How to Find the Right Online EMDR Therapist in the UK

Finding an online EMDR therapist can feel surprisingly difficult. You may already know that you want help with trauma, PTSD, anxiety, difficult memories or patterns that keep repeating, but knowing how to choose the right therapist is another matter.

A search for “online EMDR therapist” can bring up hundreds of practitioners. Some will have completed recognised EMDR training and use EMDR extensively in their clinical work. Others may have completed only introductory training or offer EMDR alongside a very broad range of therapies.

The therapist who appears first in Google is not necessarily the therapist who is best suited to you.

This guide explains what to look for when choosing an online EMDR therapist in the UK, the questions worth asking before you begin, and why the therapist’s experience with your particular difficulty can matter as much as the letters after their name.

What is an online EMDR therapist?

EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing.

It is a structured psychological therapy originally developed for trauma and PTSD. During EMDR, distressing experiences are processed while the brain is engaged in bilateral or dual-attention stimulation.

This commonly involves guided eye movements, alternating sounds through headphones, alternating tapping or other forms of left-right stimulation.

EMDR does not require you simply to keep talking about a traumatic event until it becomes easier. Instead, therapy focuses on helping memories that continue to feel emotionally present become processed and integrated so that they feel more like something that happened in the past.

NICE recommends EMDR as a treatment for adults with PTSD in appropriate circumstances. You can read the current NICE guidance on PTSD.

Online EMDR uses the same clinical model, but the therapy takes place by secure video rather than with the therapist sitting in the same room.

Can EMDR genuinely be done online?

Yes. Online EMDR became considerably more widespread during and after the pandemic, and the evidence base has continued to develop.

Research on remotely delivered EMDR has been encouraging, although the evidence base for online EMDR is still smaller than the much larger evidence base for EMDR generally. It would therefore be misleading to claim that every question about online delivery has been settled.

For many people, online work also has an important practical advantage: you can access a specialist therapist who may live hundreds of miles away without travelling to their clinic.

You can read more about online EMDR therapy in the UK and what the research says about whether EMDR can work online.

Why choosing an EMDR therapist matters

EMDR is sometimes misunderstood as simply following a moving dot across a computer screen. It is much more than that.

The eye movements or other bilateral stimulation form only one part of a broader therapeutic process. A skilled EMDR therapist needs to understand trauma and traumatic memory, readiness for memory processing, dissociation and emotional shutdown, emotional regulation, attachment and developmental trauma, appropriate target selection, blocking beliefs and protective responses, and when to slow down or adapt the work.

This becomes particularly important when the problem is more complicated than a single traumatic event.

Someone experiencing PTSD after one road traffic accident may require a different treatment strategy from someone who has experienced childhood neglect, abusive relationships, repeated trauma or years of feeling unsafe.

The question therefore should not only be:

“Does this therapist offer EMDR?”

A better question is:

“Does this therapist understand the type of difficulty I am bringing to EMDR?”

Check their EMDR training

In the UK, one of the most useful checks is whether the therapist has undertaken EMDR Europe-authorised training.

The EMDR Association UK explains that recognised standard training is the first step towards becoming an accredited EMDR therapist.

There is an important distinction between being trained in EMDR and being an EMDR Europe Accredited Practitioner. An accredited practitioner has gone beyond foundation training and demonstrated competence in EMDR practice under appropriate supervision.

The EMDR Association UK maintains a Find a Therapist directory containing accredited EMDR therapists.

If somebody is not yet accredited, that does not automatically mean they are inexperienced or unsuitable. Accreditation takes time and clinicians can legitimately practise EMDR after recognised training while working towards accreditation.

However, it is reasonable to ask:

• Where did you complete your EMDR training?
• Was your training recognised by EMDR Europe?
• Are you accredited, or are you working towards accreditation?
• How frequently do you use EMDR in your clinical practice?
• Do you receive EMDR-specific supervision or consultation?

A competent therapist should be comfortable answering these questions.

Look at their original professional background too

EMDR is an additional psychotherapy training rather than a standalone profession.

Your therapist should therefore also have an appropriate core professional background and belong to a suitable professional or regulatory organisation.

Depending on their profession, that might include organisations such as BABCP, BACP, UKCP, HCPC or another recognised professional body relevant to their underlying qualification.

The EMDR Association UK itself advises people looking for an EMDR therapist to check both the therapist’s EMDR training and their underlying professional registration.

Do they actually specialise in trauma?

A therapist can be qualified to deliver EMDR without trauma work forming a substantial part of their practice.

If you are seeking EMDR because of significant trauma, PTSD or complex experiences, look at how the therapist describes their work.

Do they regularly work with PTSD, childhood trauma, attachment trauma, road traffic accidents, medical trauma, abuse, traumatic loss, difficult relationship experiences, shame, hypervigilance, dissociation or complex and repeated trauma?

You do not necessarily need somebody who has treated an identical situation. You do want somebody whose clinical work suggests that trauma is central to what they do rather than one item among dozens of unrelated services.

Complex trauma may require more than standard EMDR

For a relatively straightforward single-event trauma, standard EMDR can sometimes progress quite directly. Complex trauma is often different.

A person may understand exactly what happened to them but still become overwhelmed, shut down or disconnected when therapy moves towards the memory. Other people find that their mind immediately begins analysing what happened rather than allowing emotional processing to occur.

Some experience internal conflict. One part of them desperately wants to recover while another part is frightened about what will happen if memories are opened up.

These are not signs that you have failed at EMDR. They may indicate that the therapy needs to be adapted.

My own work is strongly informed by EMDR, but where appropriate I also integrate approaches including Internal Family Systems-informed work, Brainspotting, somatic approaches and Deep Brain Reorienting (DBR).

This can be particularly helpful when trauma is experienced not only as a memory but through persistent bodily threat responses, emotional shutdown, internal conflict or longstanding patterns of protection.

Ask how they adapt EMDR for online therapy

Online therapy should not simply be face-to-face therapy transferred onto a video platform without any thought about the difference in setting.

Bilateral stimulation

An online EMDR therapist may use visual bilateral stimulation on screen, alternating auditory tones, therapist-guided tapping, self-administered bilateral tapping or specialist online EMDR software.

There is no single method that is right for everyone. Some people respond strongly to eye movements. Others prefer auditory stimulation or tapping.

Privacy

You need somewhere you can speak without worrying that another person can hear you. Headphones can be useful, particularly when other people are elsewhere in the house.

Technology

Your connection does not have to be perfect, but therapist and client should agree what happens if the connection fails during processing.

Safety and support

Before significant trauma processing begins, your therapist should understand where you are physically located during the session and consider what support might be available if difficulties arise.

Ending the session appropriately

A good EMDR session should not simply stop because the allotted hour has elapsed. The therapist should allow appropriate time for closure, helping you reorient to the present before the session ends.

The first session should not necessarily involve eye movements

People sometimes expect an EMDR appointment to involve immediately identifying their worst memory and beginning eye movements. That is not how good trauma therapy has to work.

EMDR has eight recognised phases. History taking and preparation come before desensitisation.

The therapist first needs to understand what has brought you to therapy. This can include the difficulties you are experiencing now, relevant experiences from your past, triggers, your current level of stability, coping strategies, physical health, medication where relevant, risk and safety, previous therapy and what you would like to change.

For straightforward trauma, preparation may be relatively brief. For more complex presentations, spending longer developing a formulation and understanding how your nervous system responds can make subsequent processing more effective.

There should not be pressure to process trauma before there is enough understanding of what is happening.

Be cautious of promises about how quickly EMDR will work

EMDR can sometimes produce striking changes surprisingly quickly. That does not mean anybody can reliably tell you in advance that a trauma will be resolved in three sessions, six sessions or another fixed number.

NICE describes EMDR treatment for PTSD in structured courses and recognises that more sessions may be needed where clinically indicated, including for people who have experienced multiple traumas.

The length of treatment can depend on the number of traumatic experiences, age at the time of trauma, developmental trauma, current life circumstances, dissociation, physical injury, attachment experiences, current coping strategies and whether the trauma is ongoing.

A therapist can give you an impression after assessment, but certainty before meeting you should be treated cautiously.

Does the therapist understand your particular presentation?

This can be one of the most important factors in choosing somebody.

For example, if your trauma followed a serious road accident, it may help to work with somebody who understands the overlap between PTSD, sensory hypervigilance, driving anxiety, physical injury, loss of function, concussion or traumatic brain injury, changes in identity and fear about the future.

If your difficulties relate to childhood or relationship trauma, somebody experienced in attachment and developmental trauma may be more appropriate than somebody whose work is almost exclusively with isolated traumatic events.

The therapeutic approach needs to fit the person rather than forcing the person to fit the protocol.

What if I cannot describe the trauma?

You do not always need to describe every detail of an experience for EMDR to be possible.

This can be important where the memory involves shame, sexual trauma, confidential information, experiences that are very difficult to verbalise or events you simply do not want to describe in detail.

EMDR therapists can sometimes use approaches in which the therapist knows relatively little about the detailed content of a memory while still guiding the processing safely.

Sometimes referred to as Blind to Therapist or restricted-processing approaches, these can provide considerably more privacy than people expect from trauma therapy.

It is worth discussing this with the therapist before processing begins if disclosure itself feels like a barrier to seeking help.

How important is the relationship with the therapist?

Very.

EMDR is an evidence-based therapy, but therapy is still a relationship between two people.

You should ideally feel that your therapist listens carefully, understands what you are saying, does not rush you, can explain what they are doing, is comfortable if you ask questions, takes your concerns seriously and adapts when something does not work.

You do not have to instantly trust somebody you have met once. For people who have experienced interpersonal trauma, expecting immediate trust would be unrealistic.

What matters initially is whether the therapist feels sufficiently safe, consistent and credible for trust to have the possibility of developing.

Questions to ask an online EMDR therapist

You do not have to conduct an interview, but a brief consultation can help establish whether the therapist is a good fit.

• What EMDR training have you completed?
• How much of your work involves trauma and EMDR?
• Have you worked with people experiencing difficulties similar to mine?
• How do you deliver bilateral stimulation online?
• What happens if I become overwhelmed or disconnected during processing?
• Do you adapt EMDR for complex trauma?
• How do you decide when somebody is ready to begin processing?
• What happens if standard EMDR processing becomes stuck?
• What professional body are you registered or accredited with?

The therapist does not need to give you a lengthy technical answer to every question. You are looking for evidence that there is thoughtful clinical reasoning behind what they do.

Red flags when looking for an online EMDR therapist

Be cautious if someone:

• cannot clearly explain their EMDR training
• suggests EMDR is simply following a light or moving image
• guarantees recovery within a fixed number of sessions
• wants to begin processing major trauma without meaningful assessment
• dismisses concerns about dissociation or emotional overwhelm
• has no clear professional registration or accountability
• appears to use exactly the same EMDR approach with everyone
• discourages reasonable questions about treatment

Good EMDR therapy should be collaborative. You should understand enough about the treatment to make an informed decision about taking part.

Is online EMDR suitable for everyone?

Not necessarily.

There may be situations where face-to-face work is preferable or where additional assessment and support are needed before trauma processing.

Examples can include significant immediate risk, serious instability, circumstances where privacy cannot be achieved at home, severe difficulties remaining oriented to the present or circumstances where the therapist believes online trauma processing would not be clinically appropriate.

These decisions should be individual rather than based on a blanket rule that online EMDR is either suitable or unsuitable for everybody.

Sometimes therapy can still begin online while initially focusing on assessment, stabilisation and preparation rather than trauma processing.

One advantage of online EMDR is access to specialist therapists

One of the strongest arguments for online therapy is not convenience. It is choice.

If you rely only on therapists within travelling distance, you may have a relatively small pool of clinicians to choose from.

Online therapy allows you to look throughout the UK for somebody with experience relevant to what you are experiencing.

That can matter when you need more specialist work involving complex trauma, road traffic accident trauma, attachment trauma, traumatic bereavement, dissociation or difficult and blocked EMDR processing.

The best therapist for you may not be the therapist who happens to practise five miles from your home.

Finding an online EMDR therapist through the EMDR Association UK

If you would like to search independently, the EMDR Association UK Find a Therapist directory is a useful starting point.

Therapists appearing in the directory are accredited, and the search facility allows you to identify practitioners offering online sessions.

You can then look at individual therapists’ websites to understand their clinical interests, professional background and style of working.

Accreditation is an important quality marker, but it still does not tell you whether an individual therapist is the right relational or clinical fit for you. Both matter.

Online EMDR with Philip Bruce Therapy

I provide online EMDR therapy across the UK as well as face-to-face therapy from my practice at Hartham Park in Corsham, Wiltshire.

My clinical work focuses particularly on trauma and the ways difficult experiences continue to affect the nervous system, relationships, beliefs and everyday life long after the original event has ended.

I work with both relatively discrete traumatic experiences and more complex presentations where standard trauma processing may need to be adapted.

Alongside EMDR, my work may draw on approaches including Internal Family Systems-informed therapy, Brainspotting, somatic approaches and Deep Brain Reorienting where these are clinically useful.

The aim is not to fit you into a particular therapy model. It is to understand what is keeping the difficulty going and choose an approach that makes sense for you.

You can learn more about EMDR therapy, trauma therapy, Deep Brain Reorienting, or online EMDR intensives.

Taking the next step

Choosing an EMDR therapist is an important decision, particularly when you may be sharing experiences you have spent years trying not to think about.

It is reasonable to ask questions. It is reasonable to speak to more than one therapist. And it is reasonable to decide that somebody who looks highly qualified on paper does not feel like the right person for you.

Look for appropriate training, professional accountability and relevant trauma experience.

Then pay attention to something harder to measure:

Do you feel that this person is trying to understand you rather than simply apply a technique to you?

That is often a very good place to begin.

If you would like to discuss whether online EMDR might be appropriate for you, I offer a free 15-minute initial consultation.

Book a free consultation or email philip@philipbrucetherapy.co.uk.