When EMDR Isn't Working: Why Some Trauma Survivors Try Brainspotting Next
Maybe you have been doing EMDR for a few months, or maybe a lot longer than that. The early sessions may have felt like something was shifting, or they may not have, but either way you have reached a point where the same memory keeps landing with the same force and the numbers your therapist asks you to rate are not moving. That is a discouraging place to be, particularly after choosing a treatment that everyone described as effective. It is reasonable, at that point, to start wondering whether the problem is you. It is not. Stalled progress in trauma therapy is common, it is well documented, and it almost never means a person is broken or beyond help. What it usually means is that something in the approach, the pacing, the preparation, or the fit needs to change.
What It Usually Means When EMDR Stops Making Progress in Trauma Therapy
There is a particular kind of discouragement that comes from a treatment everyone praised not working the way you expected. Many people describe feeling like they wasted months, or like they failed at the one thing that was supposed to help. It is worth naming plainly that this reaction makes sense and that it is also, in most cases, based on a misunderstanding of how trauma treatment actually unfolds. Reprocessing is not a linear process, and a plateau is far more often a signal about method and timing than a verdict on a person's capacity to heal.
Trauma treatment is also not one procedure. The American Psychological Association's clinical practice guideline for PTSD recognizes several distinct approaches with meaningful research support, which tells you something important on its own. If a single method worked for everyone, the guideline would list one. The existence of multiple recommended treatments is an acknowledgment, built into the professional standards themselves, that people process trauma differently and that a good outcome sometimes depends on finding the right match rather than trying harder at the first thing.
How EMDR Reprocessing Is Supposed to Work, Explained in Plain Language
EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, and its underlying theory is called the Adaptive Information Processing model. The basic idea is that most experiences get filed away by the brain in a form that connects to everything else you know, which is why an ordinary bad day loses its charge over time. A traumatic experience can get stored differently, more like a frozen file that never linked up with the rest of your memory network, which is why it still arrives with the original sensations and beliefs attached. EMDR uses bilateral stimulation, meaning alternating left and right input through eye movements, tapping, or sound, while you hold the memory in mind, with the goal of helping that stuck file finally process and integrate.
The method is highly structured, which is one of its genuine strengths. It moves through eight distinct phases, beginning with history taking and stabilization long before any memory gets targeted, and it uses specific numeric measures to track how disturbing a memory feels and how believable a new, more adaptive belief has become. That structure gives both therapist and client a shared map. It also means there are eight separate places where the process can get interrupted, and knowing which phase things stalled in usually points directly at what needs to change. You can read more about the phases and the evidence base through the EMDR International Association.
Common Reasons EMDR Reprocessing Stalls for Trauma Survivors
When reprocessing slows or stops, there is almost always an identifiable reason, and an experienced trauma therapist will usually be able to name it once they go looking. The reasons below come up frequently in clinical practice and in the training literature. None of them are unusual, and most of them are workable. If any of these sound familiar, they are worth raising with your therapist directly rather than waiting to see if things improve on their own.
Not enough preparation and resourcing. Phase two of EMDR exists to build internal stability before any memory is targeted, and it is the phase most often rushed. If you do not yet have reliable ways to bring your body back down after activation, your system will sensibly refuse to open the file. What looks like resistance is often self-protection doing exactly its job. Slowing down and spending more time building those skills frequently unsticks everything downstream.
Dissociation during sessions. Some people go numb, foggy, distant, or sleepy the moment a memory comes into focus, which is a nervous system strategy learned during experiences that were genuinely unsurvivable at the time. Reprocessing requires staying connected to the memory and to the present moment at the same time, sometimes called dual awareness. When that connection keeps dropping, the material cannot integrate. This pattern usually calls for a different pacing and a more body-oriented approach rather than more repetitions of the same protocol.
Blocking beliefs and feeder memories. Reprocessing sometimes runs into a deeper, older conviction sitting underneath the target memory, something like a bone-deep certainty that you were responsible, or that safety is not available to people like you. That belief can act like a wall the processing keeps hitting. There may also be an earlier memory feeding the current one that was never identified during history taking. Finding and addressing what sits underneath often restores movement.
The memory has no image. EMDR targeting traditionally works best with a specific scene: a moment, a picture, a worst part. Trauma that happened before language developed, or that unfolded slowly over years rather than in a single event, frequently has no scene at all. What remains is a feeling in the chest, a bracing in the shoulders, a sense of dread with no story attached. Approaches that do not require a visual target tend to work better with this kind of material.
Complex or developmental trauma treated like single-incident trauma. A one-time event and years of chronic relational harm are not the same clinical picture, even when the diagnostic label overlaps. Ongoing trauma that shaped attachment and identity generally requires a longer stabilization phase and a more relationally attuned approach. Applying a standard protocol built around discrete incidents can leave a person feeling like the treatment keeps missing the point. Adjusting the frame, not abandoning treatment, is usually the answer.
Fit, safety, and outside circumstances. Reprocessing asks your nervous system to enter a vulnerable state, and it will not do that with a therapist it does not fully trust, no matter how skilled that therapist is on paper. Current life instability matters too, since a system managing an active crisis, a housing situation, severe sleep deprivation, or heavy substance use is not in a position to open old material safely. Sometimes what is needed is stabilizing the present before returning to the past. Discover Hope does not prescribe medication or provide psychiatric evaluation, so if sleep, medication effects, or substance use appear to be part of the picture, we will help you coordinate with a medical provider alongside therapy.
What Brainspotting Is and How It Differs From EMDR
Brainspotting was developed by Dr. David Grand around 2003, and it did not come from a competing school of thought. It emerged directly out of his EMDR practice, when he noticed that a client's eyes would sometimes lock or flicker at a particular point in the visual field while difficult material was surfacing, and that holding the gaze there produced deeper processing than continuing to move the eyes. The organizing idea is often summarized as "where you look affects how you feel." Instead of moving the eyes back and forth, a Brainspotting therapist helps you locate a fixed eye position, called a brainspot, that correlates with the activation you are noticing in your body.
From there, the process looks quite different from an EMDR session. You hold your gaze on that spot and simply notice what happens, and there is no requirement to narrate the memory, rate it numerically, or move through predetermined phases in order. The therapist stays quietly present and attuned, following where your system goes rather than directing it toward a preset target. Practitioners describe this as bottom-up and emergent, meaning it starts with the body and lets meaning arrive afterward, rather than starting with a cognition and working down. For many people the felt experience is less like performing a procedure and more like being accompanied while something unwinds on its own timeline.
The theoretical claim behind it involves subcortical processing, which is worth translating out of jargon. Subcortical simply means the parts of the brain sitting beneath the thinking, language-producing cortex: the regions that manage your alarm response, heart rate, muscle tension, and the reflexive orienting you do when something startles you. Those regions do not use words, which is precisely why talking about a trauma can leave the physical part of it entirely untouched. Researchers have proposed that sustained gaze on a brainspot recruits midbrain and orienting circuitry involved in how the body originally responded, though it is honest to say this remains a hypothesis under investigation rather than settled neuroscience. You can read the practitioner-side explanation at Brainspotting International.
What the Research Says About Brainspotting Compared With EMDR for PTSD
Being straight about evidence matters more than being persuasive, so here is the honest picture. EMDR has a substantially larger research base, with dozens of randomized controlled trials and multiple meta-analyses behind it, and it appears as a recommended treatment in major clinical guidelines internationally. Brainspotting's evidence base is real but considerably younger and smaller, consisting largely of preliminary studies rather than the large replicated trials EMDR can point to. Anyone who tells you Brainspotting is proven superior is overstating what currently exists.
That said, the early comparative findings are genuinely interesting. A 2017 study by Hildebrand, Grand, and Stemmler in the Mediterranean Journal of Clinical Psychology followed 76 adults seeking help after traumatic experiences, treating them with three sessions of either EMDR or Brainspotting, and found significant reductions in PTSD symptoms in both groups that held at six-month follow-up. A 2022 study by D'Antoni and colleagues in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health compared single sessions of EMDR, Brainspotting, and body scan meditation for distressing memories and again found comparable reductions in distress between EMDR and Brainspotting. These are small studies with real limitations, and they do not establish that one approach beats the other. What they reasonably support is that Brainspotting appears to be doing something clinically meaningful, which is a sensible basis for trying it when a well-delivered course of EMDR has not moved the needle.
For general background on trauma and PTSD from a research-grounded source, the National Institute of Mental Health maintains an accessible overview of symptoms, prevalence, and treatment categories.
Why Some Trauma Survivors Respond Better to Brainspotting Than to EMDR
Certain patterns show up often enough in clinical practice to be worth describing, with the caveat that none of them predict an outcome for any particular person. People who tend to intellectualize in therapy, who can explain their trauma with impressive clarity while feeling almost nothing, sometimes find that EMDR's cognitive scaffolding gives them another surface to think on. Brainspotting's minimal verbal structure removes much of that surface. Similarly, people whose difficult material is preverbal, or held mostly as physical sensation with no accompanying scene, often find the absence of a required target image genuinely freeing rather than disorienting.
There is also a subgroup for whom the bilateral movement itself is the obstacle. Some people find tracking eye movements activating, effortful, or nauseating, and a smaller number report that it increases dissociation rather than supporting dual awareness. Holding a still gaze asks less of the system and can feel more tolerable. And for people who found EMDR's eight-phase structure and numeric ratings subtly pressuring, as though there were a right answer and a schedule to keep, the open-ended quality of Brainspotting can lower that pressure considerably.
The reverse is equally true and deserves saying. Plenty of people find Brainspotting too unstructured and feel lost without a clear map, and they do far better with EMDR's phases, measures, and predictable sequence. Others do best with neither, and respond to approaches like Acceptance and Commitment Therapy or Emotionally Focused Therapy that work through different doors entirely. This is not a hierarchy where one method is more advanced. It is a question of match, and figuring out which door opens for you is legitimate clinical work rather than a sign of failure.
Signs It May Be Time to Change Your Trauma Therapy Approach
There is no universal timeline, and pushing through a hard stretch is sometimes exactly right, since reprocessing frequently feels worse before it feels better. Still, a few patterns suggest a conversation is overdue. If your subjective distress rating on a target memory has not moved meaningfully across many sessions, if you consistently leave sessions more dysregulated than you arrive and it never resolves between appointments, or if you find yourself dreading or canceling appointments in a way you did not at the start, those are worth examining out loud. Persistent dissociation during reprocessing is another clear signal, as is the sense that the work keeps circling the actual issue without reaching it.
Raising this with your current therapist is not a betrayal and should not be received as one. Any competent trauma clinician has had cases plateau and will generally welcome the conversation, because they would rather adjust the plan than watch you quietly disengage. Useful questions include asking which phase things seem stuck in, whether more stabilization work would help, whether a blocking belief or earlier memory might be involved, and whether they are trained in other approaches or would recommend someone who is. Sometimes the answer is a small adjustment within EMDR. Sometimes it is a different method, and occasionally it is a different clinician, which is a normal outcome rather than a personal rupture.
How Trauma Therapy Works at Our Redding Counseling Center
Discover Hope Therapy is a group practice in Redding with nine clinicians, a mix of licensed therapists and registered associate clinicians practicing under licensed supervision. That size is the practical reason we can approach this question the way we do. When a client needs a different modality or a different relational style, we can usually make that shift within the practice instead of sending them back out to start over somewhere new. You can see who is here, what each person is trained in, and how they describe their own approach on our therapist pages, and our full range of counseling services covers individuals, couples, families, teens, and children.
We also offer both EMDR and Brainspotting, along with Sand Tray Therapy, which serves a similar purpose for people who cannot yet put an experience into words. Trauma work here begins with a real conversation about history, current stability, and what has already been tried, because knowing what did not work and how it did not work is genuinely useful information. If you are outside Shasta County, in Tehama County, or in a rural part of Northern California where trauma-trained clinicians are scarce, our telehealth services are available to anyone located anywhere in California at the same rates as in-person sessions. Questions about fees, insurance, and what to expect logistically are answered on our therapy resources page.
Frequently Asked Questions About Switching From EMDR to Brainspotting
Is Brainspotting the same thing as EMDR?
No, though they are related and share common ancestry. Both use the visual field as an entry point and both aim to process trauma held below conscious thought rather than only talking about it. The central difference is that EMDR uses alternating bilateral stimulation with a structured eight-phase protocol and numeric tracking, while Brainspotting uses a sustained fixed gaze with a far more open, therapist-attuned and client-led process. People often describe EMDR as more directive and Brainspotting as more emergent.
Do I have to describe what happened in detail during Brainspotting?
Generally no, and this is one of the reasons people seek it out. Brainspotting does not require narrating the event, and many sessions involve very little talking at all once a brainspot is located. Your therapist will need enough history to work safely and to understand what you are carrying, but that is different from recounting details you are not ready to speak. If describing an experience out loud has been the specific barrier for you, it is worth raising in a consultation.
How many Brainspotting sessions does it take to see a change?
There is no reliable answer to this and anyone offering a specific number is overpromising. Some people notice shifts within a few sessions, while others working with complex or long-standing trauma need considerably longer, and the honest range depends on history, current stability, and what else is happening in your life. What we can say is that your therapist should be tracking progress with you openly and adjusting when things are not moving. Therapy can help meaningfully, and it is not a cure or a guaranteed outcome.
Can Brainspotting be done online, or does it require in-person sessions?
Brainspotting is regularly practiced over secure video, and many clinicians trained in it work this way routinely. Locating a brainspot on screen requires some adaptation in technique, and your therapist will walk you through how it works in your setup. For people in rural Northern California without access to a trauma-trained clinician nearby, telehealth is often the difference between getting this kind of care and not getting it at all. Our telehealth sessions are available throughout California and are priced the same as in-office sessions.
What if I already tried EMDR and it made things worse?
That experience deserves to be taken seriously rather than explained away. Sometimes an increase in symptoms reflects the normal turbulence of processing, and sometimes it indicates that reprocessing began before enough stabilization was in place, which is a pacing issue rather than an indictment of you. Either way, a new therapist should want to hear the full story of what happened, including what you noticed in your body and how sessions ended. That history shapes how any responsible clinician would approach starting again.
Does Brainspotting work for people who dissociate?
Some people who dissociate during eye movement find a still gaze easier to tolerate, though this varies considerably and is not universal. What matters far more than the method is that your clinician recognizes dissociation when it happens, has training in working with it, and adjusts pacing accordingly rather than pushing forward. If dissociation has been a consistent feature of your therapy so far, mention it early and specifically. It should shape the entire treatment plan, not just the technique selection.
Talking It Through First
If EMDR has stalled for you, the most useful next step is usually a low-stakes conversation rather than a commitment to anything. We offer a free 15-minute consultation where you can describe what you have tried, what happened, and what you are hoping for, and we can tell you honestly whether we think we have someone here who would be a good fit. If a different practice or a different approach makes more sense for you, we will say so. There is no pressure and no obligation to schedule anything afterward.
You are welcome to reach out whenever you are ready, or call our Redding office at (530) 206-5560. Our doors are open Monday through Thursday, 9am to 7pm, and we serve clients in Redding, Anderson, Shasta Lake, Palo Cedro, Cottonwood, Red Bluff, and throughout Northern California, plus telehealth clients across the state. Whatever you decide, the fact that one approach did not work does not mean you are out of options.
