Francine Shapiro
EMDR
A therapy for trauma: for when something terrible happened and it keeps coming back as if it were now. Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing, developed by psychologist Francine Shapiro.
01 / A memory that stays raw
Shapiro’s idea: most experiences get sorted and filed as done. Some are too much to sort. They stay exactly as they were.
All of it, kept together.
“It actually gets stored in the brain with the emotions and the physical sensations and the beliefs that were there at the time.”
Francine Shapiro, psychologist
02 / Why it comes back
Everything that happens gets checked against what is already stored. Brush against a raw memory and it opens, feelings and all, as if it were now.
You get anxious in a meeting and have no idea it is thirty years old.
“If something happens 30 years later as an adult that is similar in any way, it has to link up with the memory networks.”
Francine Shapiro
03 / The walk
Shapiro noticed her own upsetting thoughts fading as she walked through a park. Her eyes had been flicking back and forth. She tried it on purpose, then on other people.
She published the first study two years later.
04 / The model
Shapiro’s picture: you have a processing system that takes what happened, keeps the useful part and lets the rest go. A bad enough experience jams it.
EMDR restarts processing for that memory. The system does the rest.
“We identify what those earlier experiences are and we process them. We bring that information processing system back online.”
Francine Shapiro
05 / A session
You bring up the worst moment of the memory: the picture, the feeling, where it sits in your body, and what it says about you. Then the therapist’s hand moves (or a light, or a pointer) and your eyes follow.
After each set of passes: what do you notice now? Then another set. You say as much or as little as you want.
“Very rapid associations and connections or insights are made, and the emotions, physical sensations, beliefs — all of those shift.”
Francine Shapiro
06 / What changes
The picture fades. The feeling drops. What the memory says about you moves from then to now.
The picture
Sharp and close. Then faded and far.
The feeling
Happening now. Then over.
The belief
I am in danger. Then: that was then.
“It appears that the original memory is transformed as these connections are made.”
Francine Shapiro
07 / The eyes
Shapiro linked them to dreaming sleep, when the day gets sorted. A 2013 review combined fifteen clinical trials.
Without them,
the memory still fades.
With them,
it fades more.
A moderate difference. Taps or tones can replace the eye movements. The mechanism is still debated.
“EMDR processing seems to link in to the same processes that occur during rapid eye movement sleep.”
Francine Shapiro
08 / The practice
The other seven phases make the work safe.
What happened, and which memories to work on.
Ways to settle yourself that you can use alone.
Pick one memory. The picture, the belief, the feeling, the body.
Sets of eye movements until the memory stops hurting.
Attach the belief you want in its place.
Think of it again. Anything left in the body?
Back to steady before you leave the room.
Next session, bring it back. How does it feel now?
Weekly sessions of up to ninety minutes, for around three months.
The short version
If Shapiro is right, the system that files ordinary days can file the worst ones too.
Where this comes from
EMDR is one of the most tested trauma therapies, and the argument is about why it works. The US Veterans Affairs guideline rates it “Strong For”; the American Psychological Association’s 2025 guideline gives it a conditional recommendation. A 2020 review of seventy-six trials found a large effect against no treatment, with only four of twenty-seven PTSD studies at low risk of bias. Whether the eye movements are needed is still contested. The numbers above are the researchers’, not Shapiro’s.