Can you do EMDR on yourself?

Yes and no. You can safely practice the core technique from EMDR, bilateral stimulation, on your own for everyday stress, and EMDR’s founder published self-help methods for exactly that. But full EMDR therapy, the kind that reprocesses trauma, is designed to be therapist-led, and researchers do not recommend self-administering it.

Most people asking this aren’t looking for a shortcut. Therapy is expensive, waitlists are long, or you’ve finished EMDR with a therapist and want something to practice between sessions. So here is an honest map: which parts of EMDR are yours to use, and which parts aren’t.

What does “doing EMDR on yourself” actually mean?

Full EMDR is an eight-phase psychotherapy. Before any memory work begins, a clinician takes your history, screens for things like dissociation, and builds stabilization skills. During reprocessing, they watch how you’re responding and step in if you become overwhelmed. That therapist-delivered package is what the World Health Organization’s 2013 guidelines list alongside trauma-focused CBT as a recommended treatment for adults with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Inside that package, though, sits a portable technique: bilateral stimulation, the rhythmic left-right eye movements, sounds, or taps that give EMDR its name. EMDR’s founder, Francine Shapiro, published a self-help book, Getting Past Your Past (2012). In it, she teaches techniques like the butterfly hug and calm-place exercises for daily self-soothing, while directing readers to a trained EMDR therapist for reprocessing trauma.

That split is the whole answer in miniature: the techniques travel, the trauma protocol doesn’t. Our guide to self-guided vs. therapist-led EMDR unpacks the differences phase by phase.

What can you safely practice on your own?

Bilateral stimulation works well as a solo practice for everyday material: the meeting you keep replaying, pre-interview jitters, a mind that won’t power down at night, the wound-up feeling that follows a hard week home.

The leading explanation for why it helps is working memory. Holding a stressful memory in mind is itself a demanding task; add a second one, like tracking a left-right rhythm, and the memory has fewer mental resources to run on, so it tends to lose vividness and emotional charge. That’s the account laid out by van den Hout and Engelhard (2012) in the Journal of Experimental Psychopathology. An honest footnote: their experiments suggest the effect comes from taxing working memory rather than from left-right movement being special, and other demanding tasks work too. Bilateral formats simply make the pacing steady and easy to keep.

A simple way to try it, the butterfly hug:

1. Cross your arms over your chest, hands resting on opposite upper arms.
2. Bring the stressful thought to mind loosely. No narrating; just let it be there.
3. Tap left, right, left, right in a slow, steady rhythm for 30 to 60 seconds.
4. Pause, take one slow breath, notice what shifted, and repeat for 3 to 5 rounds.

If you’d rather be guided than keep your own rhythm, EmEase, a self-guided EMDR app, runs the same technique with a moving on-screen target or alternating tones in the web app, at a pace you control. Either way, treat this as a wellness practice for everyday stress, not a home version of therapy. For more on building this into a regular habit, see can you practice EMDR techniques between sessions?

What should you leave to a professional?

Trauma reprocessing: deliberately revisiting the worst things that have happened to you in order to take away their charge. This is where the research gets thin and the risks get real.

A 2020 commentary in BJPsych Open went looking for evidence on self-administered EMDR for post-traumatic stress and found exactly one small primary study: 15 participants enrolled, internet-delivered, and even then with weekly clinician contact. Of the 11 participants who completed the study, 55% no longer met the criteria for PTSD by the end of treatment, but 8 reported temporary increases in re-experiencing symptoms during treatment, and 3 reported an overall worsening of symptoms by the end. The authors also cite Shapiro’s own warning that EMDR without adequate screening and preparation can have serious, even dangerous consequences. Their conclusion wasn’t “never” — it was that rigorous trials are needed before anyone can call self-administered EMDR safe or effective for trauma.

A practical way to hold the line:

Reasonable on your own	Work with a professional
Everyday stress and tension after a hard day	Trauma memories, including single events like accidents
A recent argument or awkward moment replaying	Painful material from childhood you’ve never processed
Performance nerves before interviews or tests	Grief that isn’t softening with time
Winding down a busy mind before sleep	Any history of dissociation, or distress that spikes and won’t settle

If you’re still weighing it, is self-guided EMDR safe? goes deeper on the risk side. And if you’re unsure whether your situation calls for a professional, who should not do EMDR on their own? breaks down the specific red flags.

How do you know which side of the line you’re on?

Use a simple 0–10 distress scale. Everyday material feels unpleasant but workable: you can hold it in mind, tap through a few rounds, and feel it ease. If bringing something to mind sends your distress climbing past a 7 and it won’t settle, pulls up old memories you didn’t choose, or leaves you foggy and far away, stop and treat that as information. It doesn’t mean the technique failed; it means the material is heavier than a solo practice is built for, and it deserves a trained person beside you.

Practice the small stuff on your own. Bring company for the big stuff. That isn’t a limitation of doing EMDR on yourself; it’s the definition of doing it well.