EMDR: what stabilisation means, and why we do not rush
People arrive wanting to process the memory in the first session. The early work is building the ground to process it from, and for long histories that takes longer. Here is why.
People come to EMDR having read that it can resolve a trauma in a few sessions, and they want to start on the memory straight away. I understand the urgency. But the first sessions are not about the memory, and I want to explain what they are about, because skipping them is how EMDR goes wrong.
Processing brings the charge up before it brings it down
When a raw memory is reprocessed, its emotional charge comes up. The charge rising is the memory being accessed so that it can be filed properly. For a moment, sometimes longer, you are in contact with the feeling that was stored with the event. Then, as the processing continues, the charge comes down, and the memory changes from something that is happening to something that happened.
To do that safely, you need somewhere steady to do it from. A way of coming back into the present when the memory is loud. A sense that the feeling, however big, is something you can be with and step out of. The capacity to end a session and be all right for the rest of the week. Not everyone has that steadiness when they arrive, and no therapist should assume it. It has to be checked, and where it is missing, built.
What stabilisation involves
Stabilisation is the name for that building. It begins with assessment: understanding your history in broad terms, what is happening now, what triggers what, and how you currently cope, including the ways of coping that cost you. Then it builds resources. A practised way of grounding yourself in the present. An image or a place that reliably brings calm, rehearsed until it is available under pressure. An understanding of what the processing will feel like, so it does not ambush you.
For some people this takes a session or two. For a single, recent, well-defined event in someone whose life is otherwise steady, it can be brief, and reprocessing can begin quickly. For longer histories, a childhood, years of a relationship, repeated events, it takes longer, deliberately. The more there is to process, and the more the trauma has shaped how you cope, the more ground needs to be in place before we begin.
Why rushing fails
EMDR done without stabilisation can leave someone flooded: a memory accessed, its charge up, and no way to come back down. That is re-experiencing, and it can make things worse. The people who describe EMDR as having been harmful have very often been taken to the memory before they had the means to be there.
So we do not begin reprocessing until you feel stable and prepared. That is the first half of the real work, and it is what makes the second half safe.
Stability in complex pictures
Where trauma sits alongside something else, the stabilisation phase does more. With EUPD, we build emotional skills first and process trauma only once there is enough steadiness to work with. With disordered eating that began as a way of coping, the eating has to be steadier before the memory underneath is touched. With dissociation, we work on presence before we work on the past. In each case, the ground is built to the size of what will be processed on it.
How you know you are ready
You will not be told you are ready without agreeing. Readiness is something we assess together: can you ground yourself when you need to, do you have the resources rehearsed, do you understand what is coming, and do you want to begin. If the answer to any of those is no, we keep building. There is no prize for starting early.
What comes after
Once the ground is there, reprocessing sessions work through the memories at your pace. A single-event trauma can resolve in a handful of sessions; longer histories take longer, and we review progress openly throughout. You will say far less about the event than you fear, because the method does not depend on retelling. And you will finish each session with a way back into the present that you have practised.
I am accredited with EMDR Europe, and the eight-phase method, of which stabilisation is the second, is described on the EMDR page. If you have been in a hurry to reach the memory, there is more on how I use EMDR for trauma, and the ground comes first.