When Words Aren't Enough: Healing Anxiety at Its Roots with EMDR

As a clinical psychologist, I've spent over a decade witnessing the power of talk therapy. For many of my clients navigating life transitions, relationship challenges, or general stress, having a safe space to verbalise their thoughts and feelings is incredibly helpful. We work together to build insight, challenge negative patterns, and develop coping skills. And often, they leave therapy achieving their goals and able to enjoy life without the symptoms that were holding them back.

But sometimes, despite all the talking, coping strategies and insight, a persistent core of anxiety remains stubbornly resistant to change.

Have you ever felt this way? You understand why you feel anxious. You can logically explain the origins of your fears. You can even identify that your thoughts are irrational, yet, when a specific trigger hits, your heart still races, your chest tightens, and logic flies out the window.

Clients who are experiencing this, usually attend sessions frustrated with themselves and thinking they are doing something wrong.  However, this is not the case. They have mastered the rational part of why they are anxious, but are missing the piece of the jigsaw that allows their nervous system to release the physiological aspect of the anxiety…. And this is something that talking alone can be difficult to achieve.

This is where EMDR can be helpful. So how does it work differently?

The Left Brain vs. The Embodied Right Brain

The reason lies partly in how our brain processes information—and especially emotion and trauma.

Talk therapy primarily engages the left hemisphere of our brain. This is the seat of language, logic, analysis, and thought. It’s great at making sense of the world. When you tell me about the anxiety you have experienced during the week, we are using that left brain to organise your experiences into a coherent narrative.

However, deeply stored emotions, instinctual survival responses, and traumatic memories live predominantly in the right hemisphere and deeper, older brain structures (like the limbic system). The right brain is more holistic, visual, and non-verbal.

When a traumatic or overwhelming event occurs—whether it’s a major incident or a series of smaller, stressful experiences, that are usually associated with anxiety symptoms—the brain's usual processing system can get overloaded. The memory isn't stored as a neat narrative on a shelf; instead, it becomes fragmented. It gets "stuck" in the right brain, still carrying the raw, unprocessed emotional charge of that moment in time.

These fragmented emotional pieces don't speak the language of words. They speak the language of sensation:

• A racing heartbeat.

• A sudden jolt of fear when entering a crowded room.

• A pervasive sense of unease or panic that seems to come out of nowhere.

This is why clients can sometimes feel stuck. They are trying to use the left-brain language centre to fix a right-brain emotional storage problem.

The EMDR Difference: Unsticking Fragmented Emotions

This is where Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) offers a powerful addition to therapy.

EMDR is an evidence-based approach that helps the brain reprocess these "stuck" memories and fragmented emotions. It doesn't rely solely on talking. Instead, it uses a process called bilateral stimulation—typically guided eye movements but sometimes tapping or tones—to activate both sides of the brain alternately.

Think of it like jump-starting your brain’s natural healing system.

When we focus on a distressing memory or feeling while engaging in bilateral stimulation, it seems to mimic the brain activity we experience during REM sleep (when we naturally process the day's events). This process facilitates communication between the logical left brain and the emotional right brain.

The "stuck" memory is no longer frozen in time with its intense emotional charge. It begins to integrate. The fragmented pieces finally connect to the larger narrative network. The insight you gained in talk therapy can finally "land" in your nervous system.

SO how does this look in practice?

I worked with a client recently—let’s call her Fiona—who struggled with public speaking anxiety. Fiona is a highly intelligent professional who understood exactly why she was anxious: she had a history of being harshly criticised by a boss during presentations early in her career. In our cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) sessions, we successfully challenged her beliefs about her competence. She knew, logically, that she was capable.

Yet, the moment she stood in front of a group, her body took over. Her voice would shake, her palms would sweat, and her heart would race. Her left brain knew she was safe; her right brain was convinced she was back in that original, threatening situation.

We introduced EMDR. We didn't need extensive new conversations about the past. Instead, we targeted those specific, "stuck" memories of her boss's criticism using bilateral stimulation.

We observed a significant shift. The intensity of the physical reaction began to drop rapidly during sessions. By the end of her treatment, the memory of the critical boss was still there, but it no longer held any emotional charge. Fiona's body stopped reacting with panic. She recently led a major presentation feeling grounded and focused, not anxious. The insight had finally integrated into her nervous system.

Reprocessing the Past for Present Calm

The goal of using EMDR isn't to erase memories. It's to neutralise the emotional pain associated with them.

In my practice, clients are often surprised by the shift at the end of a session. They might say, "I can still remember what happened, but it doesn't bother me anymore as it feels more distant." The anxiety symptoms—the physical panic, the avoidance behaviours, the intrusive fears—start to fade because the underlying emotional fuel has been removed.

If any of this resonates to how you are feeling; that you understand the why of your symptoms, but still feel trapped by persistent anxiety, it might be time to consider EMDR that can work directly with the nervous system. Healing is possible, and sometimes, it requires our emotional brain to catch up with what we are thinking!