Treatment Modality
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
If you're carrying the weight of past trauma while also navigating OCD or anxiety, you're not alone — and you don’t have to figure it all out by yourself. EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a research-backed therapy that helps you reprocess distressing memories so they no longer feel overwhelming or stuck.
I use EMDR specifically to treat trauma — not OCD or anxiety disorders. But if you’re struggling with both trauma and OCD, EMDR can play a crucial role in your treatment plan. It helps process trauma-related symptoms that may be interfering with your OCD progress, while we address OCD separately through ERP or I-CBT.
EMDR goes beyond simply talking about the past — it works by changing how your brain stores painful experiences. Traumatic memories often stay “frozen” in the nervous system, causing your body to react as though the past is still happening.
Through bilateral stimulation like eye movements or tapping, EMDR allows your brain to reprocess those experiences in a way that reduces their emotional intensity. It helps your system complete what it never got to finish — so those memories stop triggering present-day alarms, and OCD can no longer use them to fuel your doubts.
Co-occurring Trauma and OCD
When trauma and OCD coexist, they can look nearly identical from the outside — intrusive memories can feel just like intrusive thoughts, and both can trigger avoidance or repetitive behaviors. But they arise from different places. Trauma is your nervous system reacting to something that already happened. OCD is your mind trying to prevent something that might happen. If you use one treatment approach for both, neither fully resolves.
It’s not that you’ve failed treatment — it’s that your treatment hasn’t been targeting the right layer.
Two different disorders
Require more thanone strategy
PTSD reactions — like flashbacks, shutdown, or avoidance — are not compulsions. And OCD compulsions — like mental checking or reassurance loops — are not trauma. They can look similar, and are often confused. But when the wrong strategy is used for the wrong problem, progress stalls. Using OCD tools on a trauma response can be destabilizing. Using EMDR on an OCD doubt often becomes compulsive— unintentionally feeding the loop instead of breaking it. That’s why differentiation matters. Trauma is your nervous system reacting to something that already happened. OCD is your mind trying to prevent something that might happen.
Two different functions — two different sets of tools.
You’re not treatment resistant
You’ve been treating two issues with one approach
If progress has felt slow despite your effort, there’s likely a reason — not a flaw in you. When trauma and OCD overlap, they can interfere with each other’s healing. Trauma memories often get pulled into OCD as “proof” that your fears are valid, while OCD can hijack trauma work by turning EMDR into another round of checking or doubt.
Sometimes EMDR needs to be done first so OCD stops using the trauma as fuel. Other times OCD must be stabilized with I-CBT or ERP so the EMDR process won’t be interrupted. My role is to help you determine what to address first.
Untangle what’s overlapping
And make a clear path forward
If it feels like trauma keeps blocking your progress with OCD, EMDR may be the missing piece. We can work together to process what’s unresolved so your treatment isn’t working against itself. Reach out if you’d like to explore whether EMDR fits into your plan.