EMDR · Virtual · Six provinces
Online EMDR therapy: what it is, and how it works over video
EMDR is the therapy most people have heard of and almost nobody can explain.
A plain account of the method, the session, and what changes when it is delivered by video — from a virtual practice working across six provinces, evenings and weekends included.
At a glance
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a structured, eight-phase therapy for distressing memories and post-traumatic stress, delivered at TEO Counselling by video. It is provided by Mohamad Shabib (MACP, CCC, Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying) with the CRPO in Ontario), who sees clients in British Columbia, Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Newfoundland & Labrador, and by Alison Shaji (MA Clinical Psychology, RCC), who sees clients in British Columbia. Individual sessions are $150 per 60-minute session, couples sessions are $175, and the first step is a free 15 minute consultation with no referral needed.
What is EMDR therapy?
EMDR therapy — Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing — is a structured, eight-phase psychotherapy for distressing memories and post-traumatic stress, in which you briefly bring one specific memory to mind while a rhythmic left-right task such as eye movements, alternating taps or alternating tones occupies part of your attention, repeated in short sets with a pause after each until the memory carries less charge.
The name is a mouthful and slightly misleading: the eye movements are the part people remember and the least useful part to lead with.
Two things it is not. It is not hypnosis — you are awake, oriented, and able to stop at any point. And it does not require you to narrate the event in detail. You need to bring the memory to mind. You do not need to describe it out loud.
How does EMDR work?
EMDR works from the adaptive information processing model, which holds that most difficult experiences are filed away and lose their charge over time, while a few stay stored with the original images, sensations and conclusions still attached — and that holding one of those in mind in short, paused sets, while a left-right task divides your attention, allows it to be processed and stored more like an ordinary memory.
In plainer terms: most difficult experiences get filed. Details usually soften, the charge tends to drop, and the memory settles into the past. Some experiences never file. They stay stored with the original material still attached — the sounds, the tightness in the chest, the conclusion you reached about yourself in that moment. When something in the present brushes against one of them, the whole package can fire at once, and the body often responds as though it were happening now. That model comes from the work of Francine Shapiro, the psychologist who developed EMDR.
EMDR tries to get that stuck material moving again. You bring a specific memory to mind, briefly and deliberately, while your attention is divided by a rhythmic left-right task — eye movements, alternating taps, or alternating tones. It runs in short sets with a pause after each. Across repeated sets the memory often becomes less vivid and less physically loud, and the belief attached to it (“I should have stopped it”, “I am not safe”) tends to loosen.
How much the eye movements or taps themselves contribute, as distinct from the rest of the protocol, remains an open research question. The protocol is well specified; the mechanism is not settled, and it is more honest to say that than to explain it away.
What happens in an EMDR session?
An EMDR session opens with a check-in and grounding, moves to one specific memory agreed in advance as the target, runs short sets of bilateral stimulation with a pause and a brief report after each, and then closes deliberately with grounding whether or not that target is finished. EMDR follows a structured eight-phase protocol, and in practice it looks less clinical than that sounds.
History and preparation
The first sessions are conversation. Your therapist maps what happened, what still gets triggered, and what already helps you steady yourself. You build and test grounding skills before anything is reprocessed. If that takes several sessions, it takes several sessions — skipping it is one of the more common reasons EMDR goes badly.
Assessment
You choose a specific target: a moment, an image, a scene. You name what you believe about yourself when it comes to mind, what you would rather believe, where you feel it in the body, and how disturbing it is on a 0 to 10 scale. That number gives you and your therapist something concrete to track.
Reprocessing
You hold the target in mind while following the bilateral task for a short set, the length of which your therapist sets and adjusts. Then you stop, breathe, and report whatever came up — a thought, an image, a sensation, sometimes nothing. You do not have to explain or justify it. The next set starts from wherever you landed.
Strengthening and body check
As distress comes down, the preferred belief is paired with the memory and reinforced, and you scan the body for anything still holding on.
Closure and review
Every session ends deliberately, with grounding, whether or not the target is finished. The next session begins by checking what moved.
If reprocessing needs more room than a standard hour, raise it in the free consultation — session length and the fee that applies are agreed with you before you start.
How many EMDR sessions will I need?
There is no fixed number of EMDR sessions, and anyone quoting you one before hearing your history is guessing — a single recent incident in someone who is otherwise steady generally takes fewer sessions than repeated or childhood trauma, and a large share of the total is preparation rather than reprocessing.
What shapes the number is how much stabilisation needs to be in place first, how many targets there are, whether they cluster around one theme or several, and what else is going on in your life while the work is underway. Preparation is not a delay before the real work. It is the part that makes reprocessing tolerable, and cutting it short is one of the more common reasons EMDR goes badly.
So rather than a number fixed in advance, you and your therapist agree a first target, track the disturbance rating on it, and review where things stand as you go. If EMDR is not moving anything after a fair trial, that is worth naming out loud rather than repeating, and a different approach may make more sense.
How does EMDR work online?
Online EMDR follows the same eight phases in the same order as EMDR in a room; the only thing that changes is how the bilateral stimulation is produced, and it is set up one of three ways — you tap alternately on yourself, you track a marker moving left and right across the shared screen, or you listen to tones alternating between your ears through headphones.
The active ingredient is not a therapist’s hand in front of your face. It is holding a memory in mind while a rhythmic left-right task occupies part of your attention. Tactile and auditory bilateral stimulation are also used in in-person practice, which is one reason the method adapts to video more readily than many people expect — though the research on remote delivery is still developing.
Self-administered tapping
You tap alternately on your knees, or cross your arms and tap your upper arms — the version usually called the butterfly hug. Your therapist sets the pace, watches, and calls the stop. This is a common approach online and simple to control: the moment you want it to end, it ends.
On-screen visual movement
A marker moves left and right across the shared screen and you track it with your eyes. If an on-screen tool is used, your therapist sets it up with you in session, and the speed and width are adjusted to what your eyes follow comfortably.
Alternating audio tones
A tone alternates between your left and right ear through headphones. Useful if screen tracking is tiring, and it lets you close your eyes, which some people prefer.
What matters more than which one you use is pacing, and pacing is a matter of attention rather than proximity. Your therapist watches your face, your breathing and your voice, and checks in after every set. Setup is part of the work: headphones, a private room, a device propped on something solid rather than held, a stable connection, and a plan you agree with your therapist for what happens if the call drops mid-set — a phone call, for example — so a dropped connection has an agreed response rather than an unexplained silence.
If you have searched for EMDR therapy near me and found a waitlist, a long drive, or nobody at all, that is the practical case for working online. In fairness, the research on remotely delivered EMDR is younger and thinner than the research on EMDR overall. It is widely practised and early findings are encouraging — which is not the same as proven equivalent, and we would rather say so. And if you live in Ontario, we keep a dedicated page on EMDR therapy online in Ontario.
What does EMDR feel like?
An EMDR set usually feels ordinary and slightly strange at the same time: you stay awake in your own room, aware of your therapist’s voice, while a memory becomes briefly vivid and then, across repeated sets, less loud.
It varies more than most therapy. Some sets produce almost nothing. Others surface a detail you have not thought about in twenty years, or a wave of anger or grief or relief. Tears are common. So is the slightly strange sense of watching the memory from a small distance — close enough to feel it, anchored enough to know you are in your own room, today.
Afterwards, many people are tired. Some feel lighter, some feel raw, and both are ordinary. Some people find processing keeps running for a day or two: vivid dreams, memories surfacing sideways, a clear thought arriving in the car. You can stop at any point, and a signal to stop is respected without discussion.
Who is EMDR therapy for?
EMDR is used with people carrying distressing memories that still fire in the present — post-traumatic stress, a single overwhelming event, occupational trauma, grief stuck at the worst moment, and the harsh beliefs about yourself that older experiences leave behind.
People most often bring it to a single overwhelming event — a collision, an assault, a medical emergency, a death — where there is a clear before and after.
Childhood trauma therapy with EMDR works differently. The target is a pattern rather than one incident, the preparation stage runs considerably longer before anything is reprocessed, and the work is usually measured in months rather than weeks. What many people describe as complex PTSD, or CPTSD, sits here.
It often suits people who can describe exactly what happens in their body when they are triggered but cannot talk their way out of it — and people who have already discussed the event at length and found that understanding it did not change the response.
What are the side effects of EMDR therapy?
EMDR is not a medication and has no pharmacological side effects; what people report instead are after-effects of processing — tiredness, emotion closer to the surface than usual, vivid dreams, and memories, images or realisations that keep surfacing for a day or two after the session ends.
Those are the ordinary ones, and they are part of why sessions are closed deliberately with grounding and why the next one opens by checking what moved. Distress can also rise before it settles, particularly on a target that is only part-processed when the hour runs out. Feeling stirred up between sessions is not evidence that something has gone wrong, but it is information your therapist needs, so the plan is to report it rather than ride it out alone.
Some after-effects are worth treating as a signal rather than a nuisance: struggling to stay present or losing time, sleep badly disrupted for more than a night or two, a sharp pull toward drinking or using to shut the feeling down, or a level of distress that does not come back down between sessions. Those are reasons to slow the pacing or step back into preparation — not reasons to push through. Say so at the start of the next session, or sooner if it cannot wait, and if you are unsafe use the numbers at the bottom of this page.
How long any of this lasts differs from person to person, and it is discussed in the consultation before anything is reprocessed rather than discovered afterwards. Booking a session at a time when you do not have to go straight into something demanding afterwards is a small thing that helps.
When is EMDR not the right starting point?
Reprocessing is usually postponed when someone is still living in a situation that is unsafe, is in acute crisis, is using substances in a way that is not currently stable, or is dissociating to the point where staying present is difficult — in each of those cases stabilisation comes first, and EMDR waits until there is something steady to work from.
EMDR does not work for everyone, and it is not always the right place to begin. Complex and developmental trauma generally needs a longer preparation stage before any target is touched, and rushing that tends to backfire. Video adds one further consideration: a screen offers less containment than a room. If you dissociate easily that matters, and it is either something to work through in preparation or a reason to consider in-person care — which we would say plainly rather than proceed. EMDR does not erase memories or change what happened, and it does not replace medical care.
One more thing worth knowing before you decide. EMDR appears in several national and international clinical practice guidelines for PTSD, and those guidelines do not all weigh it the same way. There is an open research question about how much the eye movements themselves contribute, as distinct from the rest of the protocol, and guideline bodies weigh that question differently. The guidelines are public documents you can read for yourself.
Is EMDR better than CBT for trauma?
Neither one can be called better than the other in the abstract: EMDR and trauma-focused CBT both appear in clinical practice guidelines for PTSD, they get at the same material by different routes, and the useful question is not which approach wins but which one fits the person, the memory and the moment.
EMDR
Works on how the memory is stored
- Targets a specific memory and the belief attached to it
- Bilateral stimulation in short sets; you report what comes up, you do not have to explain it
- Little narration required — you bring the memory to mind rather than tell it
- Sessions are largely self-contained; there is usually no set homework between them
- Often chosen by people who can describe exactly what their body does when triggered and cannot talk their way out of it
Trauma-focused CBT
Works on the meaning and the avoidance
- Examines the thoughts and beliefs the event left behind, and tests them against evidence
- Structured and usually time-limited, with practice between sessions
- Often involves gradually approaching what is being avoided, rather than working around it
- More writing, talking and recording of the account than EMDR asks for
- Often chosen by people who want a clear framework and something concrete to work on between sessions
Those are tendencies, not rules, and neither column is a verdict about you. Some people find the reduced narration in EMDR is exactly what makes starting possible; others find the structure and between-session practice of CBT is what keeps the work moving. Some people do both, sequenced rather than at the same time, which is a conversation about order rather than about which approach is right.
At TEO you are not choosing blind. Mohamad Shabib holds Advanced EMDR training (EMDRIA) and CBT for Trauma Levels 1 and 2, and Alison Shaji is trained in both EMDR and CBT, so the approach can be discussed openly in the free consultation and revisited later if the first choice is not moving anything. Rola Shbib does not offer EMDR.
Who offers EMDR therapy at TEO, and what did they train in?
Mohamad Shabib, founder, holds Advanced EMDR training (EMDRIA). He is a Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying) with the CRPO in Ontario, holds an MACP, and is a Canadian Certified Counsellor. His trauma background includes work with first responders in a specialized concurrent trauma and addictions program at Edgewood in Nanaimo, crisis response, First Nations community mental health, and refugee support. He is also trained in IFS and in CBT for Trauma — which matters, because EMDR is rarely used in isolation. Sessions in English or Arabic.
Read Mohamad’s full bio →Alison Shaji is a Registered Clinical Counsellor in BC with an MA in Clinical Psychology. She is trained in EMDR, alongside DBT, CBT, psychoanalytic therapy, EFFT and inner child work.
Read Alison’s full bio →Rola Shbib, our Registered Social Worker in Ontario, does not offer EMDR. Her training is in trauma-informed person-centred care, crisis intervention and suicide prevention, and grief and loss. If EMDR is what you want, you would be booked with Mohamad or Alison. Which of them can work with you depends on where you live, and the free consultation confirms that before anything is booked.
Read Rola’s full bio →We do not use modality-based certification titles for our clinicians — that phrasing is not recognised in Canadian regulated practice. The training is listed so you can judge it yourself.
Common questions about online EMDR
Does EMDR work over video?
It is delivered over video routinely, using the same eight-phase protocol with the bilateral stimulation adapted — self-tapping, an on-screen moving target, or alternating tones. Research on remote delivery is smaller and more recent than research on EMDR generally, so the accurate answer is that it is widely practised with encouraging early findings, not that it has been shown identical.
How does EMDR work?
EMDR works from the adaptive information processing model: the idea that some experiences stay stored with the original images, sensations and conclusions still attached, and that holding one of them in mind in short, paused sets while a left-right task divides your attention allows it to be processed and stored more like an ordinary memory. How much the eye movements or taps themselves contribute, as distinct from the rest of the eight-phase protocol, is still an open research question — the protocol is well specified, the mechanism is not settled.
What are the side effects of EMDR therapy?
EMDR is not a medication, so what people report are after-effects of processing rather than side effects: tiredness, emotion closer to the surface than usual, vivid dreams, and memories or realisations continuing to surface for a day or two. Sessions are closed with grounding for that reason. Anything that does not settle — difficulty staying present, badly disrupted sleep, a pull toward drinking or using to shut the feeling down, or distress that stays high between sessions — is a reason to slow the pacing and should be raised with your therapist rather than pushed through.
Is EMDR better than CBT for trauma?
Neither can be called better than the other in the abstract. Both EMDR and trauma-focused CBT appear in clinical practice guidelines for PTSD, and they differ in route rather than in ambition: EMDR targets a specific memory with bilateral stimulation and asks for little narration, while trauma-focused CBT works with the meaning and the avoidance the event left behind, usually with structure and practice between sessions. Which one fits depends on the memory, how you process, and what you have already tried. Mohamad holds Advanced EMDR training (EMDRIA) and CBT for Trauma Levels 1 and 2, and Alison is trained in both, so the choice is discussed in the free consultation rather than assumed.
Do I have to describe what happened in detail?
No. You need to bring the memory to mind and report what comes up between sets, in whatever words you have. Many people find that easier than a full retelling.
How many EMDR sessions will I need?
There is no fixed number, and it varies widely from person to person. Repeated or childhood trauma usually takes longer than a single recent incident, and much of that time is preparation rather than reprocessing. A dependable estimate is not possible before knowing your history, so you and your therapist agree a first target, track the disturbance rating on it, and review as you go.
Can I get stuck in a memory?
You stay awake and oriented, you can stop any set immediately, and sessions are closed with grounding whether or not the target is finished. The genuine risk is not getting stuck — it is beginning reprocessing before enough stabilization is in place, which is what the preparation phase is designed to guard against.
What do I need, and what if my internet drops?
Headphones, a device that sits steady on a surface, a private room, and a reasonable connection. If an on-screen tool is used, your therapist sets it up with you in session. You can agree a fallback with your therapist before you start — a phone call, for example — so a dropped connection is a normal event, not an emergency.
Is there EMDR therapy near me?
TEO is virtual only; there is no office to travel to. We work with clients in British Columbia, Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Newfoundland & Labrador, evenings and weekends included. Which clinician can work with you depends on where you live, and that is confirmed in the free consultation. Outside the larger cities, working online can matter more: there is no travel, and you are not limited to whoever happens to be nearby.
What does it cost, and is it covered?
Individual sessions are $150 per 60-minute session and couples sessions are $175. If you think you will need longer sessions, raise it in the free consultation so the length and the fee that applies are agreed before you book. We provide receipts for extended health benefit plans — check which practitioner designations your plan reimburses. TEO is an approved provider with BC’s Crime Victim Assistance Program.
Written at more length
If you would rather read the long version before booking a call.
What Is EMDR Therapy and How Does It Work? A Therapist’s Guide
The eight phases walked through one at a time, with the preparation stage given the space it takes up in practice.
7 Signs of Unresolved Trauma (And What You Can Do About It)
The everyday signs that bring people to ask about EMDR in the first place, long after the event itself.
Trauma Therapy Online in Ontario: How It Works
How structured trauma work runs by video for Ontario clients, and what the CRPO registration means for you.
First Responders Therapy in BC: Support for Those Who Give Everything
Written for police, fire, paramedic and dispatch work, where the difficult material accumulates across a career.
If you need help now
This page is educational. It is not a diagnosis, a treatment plan, or a substitute for individual clinical advice. TEO does not provide emergency or crisis services and does not monitor messages outside session hours.
Start with a free call, not a session
The first step is a free 15 minute consultation. It is not a session and there is no assessment to sit through. You describe what you are dealing with, we tell you whether EMDR looks like a reasonable fit and what preparation would likely involve, and if another approach makes more sense we will say so.
Book a Free ConsultationOr call (519) 760-5211
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If you have questions about whether EMDR is a fit before booking, write a line or two and we will reply by email.