Your brain and body are wired for healing. Here’s how EMDR therapy can work with your sensitive qualities to enhance your wellbeing.

Quick refresher… what is EMDR?

You’ve likely heard stories about the transformative power of EMDR therapy. Short for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, EMDR is an evidence-based modality that heals trauma in a safe, structured, and lasting way.

EMDR utilizes body-based techniques (called bilateral stimulation) to rewire neural networks and decrease the emotional charge of distressing memories. At the end of an EMDR processing session, the brain and body are able to digest painful experiences and store them in their proper place – in a metaphorical filing cabinet labeled “THE PAST.”

In the words of Francine Shapiro, founder of EMDR therapy:

EMDR is about “getting past your past.”

Going beyond talk therapy, this modality works at the brain-body level to address pain at its roots. It’s about treating the source of distress (that painful thing that happened X years ago), and not just the symptoms (the anxious feelings you have right now). EMDR guides you to notice how:

the past gets “stuck” in the brain and body, becoming stored as emotional and physical pain
your awareness (where and how you direct your attention) impacts your mind-body experience
the way your brain stores memories (visually, cognitively, somatically, and/or emotionally) can shift across time

Okay, and what about EMDR therapy for highly sensitive people (HSPs)?

As a highly sensitive person, you’re wondering if EMDR therapy will actually work for you. You want to make sure that this modality won't overwhelm your finely tuned nervous system.

Because you feel everything so deeply, you don't want to go too fast or too soon into the healing process. You know how hard it can be to close those doors once they’re opened.

As a therapist who specializes in EMDR therapy for highly sensitive people, I’ll share how this modality can work beautifully with the HSP neurotype.

Keep in mind, of course, that each person's experience with EMDR therapy is different, and that there is no guaranteed outcome for any therapeutic process.

Here are some general ways that EMDR may support you.

#1: Learn to regulate the nervous system.

EMDR therapy begins with resourcing. Through guided mind-body practices – such as Calm Place, Inner Ally, and Healing Light Stream – you will learn to access states of calm and peace within your nervous system. You will become familiar with your psychological landscape and find pathways to the places that feel neutral, positive, and even joyful.

EMDR will teach you how to manage distressing energy. You know how your nervous system soaks up sensory input like a sponge in a rainstorm? By the end of the day, you’re carrying not only your emotional baggage, but also splotches of energy from other people and the environment.

In moments of overwhelm, you might need a space to step away from all that energy – mentally, emotionally, physically. There’s an EMDR resourcing practice for that: Containment.

Check out this 6-minute video to learn more.

The resourcing phase of EMDR may span across a few weeks or several months, depending on the needs and pacing of your nervous system. There is no rush and no timeline. The purpose of resourcing is to equip you with skills to soothe your nervous system and navigate through challenging emotions.

The best part of resourcing for HSPs? It’s a highly creative process.

You get to use your natural HSP strengths – your rich inner world, vivid imagination, insightfulness, and profound appreciation of beauty. With the guidance of your EMDR therapist, you’ll create a toolkit of internal resources, personalized to you – such as a calm place that you can visualize in stunning detail; or an inner ally that you can feel and sense as if they were in the room with you.

#2: Process painful experiences.

The next phase of EMDR is reprocessing. Your therapist will guide you to identify a distressing memory, and then bring that memory into conscious awareness. For many HSPs, common stressors and trauma include:

the pain of not belonging
experiences of rejection (those “you’re too sensitive” and “get over it already” moments)
burnout and vicarious trauma (intensely feeling the pain of others and the weight of injustice)
relationship challenges (struggling to trust and connect, fearing abandonment, grieving losses and endings)
difficult childhood experiences (especially if you were raised by insensitive caregivers or in overwhelming environments)
ongoing struggles, stressors, and traumas as an adult, particularly as the HSP neurotype intersects with other facets of identity (gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, culture, religion, dis/ability, socioeconomic status, etc.)

Pause and take a breath here.

Don’t worry — you will not have to go into your whole life history, all at once. That would be extremely overwhelming. Instead, you will pick specific, digestible pieces of the past to work through.

You’ll pick 1 memory (or cluster of interconnected memories) to begin reprocessing. Your therapist will guide you through sets of bilateral stimulation – such as alternating eye movements, self-tapping, audio tones, or another body-based technique — to facilitate communication between the brain hemispheres. Across sets of bilateral stimulation, you will experience emotional, somatic, mental, and physical shifts.

Through the natural wisdom of your nervous system, your brain’s relationship to the memory will orient toward healing.

Before EMDR

A bee sting at age 6 might lead you to:

fear all bees (even as an adult, decades later)
feel extremely anxious when you think about bees
believe “I’m powerless” and “the world is not safe” when you see a bee

After EMDR

When you think of the bee sting memory:

you’ll notice that it is just a memory — it no longer hurts to remember
your body feels neutral
you can see and hear bees without having a strong reaction
you have a felt sense of “I’m okay” and “I trust myself”

Here’s why EMDR reprocessing can work well for many highly sensitive people.

As an HSP, you are wired to notice subtleties and nuances. You have capacity for deep, complex processing. These HSP traits tend to be assets in EMDR therapy – because the only thing you need to do during EMDR reprocessing is to notice your experience.

That’s it. Just notice. You don’t have to make anything happen. You don’t have to force yourself to think or feel a certain way. And you definitely don’t need to “tone down” your sensitivity (as if that’s even possible).

As you notice what is happening within you – the ebb and flow of emotions, the passing of thoughts in your mind, the subtle shifts of energy in your body – you are embodying the awareness that allows healing to happen. Your brilliant brain and body do the rest of the work.

#3: Increase self-compassion.

The final phase of EMDR therapy is integration. Once the processing of a memory is complete, you will leave the past in the past and experience yourself in a new way.

The negative beliefs you may have internalized from a past experience (“I’m bad,” “I’m a failure,” “I’m powerless”) will transform into neutral or positive beliefs (“I'm good enough,” “I'm okay,” “I am capable”).

This is more than about thinking new thoughts, though. It’s about feeling them to be true. Through sets of bilateral stimulation, you will install a new felt sense in your brain and body – of joy, compassion, curiosity, confidence, clarity, or good enough-ness.

The integration phase of EMDR is all about compassion – toward your past self, your present self, your future self, and all the parts of you in between. Since HSPs tend to struggle with low self-esteem, a dose of self-compassion might be exactly the medicine you need.

The power to heal is within you, always.

And EMDR therapy can work with your sensitive qualities to guide you through these steps:

Stabilize your nervous system.
Heal from the past.
Create healthy templates for the present and future.

If you’re seeking EMDR therapy to help you heal & thrive as a highly sensitive person, let’s connect.

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About the Author

I’m Liz Zhou, a holistic trauma therapist (MA, LPCC, she/her). My work integrates teachings from psychology, neurobiology, multicultural awareness, and spirituality. I provide compassionate therapy for highly sensitive people across Colorado.

How EMDR Therapy Helps Highly Sensitive People Heal