EMDR Therapy
Process painful memories so they stop running the show.
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) at Westpeak Wellness is a structured eight-phase therapy for distressing memories, delivered by secure video across British Columbia by an EMDR-trained Registered Clinical Counsellor (MA, RCC). It has a strong evidence base for post-traumatic stress and is used for trauma, PTSD, anxiety and grief. Most of the protocol is preparation rather than eye movements: reprocessing does not begin until the regulation skills to come back down are reliably in place.
- 50 minutes per session
- Secure video sessions
- Free 15-min consult
- $190 per session
- MA, RCC · BCACC
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is an evidence-supported therapy that helps the brain reprocess distressing memories so they lose their grip. You don't have to relive everything in detail or explain it perfectly — EMDR works with how memory is stored, not just how it's told. Available online across BC, including a 90-minute intensive format.
How we approach it
Your counsellor is EMDR-trained and works in a paced, trauma-informed way — we build safety and stability first, and never move faster than you're ready for. EMDR translates well to virtual sessions, and many people find the comfort of their own space helps the work.
Why EMDR works differently from talking it through
Ordinary memories fade and integrate — you remember that something happened without your body returning to the state it was in at the time. Some memories do not file themselves that way. They stay stored with the images, sounds, body sensations and beliefs from the moment intact, so recalling them is closer to re-experiencing them.
That is why "I know intellectually it wasn't my fault" so often changes nothing about how it feels. The understanding is in one system; the memory is stored in another.
EMDR works on that storage problem rather than on the narrative. You hold the memory in mind while your attention is partly occupied by bilateral stimulation — eye movements, alternating taps, or alternating tones — and the memory typically becomes less vivid and less charged. You do not have to describe it in detail for this to work, which is why EMDR is often the route in for people who have avoided therapy precisely because they cannot face retelling it. There is a phase-by-phase walkthrough in the guide on what EMDR is.
Might be a fit if
What people tend to arrive with
A memory that still intrudes
Arriving uninvited, in full colour, sometimes triggered by something small and unrelated.
You understand it but still feel it
The gap between what you know and what your body does — the clearest indication for EMDR over purely talk-based work.
You cannot face describing it
Avoidance of therapy specifically because of the retelling. EMDR requires far less of that.
Your reactions do not match the present
Startle, panic, shutdown, or rage at a scale that belongs to something older than what is in front of you.
A single identifiable event
An accident, an assault, a medical event, a death. Single-incident trauma is where EMDR tends to move fastest.
Grief that has not moved
A loss that stayed frozen rather than settling over time.
Recognise several of these? A free 15-minute consultation is the least committal way to find out whether this is the right approach — including if the answer turns out to be something else.
How EMDR runs here
EMDR is an eight-phase protocol, not an improvised technique. The first two phases are history-taking and preparation — building grounding skills, a settling place, and an agreed signal to stop. This is the part that gets rushed by inexperienced practitioners and should not be. Nothing gets processed before there is enough stability to tolerate it.
Processing sessions run 50 minutes, with a 90-minute intensive format available where longer uninterrupted time suits the work better. Sessions always close before you leave — you are never sent off mid-processing.
Online, bilateral stimulation uses a moving marker on screen, alternating tones through headphones, or self-administered tapping — the butterfly hug, arms crossed, alternating taps on each shoulder. Many people prefer the self-administered version because it puts the pace directly in their control.
When it is not the right first move: if you are in an actively unsafe situation, in early substance-use recovery, or currently without much ground underneath you, the honest answer is often "not yet" — stabilisation first. A practitioner proposing processing in a first session, without knowing your history, is moving too fast.
Questions
More on how this work runs
Who EMDR is not the first choice for
EMDR has strong evidence for post-traumatic stress and it is not a general-purpose therapy, so being clear about the edges matters more than listing what it treats.
It is generally not the first move where stabilisation has not happened. Someone in an ongoing dangerous situation, in active crisis, or without reliable ways to regulate themselves is not well served by opening a memory. The preparation phase exists precisely for this, and where it needs to take two months, it takes two months.
It is not usually the right tool for a difficulty with no traumatic memory attached to it — a decision you are stuck on, a communication problem, a career question. Those are ordinary therapy, and using a trauma protocol on them is a category error.
It requires caution with dissociation. Significant dissociative presentations need assessment and a modified approach rather than a standard protocol, and a counsellor who does not screen for this before starting is not being careful.
It also sits alongside rather than instead of medical care. Where substance use is active, where a medication is being adjusted, or where an unassessed physical condition may be contributing, sequencing matters — and a counsellor should say so rather than proceed.
Finally, it is not the only effective trauma treatment, and anyone presenting it as uniquely powerful is overselling. Trauma-focused cognitive approaches have comparable evidence, and the better question is which suits you — see CBT vs EMDR for trauma.
What "trained" actually means, and what to ask
EMDR training is tiered, and the word on a website covers a wide range. Asking about it is a normal question that a properly trained clinician answers without defensiveness.
Standard training runs in parts, with supervised practice and consultation between them, and completing the full sequence is the baseline for practising it. Beyond that, some clinicians pursue certification, which requires additional consultation hours and demonstrated competence, and some go further into consultant-level training. None of that guarantees a good fit; it establishes a floor.
The questions worth asking are specific. Have you completed the full training, or part of it? Do you receive ongoing consultation on EMDR cases? How do you handle it if reprocessing destabilises someone? The third is the most revealing, because it separates clinicians who understand the protocol as a safety structure from those who have learned a technique.
It is also worth asking how they screen for dissociation before starting. A standard protocol applied to a significant dissociative presentation without assessment is the clearest way this work goes wrong, and a careful clinician will have a clear answer.
Finally, ask what they would do if EMDR is not the right fit for you. Anyone whose answer is that it always is has told you something useful — see CBT vs EMDR for trauma.
EMDR in a first language, and why it is not a preference
On most of this site the argument for working in Punjabi is about comfort and precision — not having to translate a family argument, or explain what log kya kahenge means before describing how it felt. Real, but a matter of degree.
In EMDR it is structural. The protocol is built around a negative cognition: a short sentence in the first person that the memory still seems to prove — "I am not safe", "it was my fault", "I am not enough". You rate how true it feels, hold it alongside the memory during bilateral stimulation, and work toward a positive cognition that begins to feel true instead. That sentence is the instrument.
A memory laid down in Punjabi carries its cognition in Punjabi. Translated into English on the way into the session, it becomes a near-equivalent — usually flatter, sometimes carrying a slightly different accusation, occasionally missing the register entirely. English has no single word doing the work of sharam, and "shame" and "disgrace" each capture part of it and imply different things about who else is affected. Processing the translation is processing something adjacent to what happened.
The rating scales have the same problem. Asking how disturbing something feels from nought to ten, in a language the event did not occur in, invites a considered answer rather than an immediate one — and the immediate one is what the protocol needs.
What this looks like in practice is unremarkable: the cognition stays in whichever language it arrived in, the instructions and the scales are usually in English because those are administrative, and nobody stops to tidy up the switching. Sessions frequently run bilingually within a single sentence, which is how a lot of people think anyway.
None of this makes EMDR in English wrong for a Punjabi speaker. Plenty of people process in their second language perfectly well, particularly for events that happened in it. It matters most where the memory is old, from childhood, from before migration, or from inside a family — which is a large share of what people bring.
The edges set out above apply unchanged: stabilisation first, caution with dissociation, and it is not the right tool for a difficulty with no traumatic memory attached. Working in Punjabi does not shorten the preparation phase, and a counsellor offering to skip it is not being accommodating.
EMDR online: how the therapy works over video
EMDR online replaces the therapist’s moving hand with an on-screen target, alternating audio tones, or self-administered tapping — adaptations with years of clinical use behind them, not workarounds. Everything else about the method is unchanged: the same eight phases, the same preparation before processing, the same closing discipline at the end of every session.
Practically, online EMDR asks for a private room, headphones, and a stable connection — and it removes the commute that would otherwise bracket an emotionally heavy hour on both sides. For the longer 90-minute intensive format, that absence of a commute turns out to matter more, not less: the session can end with proper closing and then simply… end, in your own space.
Before you book
Do I have to tell you what happened?
Not in detail. Your counsellor needs enough to identify the target — an image, the belief attached to it, where it sits in your body — but the processing itself does not require narration. Many people say little during a set.
Does EMDR work over video?
Yes, with adaptation. On-screen movement, alternating audio, or self-administered tapping all work. The preparation phase matters more online, not less, and a careful practitioner will spend longer there.
How many sessions?
Single-incident trauma in someone otherwise stable can resolve in a handful of processing sessions. Complex or intergenerational trauma is a longer piece of work, and most of the early time goes to stabilisation.
Can EMDR make things worse?
Trauma work paced badly can destabilise anyone — which is what phases 2 and 7 exist to prevent. Distress during a session is normal and temporary; deterioration lasting days is a signal to slow down, and worth saying out loud.
More in the full FAQ, or see fees and extended health coverage.
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