Tag Archives: Depth psychology

EMDR: Modern Rituals in Trauma Healing

“There is no coming to consciousness without pain… One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”
— Carl Jung (CW 13, ¶335)

This post will be a little different from my usual writing. It leans more academic in tone because I want to reflect on one of the most widely respected tools in trauma therapy: EMDR.

For those unfamiliar, EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. It has gained endorsements from the American Psychological Association (APA), the Department of Veterans Affairs, and even the World Health Organization. Its place in the clinical world is well established, and its benefits are experienced by many.

What follows is not a dismissal of EMDR’s value but a reframing of how it may actually work. While EMDR is best known for its use of bilateral stimulation (BLS), I propose that the deeper source of its healing power is something more timeless: the direct confrontation with trauma.

To be clear, I fully acknowledge the growing body of research supporting EMDR’s efficacy (Lee & Cuijpers, 2013; Shapiro, 2018). My aim is not to strip away its credibility but to look at it through a symbolic lens. As a clinician-in-training steeped in trauma-informed care and depth psychology, I wonder whether the field has misattributed its effectiveness. Are we focusing so much on the method that we overlook the ritual act at its core?

The Hypothesis: Exposure, Not Eye Movements, Is the Active Ingredient

Let us first dive into the research: EMDR leads to significant symptom reduction in trauma survivors. However, when the role of bilateral stimulation is isolated, the findings become a bit murky. Davidson and Parker (2001) conducted a meta-analysis and found that eye movements did not significantly enhance outcomes beyond exposure alone. van den Hout et al., (2011) observed that while BLS may slightly reduce vividness and emotionality, it appears non-essential to successful treatment.

This brings us to a question that many researchers have asked, but few clinicians or educators seem willing to face directly. Is it wholly the eye movements or the repeated, structured confrontation with trauma that promotes healing?

Here is what has not been explored deeply: the symbolic and psychological function of BLS. What if BLS serves more as an emotional buffer, something that helps to regulate discomfort rather than reveal truth? What if the real healing lies not in tracking a therapist’s fingers, but in walking through the fire of memory without turning back out of fear?

Talk Therapy’s Avoidance Problem

In many graduate counseling programs, students are taught to be trauma-informed by emphasizing non-intrusiveness. Do not push. Do not retraumatize. Do not make the client uncomfortable. While well-intentioned, this approach can backfire. In our effort to “do no harm,” we may do nothing meaningful and cause harm in and of itself. We sit quietly, hoping the client will go deep on their own, while silently colluding in their avoidance.

This avoidance can, moreover, mirror the client’s trauma and merely perpetuate a trauma loop. A sense of being abandoned, unseen, or emotionally unheld in their darkest moments. The therapist’s inability to bear witness to pain perpetuates the very repression that trauma thrives in. If we cannot make space for and hold the heat of a client’s story, how can they ever trust themselves to come to face it with courage?

EMDR as Modern Ritual

Looking through a Jungian lens, EMDR is less about BLS and more about a ritualized descent into the unconscious. It mirrors ancient rites of passage found across cultures. These are journeys into darkness, chaos, or death to retrieve something vital: a lost part of the Self. In this way, EMDR becomes a modern ritual that guides clients into the symbolic underworld to reclaim what was fragmented.

Now this is where the controversy deepens… What if BLS is not a catalyst, but a distraction? A rhythmic soothing agent, not unlike a lullaby or a pacifier, that makes the journey more bearable but less potent. Yes, the bilateral tones and eye movements can regulate the nervous system. But perhaps they also cushion the intensity of the experience. And maybe, just maybe, that is where a fundamental problem lies.

Hypnotherapy: Another Descent-Based Modality

Take hypnotherapy. Dismissed by many for its pseudoscientific reputation, hypnosis also facilitates an altered state of consciousness. It invites a trance, a softening of ego boundaries. Like EMDR, it opens the door to unconscious material. When paired with cognitive-behavioral therapy, hypnosis has been shown to enhance trauma treatment outcomes (Kirsch et al., 1995; Valentine et al., 2019).

From a depth perspective, hypnotherapy is not about control or suggestion. It is about a symbolic descent into the abyss. It is Dante, led by the image of his Beatrice, the guiding archetype of the inner feminine, through the underworld toward integration. It is Persephone, reclaiming her agency. These are not techniques. They are myths made real. What unites EMDR, PE, and hypnotherapy is quite obviously, not their form, but their demand for emotional honesty.

What Actually Heals

When clients wholly come to face their trauma, not just remember it, but feel it fully, symbolically, and viscerally, that is when the inner alchemical transformation begins. These methods succeed not because they are gentle, but because they ask something of the client that many modalities do not: to return to the wound with open eyes.

The client becomes the mythic hero. The one who chooses descent. And the therapist, if they are willing, becomes the witness, the anchor, and the soul guide.

What Needs to Change

If talk therapy wants to remain relevant in trauma work, it must stop pathologizing emotional intensity. Too often, strong emotions are seen as something to avoid or regulate rather than engage with. But it is precisely within these intense emotional states of grief, rage, and fear, that the deepest healing potential lives. Avoiding them keeps both therapist and client circling the wound rather than entering it.

Therapists must be trained not only to avoid harm, but to tolerate discomfort: their own and their clients’. The ability to stay present during emotional upheaval is not optional in trauma work. It is essential. A therapist cannot guide someone through the storm if they are only willing to stand on the shore.

What heals is not comfort, but honest confrontation. True safety is not the absence of emotional risk. It is the presence of someone who can stay steady when everything else feels like it’s falling apart. That is what clients need. That is what trauma work requires.

Revisiting “Do No Harm”

It is important to pause and address what may already be rising in the minds of many readers. The ACA Code of Ethics states that clinicians must avoid harm. Non-maleficence—do no harm—is one of the foundational principles of our profession. It is often cited to justify cautious, client-led, non-intrusive approaches, especially when working with trauma.

But we must ask the harder question: what does “harm” actually mean when it comes to trauma?

Are we being wholly benevolent when we avoid stirring the inner wounds of our clients? Or are we, under the guise of caution, participating in something more insidious? When a therapist avoids a client’s trauma, when they softly reassure, “You don’t have to go there,” while that trauma silently erodes the client from within, is that not a form of harm? Is that not abandonment by another name?

In our effort to be kind, we may become complicit. Complicit in avoidance. Complicit in shame. Complicit in preserving the very suffering we claim to treat.

Let us also be honest about something else: there are far more bad therapists in the world than there are good ones. This not cynicism, it is reality. And the tragedy continues in that nearly everyone believes they are one of the good ones. But sincere trauma work does not come from being “good”. It comes from being whole.

Only those who are themselves on the path to wholeness (not perfection and not performance) can embody what trauma-informed care actually requires. This is not just a clinical posture. It is a way of being. One must be able to sit in the fire with another human being without retreating. That is what heals. Not credentials, not compliance, and certainly not the illusion of safety.

Thus, if we, as clinicians, shy away from that confrontation, we teach our clients to do the same…and nothing changes. The trauma goes on repeating. But when we consciously aim to walk with them, into the depths, through the fire, with eyes unaverted, something ancient stirs. Not just recovery, but resurrection.

“Fear, like love, can become a call into consciousness; one meets the unconscious, the unknown, the numinous and uncontrollable by keeping in touch with fear, which elevates the blind instinctual panic of the sheep into the knowing, cunning, fearful awe of the shepherd.”
— James Hillman, (Pan and the Nightmare, p. 65.)

References… for your viewing pleasure.

Davidson, P. R., & Parker, K. C. H. (2001). Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR): A meta-analysis. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 69(2), 305–316. https://doi.org/10.1037//0022-006x.69.2.305

Kirsch, I., Montgomery, G., & Sapirstein, G. (1995). Hypnosis as an adjunct to cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy: A meta-analysis. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 63(2), 214–220. https://doi.org/10.1037//0022-006x.63.2.214

Lee, C. W., & Cuijpers, P. (2013). A meta-analysis of the contribution of eye movements in EMDR therapy: Psychological Bulletin, 139(2), 241–268. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbtep.2012.11.001

Shapiro, F. (2018). Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) Therapy: Basic Principles, Protocols, and Procedures (3rd ed.). Guilford Press.

Valentine, K. E., Milling, L. S., Clark, L. J., & Moriarty, C. L. (2019). The efficacy of hypnosis as a treatment for anxiety: A meta-analysis. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 67(3), 336–363. https://doi.org/10.1080/00207144.2019.1613863

van den Hout, M. A., Engelhard, I. M., Beetsma, D., Slofstra, C., Hornsveld, H., & Houtveen, J. (2011). EMDR and mindfulness: Eye movements and attentional breathing tax working memory and reduce vividness and emotionality of aversive ideation. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, 42(4), 423–431. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbtep.2011.03.004

The Struggle of Being Seen in a Disconnected World

“We meet ourselves time and again in a thousand disguises on the path of life.”
— Carl Jung (The Practice of Psychotherapy)

When a Human Soul Is Dismissed

Today, I witnessed something that deeply disturbed me. I was shadowing a meeting that a seasoned clinician had put together to support a client in immense distress. I sat there watching a team that was in place to help him—a client who had dared to bring his soul into the room—further tear him apart.

He was angry, raw, expressive. He voiced his rage at the systems that had failed him, the people who had overlooked or abused him, the reality he could no longer tolerate. And in return, he was met with condescension and malice.

He was the one with diagnostic labels. The one with physical ailments, including blindness. He was also the one who no longer knew how to comply. But because he did not express himself in ways deemed socially acceptable, he was penalized. The energy in the room created by his group home staff, not so quietly agreed: if only he were better, calmer, more appropriate, maybe then the world would treat him better.

Only one other person in the room truly saw him—his therapist. The rest missed the mark entirely. It was one of the most disgraceful observations I have seen while being in this field. A human soul laid bare, and met with frustration, ambivalence, and scorn.

That hour of absolute shame birthed this essay. Because what I observed is not rare. It is yet another rule.

The Age of Empty Reflections

We live in a world more connected than ever before. Hyperlinked. Hyper-aware. Hyper-informed. Yet never have we been so profoundly disconnected. We scroll past suffering, shout into echo chambers, and lose ourselves in curated reflections. In a world flooded with faces and mirrors, it is astonishing how few we truly see.

We hate our neighbor. We hate the world. And beneath it all, we quietly and largely unconsciously, hate ourselves.

Our hatred is not new. It is not some radical notion I am offering for shock value. It is ancient and archetypal, rooted in the most primitive aspects of the psyche. We are not merely reacting to what we see in others. We are reacting to what we cannot yet accept within ourselves. As Jung observed, “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.” But how many of us are willing to follow that delicate, grotesque thread inward?

The Mirror and the Myth

The truth is, we do not see clearly. Not others, and certainly not ourselves. We do not see our neighbors as they sincerely are. We do not see our sister or our brother. Not even our closest friend. And especially not the celebrities we idolize. What we perceive is a distortion: a mirror image of the unconscious. Every human interaction holds up a reflective surface, revealing aspects of ourselves we often cannot or will not confront, whether good or bad.

We are much like Narcissus, mesmerized by our own reflection in the pool. Yet it is not the full self he falls in love with. It is a mask. A mere surface image. A persona. When Echo arrives—when someone repeats our words and reflects back the truth—we reject her. We despise the one who exposes what lies beneath. Narcissus could only “love” what he could idealize, but Echo mirrored back the whole truth, and that was intolerable. Much like what we see in today’s social climate.

The Failure of “Helpers”

This same dynamic plays out in both social and psychological spheres. We champion slogans like “Love and accept all” until we encounter someone who does not share our worldview. “Honor boundaries,” unless those boundaries apply to us. We preach of empathy, tolerance, and self-awareness, but our actions reveal a deeper, shadowy disdain for those who challenge our projected ideals. It is not morality we practice. It is moral narcissism.

Even in the world of therapy, where we are trained to see beyond appearances, we project. It is not just the client who transfers parental images onto us. We, too, transfer. We project ourselves onto our clients: our wounds, our unlived lives, our ideological rigidity. And when clients reflect back the parts of ourselves we have not made peace with, we grow frustrated, impatient, or distant.

We see this in our refusal to work with clients who do not echo our political, spiritual, or social values. It can be observed in our quiet annoyance with those who make us uncomfortable. We see it in clinical burnout—not because we “care too much,” but because we are fractured and attempting to meet others with compassion while rejecting the parts of ourselves that are wounded, judgmental, or afraid. This is not how to sincerely care for those we work for. We call for authenticity in our clients while lacking it within ourselves.

How might we accept anyone as they wholly are when we have not yet accepted the entirety of ourselves?

The Monsters Within

We are all flawed, and we are all blind. We all carry a needle in our eye even as we attempt to remove the speck from another’s. To deny this is to deny the shadow. To live split in half, performing the light while resenting the dark, is to abandon our humanity and flat-out reject ourselves and others.

The result is that we have become beasts in human form. Our egos are calcified. Our unconscious drives run rampant. We roam the world extracting from it rather than relating to it. Devouring attention, dominating narratives, and exploiting the Earth for meaning, control, or catharsis. We no longer seek wholeness. We seek power. All while not realizing that power is not strength. Nor is it through which we may find wholeness.

The Risk of Being Seen

To be seen, in this climate, is no longer a gift. It is a threat. Because if we were truly seen—if the reflection no longer flattered but confronted—we would be left with no more excuses. We would have to face who and what we really are: not just light, but shadow. Virtue and contradiction. Soul and destruction.

But perhaps in that raw, uncomfortable confrontation, a deeper seeing might emerge. One not built on projection, ideology, or image, but on something far more terrifying and far more holy: the sincere truth of ourselves, which lives at the very crux of our perception of reality.

“We are not here to fit in, be well balanced, or provide examples for others. We are here to confront our own souls, to struggle with meaning, to learn how to see.”
— James Hollis (Through the Dark Wood, 2005, p. 13)

Breaking the Mask: Embracing Authenticity in Therapy

“The persona is a mask which makes people believe one is somebody. It is a compromise between the individual and society as to what a man should appear to be.”
— Carl Jung (Two Essays on Analytical Psychology (Collected Works, Vol. 7))

The Death of Goodness: Why I am writing this at all…

I have stayed quiet for a long time. Not because I had nothing to say, but because I became accustomed to staying in the shadows. Observing. Analyzing. Simply being a wallflower. There was comfort within the discomfort of it all.

I am a therapist-in-training, a mother, and a woman shaped by both compliance and rebellion. For years, I have carried a growing dissonance between what I know in my body and what I see in the world around me and especially within the clinical realm.

We say we care about healing. We say we care about wholeness. However, what we reward is fakeness. Blind obedience. Faux goodness. Polished language. Correct affiliations. Emotional tone regulation. Smiles.

We have, moreover, been told to be safe. Kind. Neutral. Do not say too much. Do not feel too much. Oh, but don’t forget to empathize. And one of the single most important pieces: Do not think too much…best yet, not at all. We are to make sure everyone is comfortable, even if we and our clients are disintegrating inside. Internally ripping our faces off, screaming into the abyss of our minds that fails to pierce through the veil of our lips.

And I have become tired of it all.

Exhausted by the pretense that goodness equals wholeness. That if clients are able to be “socially acceptable” and “independent,” they are healed. But they aren’t. Not truly. It is rather, the opposite, and that is now why this website exists.

This space is not for performance nor to reinforce the shiny persona of the perfect clinician or the healed mother or the spiritually poised woman. I am not writing for applause or even in the hopes that the world will even wake up; I am writing because if I don’t, I will suffocate under the weight of what has been left unspoken — not just within me, but that resides under the overbearing weight of the performance we have all abided by for much too long.

I have seen too many people break under the lie that goodness will save them. For it won’t. It always has been and always will be a mere mask. And masks are useful…until they begin to rot from the inside because it was mistaken for an authentic sense of self.

Goodness Over Wholeness: A Cultural Delusion

The clinical world, for all its talk of self-awareness and integration, often operates on a fundamentally disintegrated model. We are taught to repress the parts of ourselves that might make others uncomfortable: rage, shame, complexity, ambiguity, and paradox. We call that “professionalism.” Some even call it “trauma-informed.” We say it’s for safety. No, it is to merely maintain an illusion. Clinicians are some of the most messed up souls around, yet we act as though we have all of the answers (now whether we consciously admit to this or not is a whole other story).

What it really is that we as clinicians and clinicians-in-training have mastered is avoidance. And in that avoidance, we do the very thing we claim to treat by dissociating. We become “well-behaved” monsters: smiling, credentialed, abiding by ethical codes. Hollowed out. Half-alive and barely living.

We have traded soul for approval and mistaken emotional compliance for mental health. We call ourselves “helpers” while living inside systems that are terrified of anything raw, messy, or real. And then we have the gall to wonder why the world is collapsing and find some external force to blame all of our problems on…the crux of these problems that really reside within.

The Monsters We’ve Become

We imagine that monsters are violent, loud, and cruel. Grotesque and malicious. Wholly one way without an inkling of goodness within them. However, the true monsters are often those who believe they are good while being completely unconscious of the damage they do; the nuance of this complexity lacks any acknowledgment, whether in training programs, intellectual circles, or mainstream pop culture.

Monsters include the therapists who smile while pathologizing difference and judging each client by the diagnosis they were labeled by. The educators who punish emotion under the guise of order. The activists who rage for justice while secretly feeding on ideological purity and power. And yes — they are all of us. Me, you, and your friend’s sister’s cousin twice removed.

We are all susceptible to the spell of goodness. But why? Because goodness feels safe. I mean, it has gotten us this far, hasn’t it? We are no longer worried about outsiders raping and pillaging. Nor about having our neighbor turn on us simply because we are in some way different from them…or are we?

Now, what about this wholeness I spoke of? Wholeness asks us to face the parts of ourselves we have exiled: the shadow, the shame. The parts of us that wanted to punch the person that nearly crashed into us, scream at the system we feel is suppressing us, or collapse in the grocery store and cry because we are just so tired of pretending to be okay.

This blog marks the end of my performance.

Where We Go from Here

I do not have a formula. I do not have an endpoint. But I do have a voice, and a deep ache for truth. If you too are tired of being “good” and living in a world that tries their damnedest to collapse reality down to a 2D version of itself — black and white, good and evil — but still want to be whole…you are not alone.

If you feel more like a monster than a saint some days…you are also not alone. And if you are willing to question the very ground, we’ve built our “helping professions” on — then welcome!

This is not a safe space. It is a sacred one. One that while perhaps infuriating you, will also make you think. Sacredness begins not with perfection, but with brutal honesty. As the late psychiatrist, Dr. Carl Jung noted, what we do not face, we become. And what we refuse to name, we are destined to act out. Thus, wholeness is born when the mask is torn, and the monster is finally met.

“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”
— Carl Jung (Alchemical Studies (Collected Works, Vol. 13))