Dangers of EMDR therapy refers to the real risks that can show up when Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing is done without adequate preparation, appropriate pacing, or a therapist trained to work with your nervous system and context. Most of these risks are preventable.
Last updated: April 2026
TL;DR
Most of what you’ve heard about the dangers of EMDR therapy is a mix of real risks and misinformation tangled together. Real risks exist. They include destabilization when preparation gets skipped, worsening dissociation, emotional flooding between sessions, and re-traumatization with a therapist who isn’t trained for your level of complexity. These are almost always preventable with proper pacing, a skilled EMDR counsellor, and a long-enough preparation phase. This post walks through what can go wrong, who EMDR isn’t the right first step for, what under-trained EMDR looks like, what well-paced EMDR looks like, and why cultural attunement is part of safety. You’ll leave with specific questions to ask any EMDR therapist before you book a session.
Table of Contents
- What People Actually Mean When They Say EMDR Was Dangerous
- Why the Preparation Phase Takes So Long
- When EMDR Isn’t the Right First Step
- What Under-Trained EMDR Looks Like
- What Safe, Well-Paced EMDR Looks Like
- Why Cultural Attunement Is a Safety Issue
- Things to Ask Before You Start
- FAQs
You’re reading this because something made you pause.
Maybe you’ve heard someone say EMDR broke them. Maybe a TikTok video said it was dangerous. Maybe your last therapist moved too fast and you’re trying to figure out if that’s what EMDR is supposed to feel like, or if something went wrong. Pausing here is wise. The dangers of EMDR therapy aren’t imaginary, and they’re not the whole story either.
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is an evidence-based trauma therapy. It’s recognized by the American Psychological Association, the World Health Organization, and the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies as a front-line treatment for PTSD. It’s also a therapy that, when done without preparation or by someone without the right training, can leave people destabilized in ways that take weeks or months to settle.
Both of those things are true.
So let’s look at what the real risks are, why they happen, and what good, paced, justice-oriented EMDR therapy in Vancouver and Port Moody actually looks like. Because the question isn’t whether EMDR is dangerous. It’s whether the specific EMDR you’re about to enter has been set up to be safe for your specific nervous system.
What People Actually Mean When They Say EMDR Was Dangerous
When someone says EMDR made them worse, they’re usually describing one of a few specific experiences.
Emotional flooding that didn’t settle. They got into processing too fast, accessed material their nervous system couldn’t contain, and came out of the session feeling wide open, raw, and unable to close back down. The days after were worse, not better. Sleep disrupted. Intrusive images returning. A sense of having been split open with nowhere to put the contents.
Worsening dissociation. They started the work already prone to dissociating, and bilateral stimulation (the eye movements, tapping, or sounds that make up part of the protocol) intensified the pattern instead of moving through it. They checked out during sessions. Or they floated during sessions and didn’t land for days afterward.
Re-traumatization. They felt pushed by their therapist to access memories before they were ready. Or they accessed memories with a therapist who didn’t know how to slow things down, interweave grounding, or recognize when someone had left their window of tolerance.
Protocol without relationship. They got the technique without the relational holding. The eye movements happened. The therapist followed the phases. But the person on the receiving end didn’t feel safe, didn’t feel seen, and didn’t feel like the therapist understood their context.
These are real. They happen. They’ve happened often enough that online communities like r/EMDR and MyPTSD forums have threads full of people trying to make sense of what went wrong. The dangers of EMDR therapy are not a conspiracy theory. They’re a set of preventable failures that researchers, supervisors, and experienced EMDR therapists have been naming for years.
What’s also true: the same community has thousands of stories of people who finally moved through trauma that years of talk therapy couldn’t touch. Both things are real. The variable isn’t EMDR. The variable is preparation, pacing, therapist training, and fit.
Why the Preparation Phase Takes So Long
The EMDR protocol has eight phases. The part most people picture (the eye movements, the intensity, the processing) is phase four. Before you get there, there are three phases of preparation that, done well, can take anywhere from a few sessions to a few months, depending on your nervous system, your history, and your access to regulation.
Phase one: history-taking. Your therapist gathers your story. Not to perform it, not to re-traumatize you by making you recount everything, but to map what’s there. What memories still have a charge. What beliefs about yourself got installed by experiences you didn’t choose. What current triggers are connected to what older experiences. This is also where a justice-oriented therapist will make room for systemic and cultural context, because the question what happened to you has to include what was done to your body by the systems you live inside of.
Phase two: preparation and resourcing. This is the part people skip or rush, and it’s the part that prevents almost every danger we just named. Phase two is where you build the capacity to process without flooding. You learn grounding practices that work for your specific nervous system. You develop internal resources (a safe or calm place, a protector figure, a body-based container) that your therapist can return to if a session gets too intense. You practice bilateral stimulation in low-activation ways before you use it on anything charged. You build a stop signal, and your therapist agrees to honour it.
Phase three: assessment. For a specific memory you and your therapist have chosen together, you identify the worst moment, the negative belief attached to it, the belief you’d like to hold instead, what emotion comes up, and where it lives in your body.
Only then does processing begin.
If your EMDR therapist tells you you’ll start processing in session two or three without having done significant resourcing work, that’s a red flag. Not because EMDR therapists who move faster are bad therapists, but because the nervous system needs to practice containment before it practices release. Moving faster is reasonable for some single-incident traumas in someone with strong regulation already in place. It’s rarely reasonable for complex relational trauma, CPTSD, or someone who’s been in the work with multiple therapists before.
When EMDR Isn’t the Right First Step
EMDR isn’t a universal front door.
For some folx, it’s an excellent first-line treatment. For others, it works beautifully but only after a period of stabilization or another modality has laid groundwork. And for some people, at some points in their lives, EMDR isn’t the right fit at all, or isn’t right right now. A skilled EMDR therapist will know the difference and will say so out loud.
Here are the situations where EMDR typically needs to wait or be significantly adapted:
Active crisis. If you’re in the middle of a suicidal crisis, actively self-harming, in an unstable housing situation, or inside a currently violent relationship, trauma processing isn’t the work. Stabilization is the work. EMDR with an active crisis present often makes things harder, not easier.
High dissociation without stabilization. If you dissociate frequently, have DID or OSDD, or lose time regularly, EMDR can be part of treatment, but it has to be adapted. Researchers like Dolores Mosquera and others who specialize in structural dissociation have published extensively on how to do this. The short version: the preparation phase extends significantly, internal communication among parts becomes central to the work, and processing is fractionated so no single session flood the system. An EMDR therapist without specific training in dissociation should not be offering EMDR to someone with a dissociative disorder. Full stop.
Severe current substance use. If substances are actively regulating your nervous system to the point that processing would destabilize that regulation, EMDR typically needs to wait. This isn’t judgment. This is pacing.
No established therapeutic relationship. EMDR done with a therapist you’ve seen twice is structurally different from EMDR done inside a relationship that’s already built some trust. People who get “EMDR intensives” from strangers sometimes report dramatic shifts. They also sometimes report being flooded with no one to call afterward. The relational container matters.
When what you actually need is grief, or rage, or rest. Sometimes what looks like stuck trauma is grief that hasn’t been allowed. Sometimes it’s burnout. Sometimes it’s the need to leave a situation, not process one. A good trauma therapist in Vancouver will help you figure out which one is actually happening before offering you a protocol.
None of this means you can’t do EMDR. It means the work before the work matters. If an EMDR therapist doesn’t ask these questions or doesn’t know how to answer them, you’ve learned something important about their training.
What Under-Trained EMDR Looks Like
There are a few patterns that show up reliably when EMDR goes poorly, and most of them trace back to training gaps rather than bad intent.
Protocol without adaptation. The therapist applies the eight phases rigidly regardless of what’s happening in your system. Dissociation starts to rise? They push through. You ask to slow down? They reassure you and continue. The protocol becomes the therapy instead of a structure the therapy moves inside.
Rushed preparation. You’re processing in session two or three. You haven’t done significant resourcing work. You haven’t practiced bilateral stimulation on anything low-stakes first. You don’t have a clear stop signal. The therapist is confident this will work fine for you, and you took their word for it.
No between-session support plan. You leave a heavy session and have no plan for the days after. Your therapist doesn’t ask how you slept, doesn’t check in on dreams or body symptoms, and doesn’t build in grounding for the time between. Phase seven of EMDR (closure) and phase eight (re-evaluation) exist specifically so this doesn’t happen. Skipping them leaves you doing integration alone.
Inability to sit with big emotion. You reach intense affect and your therapist gets uncomfortable, redirects prematurely, or pulls you out of the memory before the emotional charge has had room to move. Or the opposite: they can’t recognize overwhelm and keep pressing when you’re already outside your window of tolerance.
Context blindness. You name a piece of systemic harm (racism, transphobia, ableism, colonization, gendered violence) and your therapist pathologizes your response or treats the systemic piece as backdrop. For racialized and queer folx, this is one of the most common and most damaging gaps.
The certification alphabet is unclear. The therapist has done a weekend training, calls themselves “EMDR trained,” and is practicing without ongoing consultation. EMDRIA (the EMDR International Association) has specific standards: Basic Training requires about 50 hours including supervised practice, plus 10 hours of consultation. EMDRIA Certified means additional clinical hours and continuing education. EMDRIA Approved Consultant is a further step. None of these are the only valid credential. But if someone can’t tell you what training they did, from whom, when, and whether they’re currently in consultation, that’s a signal.
What Safe, Well-Paced EMDR Looks Like
On the other side of the room is what good work tends to feel like.
Slow preparation. The first few sessions are about getting to know each other, mapping your history, and building the resources that will hold you through processing. If you’re ready to rush, your therapist gently invites you to notice that urgency. If you’re frightened, your therapist honours that fear as information, not obstacle.
Stop signal from the start. You’re given a way to pause processing. It’s rehearsed. Your therapist tells you ahead of time that using it is welcomed, not a failure.
Titration and fractionation. For heavier material, your therapist works with smaller pieces. You might process one aspect of a memory at a time: just the image, then later the body sensation, then later the negative belief. This isn’t slower for its own sake. It’s faster, because you don’t have to restart from the start if you flood.
Window of tolerance tracking. Your therapist notices when you’re approaching overwhelm or shutdown and adjusts in real time. Shortens bilateral stimulation sets. Interweaves grounding. Returns to your calm place before continuing.
Between-session closure. Every session ends with time to land. You don’t leave mid-processing. Your therapist checks in about the week ahead, names what’s normal between sessions (vivid dreams, body sensations, old memories resurfacing), and makes contact available if something doesn’t settle.
Politically grounded framing. Your therapist doesn’t treat your racial identity, queerness, neurodivergence, chronic illness, or class history as variables to be controlled for. They treat them as context that shapes what trauma even means for you.
Modality flexibility. Your therapist is trained in EMDR but doesn’t treat it as the only tool. They know when to use somatic approaches, when to integrate expressive arts, when to return to talk, and when to pause entirely.
The difference between under-trained EMDR and safe, well-paced EMDR isn’t always visible from the outside. It’s visible in how you feel after a session. Settled, even when tired. Seen. Not alone with what just surfaced.
Why Cultural Attunement Is a Safety Issue
There’s a version of EMDR that treats the protocol as universal and culture as decoration.
That version is not safe for racialized, Indigenous, queer, trans, disabled, or migrant clients. Not because the protocol doesn’t technically work across contexts, but because the safety that allows processing to happen is relational rather than technical. If you’re holding race-based traumatic stress, a therapist who can’t hold the systemic context of that stress can’t provide the conditions that let your nervous system release it.
This has been named repeatedly by BIPOC EMDR practitioners and researchers. Mark Nickerson’s Cultural Competence and Healing Culturally Based Trauma with EMDR Therapy lays out how the standard protocol needs adaptation for culturally based traumas. Liliana Baylon and other bicultural EMDR practitioners have written about the necessity of seeing BIPOC faces on practice websites, of having culturally based trauma named in history-taking, of adapting metaphors and resources to match a client’s worldview. Riel Dupuis-Rossi’s work on Indigenous approaches to attachment and trauma makes clear that for Indigenous peoples, attachment disruption is often political, rooted in residential schools and child welfare systems, not only familial.
EMDR done well for someone carrying racialized trauma doesn’t treat the racial component as incidental. It treats it as part of the target. For more on this, our EMDR therapy cultural healing post goes deeper into the anti-colonial framing, and our EMDR and somatic therapy post explores how bilateral stimulation connects to ancestral healing practices that existed long before Western psychology named them.
There’s something underneath all of this worth saying directly. The bilateral stimulation at the centre of EMDR isn’t a Western invention. Indigenous drumming ceremonies, African drumming and dance traditions, the butterfly hug developed by Mexican EMDR practitioners drawing on Mesoamerican healing imagery, mandala creation, sand painting, kolam, frame drumming across Polynesian and Inuit traditions, all of these are bilateral healing practices that long predate EMDR’s institutional emergence. Western psychology operationalized something cultures around the world have always known. For folx whose lineages hold this knowledge, doing EMDR with a therapist who recognizes that lineage as foundational rather than supplementary is part of what makes the work safe.
At Venturous Counselling, we practice EMDR inside a frame that centres justice, culture, and context. The protocol becomes safer for the specific bodies we work with when culture and context aren’t treated as decoration.
Things to Ask Before You Start
If you’re about to start EMDR, these questions can protect you:
- What level of EMDR training do you have, and where did you do it? (Listen for specifics: Basic Trained through EMDRIA, Certified, Consultant-in-Training, or Approved Consultant status.)
- Are you currently in consultation on your EMDR cases, and with whom? (Ongoing consultation is a green flag, even for experienced practitioners.)
- How do you approach the preparation phase? How long does it usually take with someone like me? (Listen for flexibility and pacing, not a fixed number.)
- What’s your approach when someone dissociates or becomes flooded in session? (Listen for specific, concrete answers: grounding interweaves, shortened sets, return to the calm place, titration.)
- How do you work with clients who carry racialized, cultural, or systemic trauma? (Listen for humility, not mastery. Listen for politics.)
- What does your between-session support look like? Can I reach you if something doesn’t settle?
- If EMDR isn’t the right fit for me right now, would you say so? What would that look like?
These are not adversarial questions. A therapist who welcomes them is often the one you want.
Things to Start Trying Now
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Notice what you’ve already been doing to regulate. Before you even start EMDR, take inventory of what already helps your nervous system. Walking. Music. Rhythmic movement. Cold water. Specific people. These become resources you can bring into your preparation phase so your therapist isn’t building regulation from scratch.
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Build a “too much” signal for yourself. Before you start processing, know what it feels like when you’ve hit your edge. Is it shallow breathing? Blank mind? Body going rigid? The earlier you can name the sensation, the sooner your therapist can respond. This awareness itself is protective.
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Ask about your therapist’s relationship to their own work. It’s fair to ask whether an EMDR therapist has done their own EMDR work. Many experienced practitioners will answer directly. Someone who’s done their own work tends to recognize overwhelm faster and take it more seriously.
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Read about the 8 phases before your first session. Understanding what to expect reduces the sense of being done to. The EMDRIA website has a plain-language overview.
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Don’t start EMDR at the same time as other major destabilizers. If you’re moving, leaving a relationship, starting a new job, or weaning off medication, it may not be the right moment to begin trauma processing. Wait until the ground under you is slightly more stable.
Next Steps
If you’re considering EMDR in Vancouver or Port Moody and want to talk through whether it’s the right fit, we offer a free 15-minute consultation. You can also take our 3-minute matching quiz to find the Venturous counsellor who might suit you best, or book a consult directly. If you want to read more about our full approach, visit our EMDR therapy page. If alarming claims online are what brought you here, we unpack whether EMDR is genuinely controversial or dangerous in a separate guide.
FAQs
Can EMDR therapy make you worse?
EMDR can temporarily intensify symptoms during processing, and it can meaningfully destabilize you if preparation gets skipped or your therapist isn’t trained for your level of complexity. That’s not the same as EMDR being harmful in itself. Most of what people describe as “EMDR made me worse” traces back to insufficient preparation, a poor therapeutic fit, or attempting to process material the nervous system wasn’t yet resourced to hold. With proper pacing and a well-trained EMDR counsellor, those outcomes are largely preventable. If you’re worried this happened to you, it didn’t mean EMDR is wrong for you; it may mean the specific EMDR you received wasn’t set up well.
Is EMDR safe for CPTSD and dissociation?
EMDR can be adapted safely for complex trauma and dissociation, but it needs a significantly longer preparation phase and a therapist specifically trained in dissociation. Researchers like Dolores Mosquera and the EMDR and Dissociation community have developed frameworks for fractionating processing, extending stabilization, and working with internal parts before attempting memory work. If you have CPTSD, high dissociation, or a diagnosed dissociative disorder, ask any potential EMDR therapist what specific training they have in dissociation. A generalist EMDR therapist without that training isn’t the right fit, even if they’re well-meaning.
What are the actual contraindications for EMDR?
Absolute contraindications are rare, but common situations where EMDR needs to wait or be significantly adapted include active suicidal crisis, ongoing violence in current relationships, active severe substance use, unmedicated psychotic symptoms, and medical conditions where bilateral stimulation might need modification (like certain seizure disorders or severe migraine patterns). None of these are permanent exclusions. They’re signals that stabilization or a different modality needs to happen first. A skilled EMDR therapist will do this assessment before ever starting processing.
How long should the preparation phase take?
For someone with a single-incident trauma and strong baseline regulation, the preparation phase might take two to four sessions. For someone with complex relational trauma, high dissociation, or significant systemic harm in their history, it can take two to six months or longer. There’s no correct length. What matters is whether you and your therapist agree you’re resourced enough to contain processing, whether you have a clear stop signal, and whether your nervous system has practiced regulation in lower-stakes ways before attempting release.
What if my EMDR therapist wants to start processing right away?
Ask why. Some experienced therapists do start processing in an early session with clients who come in already resourced, already familiar with EMDR, or dealing with a discrete recent trauma. That can be appropriate. What’s not appropriate is a therapist starting processing without having asked about your history, your regulation capacity, your dissociation levels, your current life stability, or your context. If the answer to “why are we starting so fast” is anything other than a specific, informed answer that names your capacities, pause. You’re allowed to ask for more preparation before you do more processing.
Will EMDR work if I can’t remember my trauma in detail?
Yes, often. EMDR doesn’t require detailed conscious recall of traumatic events. It works with what’s currently activating in your nervous system. If a felt sense, a body symptom, an emotional reaction, or a recurring pattern is present, there’s enough material to work with. This matters especially for childhood trauma, developmental trauma, and racialized or systemic trauma that accumulated over time rather than in a single moment. For more on this, see our post on how trauma lives in the body.
Can EMDR retraumatize me?
Re-traumatization can happen when EMDR is done without adequate preparation or with a therapist who can’t slow the work down when you need them to. It’s a real risk, and it’s also largely preventable. A well-paced EMDR session doesn’t require you to relive the trauma. You notice the memory while staying in the present. Your therapist tracks your window of tolerance. You stop when it’s too much. The goal is for the memory to become something you remember rather than something that still happens to you. If a session feels like reliving, that’s a signal the pacing needs to shift.
What should I do if I had a bad EMDR experience before?
Your previous experience doesn’t mean EMDR isn’t for you. It might mean that specific EMDR, with that specific therapist, at that specific time, wasn’t right. Many people do EMDR a second time with a different therapist, a different pace, and better preparation, and the experience is substantially different. If you’re considering trying again, name the previous experience up front. A thoughtful EMDR counsellor will want to know what went wrong, what you needed that wasn’t there, and how to prevent a repeat. That conversation itself is often clarifying.
Is virtual EMDR safe, or do I need to be in person?
Virtual EMDR can be safe and effective for many people, especially if you have an undisturbed, private space and a stable connection. Self-tapping, audio cues, and visual bilateral stimulation on a screen all work. Some people actually prefer virtual because they’re in their own environment and can regulate with familiar surroundings. Other people find in-person presence steadier. If your nervous system dysregulates easily, in-person can sometimes provide more containment. Talk with your therapist about which setup suits your system.
How do I know if I’m ready to start EMDR?
Readiness isn’t the same as feeling calm or symptom-free. It’s having enough internal resources and external support that you can experience activation during a session without being completely flooded, and enough stability in your life that the days between sessions have some ground underneath them. Your therapist will help you assess this in the preparation phase. If you’re unsure, that uncertainty itself is useful information. You don’t have to be certain to begin. You do have to be willing to pause if something isn’t working.
About the Counsellor
Jess Picco (MCP, RCC) offers EMDR therapy integrated with somatic and expressive arts approaches at Venturous Counselling. Her work centres the nervous system, lived context, and pacing that honours complexity. She supports adults and youth navigating trauma, identity shifts, and the slower work of healing that doesn’t perform progress.
References & Further Reading
- EMDR International Association. (2024). “What Should Clients Ask An EMDR Therapist?” https://www.emdria.org/blog/what-should-clients-ask-an-emdr-therapist-part-1/
- Mosquera, D. (2024). “EMDR Therapy and Dissociation Challenges.” EMDRIA GWT Magazine. https://www.emdria.org/blog/emdr-therapy-and-dissociation/
- American Psychological Association. (2017). Clinical Practice Guideline for the Treatment of PTSD.
- Dupuis-Rossi, R. (2020). “Decolonising Indigenous relational practice in psychotherapy.” PACJA.
- Nickerson, M. (2025). EMDR Therapy Approaches with BIPOC Clients and Addressing Culturally Based Trauma. https://www.msudenver.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/EMDR-therapy-with-BIPOC-clents-and-culturally-based-trauma.pdf