or patterns formed through experience, can be so persistent is that different parts of the system hold them in different ways. The left brain remembers the story. The right brain carries the emotion. The body holds the felt sense of what happened. When these pieces don’t come together, the mind struggles to register something as resolved. It can linger in the present instead, showing up as reactivity, tension or responses that feel automatic and hard to shift.

EMDR works directly with this. Through guided bilateral stimulation, it re-engages both sides of the brain while gently revisiting the experience- helping the nervous system process and integrate what hasn’t yet been resolved, so it can begin to feel like the past rather than the present.

EMDR doesn’t require you to talk through every detail of what happened, and it doesn’t erase memories. Most people find it less exposing than they expect, and often more effective than years of talking alone.

Sensorimotor Psychotherapy – the body as a doorway to change

Sensorimotor Psychotherapy works with the body’s role in how we hold our experiences. When something overwhelming happens, or when patterns are formed early through repeated relational experiences, the nervous system responds. Those responses can become fixed in ways we don’t always notice: tension, hypervigilance, numbness, the urge to flee or shut down. These aren’t just psychological reactions – they’re physical ones too.

This approach brings together body awareness, attachment theory and insights from neuroscience, helping you make sense of what’s happening in your body and in your head, physically, emotionally and mentally. Because many people with trauma find body-based work intimidating or out of reach, there’s no expectation that you’ll suddenly feel comfortable being in your body. Instead, we gently notice whatever is there: a breath, a gesture, a sensation, or even numbness. These small signals can show the familiar, automatic ways your system has learned to cope, and how those habits shape how you see yourself, your relationships and the world around you. From there, change can unfold at a pace that feels safe and manageable.

Sensorimotor Psychotherapy can be especially useful when other approaches haven’t quite reached the root of things. It can also be a supportive precursor to EMDR, helping to build the stability, grounding and body awareness that make EMDR work feel safer and more effective.