Process Trauma Without Retelling It — EMDR Therapy in Portland, OR
EMDR is not talk therapy. You will never be asked to narrate what happened in detail, to anyone, in order to be free of it. That single fact is why most of our clients finally started.
You Don't Have to Tell Me What Happened
The single most common reason people put off trauma therapy for years is the thing they assume it requires: sitting in a room and describing the worst hour of their life out loud, in detail, repeatedly, to someone they've just met.
EMDR does not work that way. You need to be able to bring the memory to mind — that's it. You do not need to give a narrative account of it. Some of our clients never say out loud what the memory is, and the work still does what it does.
This isn't a comfort we offer to get you through the door. It's a structural feature of the method. EMDR works on how a memory is stored, not on how well you can describe it, so detailed disclosure isn't therapeutically necessary and we don't ask for it.
If you have been circling trauma therapy for years because of that one fear, this is the specific reason to look again.
- ✓Bring the memory to mind — no detailed narrative required
- ✓Long stretches of a session involve no talking at all
- ✓The memory stays; the alarm attached to it is what changes
- ✓You control what you disclose, always, including nothing
How the Work Is Ordered
The eight phases, grouped into the five things you'll actually experience.
History and mapping
One to two sessions building a picture of what happened, what's happening now, and which memories are actually driving the present-day symptoms. Often not the ones you'd expect.
Preparation and resourcing
Building the skills to regulate before we touch anything difficult — the stop signal, grounding, a safe internal place. For complex trauma this phase can be most of the work, and that's correct, not slow.
Reprocessing
The phase people mean when they say EMDR. Hold the target, follow the bilateral stimulation, notice what comes. Repeat in short sets until the memory no longer carries the charge.
Body and belief check
Trauma lives in the body and in what you concluded about yourself. We check both — the residual physical activation, and whether "it was my fault" still feels true when you bring the memory up.
Closing and re-evaluation
Every session ends contained; you never leave mid-processing. The next session opens by checking what held over the week, which is where you'll first notice it working.
What We Treat
Trauma work only. It's the whole practice, not a specialism listed among ten others.
If what you're carrying isn't on this list, ask anyway. Trauma rarely arrives labelled.
What a Reprocessing Session Feels Like
Quieter than people expect. You sit in a chair. You bring the memory to mind and hold it lightly while following a set of eye movements, or a tone alternating between your ears, or a small tapper in each hand — whichever you prefer.
A set runs maybe thirty seconds. Then we stop and I ask what you noticed. You say a sentence, or a word, or nothing much. Then another set. That repeats for most of the hour.
What comes up is not under your control and not under mine. People report images, sensations, a smell, an unrelated memory from a different decade, a sudden strong opinion about something they thought they'd settled. All of it is the material sorting itself. There is no correct thing to notice.
Most people leave the first reprocessing session slightly tired and a little unimpressed. The change usually shows up three or four days later, when something that always triggered you simply doesn't.
- ✓Sets of about thirty seconds, then a short check-in
- ✓Eye movements, alternating tones, or hand tappers — your choice
- ✓There is no correct thing to notice, and no wrong answer
- ✓The stop signal works instantly, every single time
Signs It's Still Running the Show
Trauma rarely announces itself. It usually shows up as something you've decided is just your personality.
You're calm until you're not
Fine for weeks, then a disproportionate reaction to something small — a tone of voice, a door, a smell — followed by hours of wondering what that was about.
You've reorganised your life around avoiding something
A route you don't drive. A month you dread. A conversation you steer away from so smoothly that nobody notices, including you, most of the time.
The sleep never fully came back
Not necessarily nightmares. Often just a body that won't fully stand down at night, years after the thing that made standing down unwise.
You can tell the story without feeling anything
Sometimes read as having processed it. More often it's the opposite — the memory is stored somewhere the feeling can't reach, which is exactly what EMDR addresses.
You believe something about yourself you'd never accept about anyone else
That you should have stopped it, seen it coming, been stronger. Applied to a friend in the same situation, you'd reject it instantly. That gap is the tell.
Shared With Permission
I had avoided trauma therapy for eleven years because I could not face saying it out loud, week after week, to a stranger. Nobody had ever told me there was a form of this that doesn't require that. I wish someone had told me at year one.
Two things surprised me. It was less verbal than I expected — long stretches where I wasn't talking at all. And the memory didn't disappear; it just stopped arriving with the whole physical alarm attached to it. It's a fact about my life now instead of an event still happening.
I did the five-day intensive because I work rotating shifts and weekly was never going to happen. Going in I assumed intensives were a shortcut you pay for. It wasn't a shortcut — it was five very long days, and the reason it worked was that I never had to rebuild momentum between sessions.
Where the Work Happens
A ground-floor room on Hawthorne with its own entrance, because walking past a full waiting room is the wrong start to this particular hour.
The Numbers, Stated Plainly
Weekly EMDR sessions are $195 for 50 minutes. Extended reprocessing sessions — 80 minutes, which many people find more effective because a full set of reprocessing rarely fits in fifty — are $280.
Intensives are $3,400 for three days and $5,200 for five, including the preparation sessions beforehand and two follow-up sessions afterwards. Clinician consultation toward EMDRIA certification is $150 an hour individually, $65 in a group of four.
We are in network with Regence, PacificSource and Providence, and out of network otherwise with a superbill provided. Insurance will generally cover trauma treatment where there is a PTSD diagnosis, which — unlike couples work — is usually straightforward and accurate here.
Three sliding-scale places are held at any time, with priority to first responders and to people whose trauma is the direct reason their income is what it is. Ask on the consultation call.
- ✓$195 per 50-minute session · $280 for the 80-minute extended session
- ✓$3,400 for a three-day intensive · $5,200 for five days, prep and follow-up included
- ✓In network with Regence, PacificSource and Providence
- ✓Three sliding-scale places held, first responders prioritised
What People Ask Before Booking
Will I have to describe what happened?
No. You need to be able to bring the memory to mind — that is genuinely the only requirement. You do not have to give a narrative account of it, and some of our clients never say out loud what the target memory is. EMDR works on how the memory is stored rather than on how well you can describe it, so detailed disclosure isn't therapeutically necessary and we don't ask for it.
Is EMDR actually evidence-based, or is it the eye thing?
It's recommended for PTSD by the World Health Organization, the American Psychological Association and the VA/DoD. The debate in the literature is about which component does the work — whether the bilateral stimulation is essential or whether it's the structured exposure-plus-working-memory load. Nobody serious disputes that the protocol works for PTSD.
What if I fall apart in the session?
That's what phases one and two exist to prevent, and why they take as long as they take. You'll have a stop signal agreed before we start any reprocessing, and it stops things instantly. No session ends mid-processing — the last ten minutes are always for closing down and getting you contained enough to drive home.
How many sessions will this take?
For a single-incident trauma, commonly six to twelve reprocessing sessions plus the preparation phase. For complex or developmental trauma it is considerably longer and the preparation phase is most of it. We'll tell you which category we think you're in after the history-taking, and we'd rather revise that estimate up front than quietly extend it.
Can EMDR be done online?
Yes, and we do it routinely across Oregon. Bilateral stimulation works over video using on-screen movement or alternating audio through headphones. What matters more than the format is that you have a private space and won't be interrupted — that is the real constraint, not the technology.
I did EMDR before and it didn't help. Now what?
Tell us on the call, in detail. The most common reasons are that reprocessing started before stabilisation was in place, or the targets chosen weren't the ones actually driving the symptoms. Both are fixable, and neither means EMDR won't work for you. Occasionally the answer is that a different modality fits better, and we'll say so.
A Free 20-Minute Consultation
No history-taking on the call and nothing you have to disclose. It's for asking whatever you need to ask before deciding, including the questions you'd feel awkward asking in person.
Book a Consultation
Write as much or as little as you want. You do not need to explain what happened in order to book — a sentence about what you're hoping changes is plenty.