How to Support Your Healing Between EMDR Sessions: Practical Tools for Women and Parents
- sarahdonovanlcpc
- 11 hours ago
- 5 min read
How to Support Your Healing and Stay Grounded Between EMDR Sessions
A practical guide for women and parents navigating stress, trauma recovery, and the day-to-day realities of caregiving.
By: Sarah Donovan, LCPC, PMH-C
Perinatal Trauma Specialist · EMDR Therapist & Consultant
December 4, 2025
A Grounded, Real-Life Start to EMDR Integration
Healing doesn’t only happen in the therapy room. In EMDR and other somatic therapies, the work continues between sessions—quietly, alone, and often more powerfully than you’d expect.
If you’ve ever thought, “I would take care of myself… if I knew what that even meant,” you’re in the right place.
We’re not talking spa days or a 27-step morning routine.
Think small shifts, real relief, sustainable healing that fits your actual life.
Why the Time Between Sessions Matters
EMDR isn’t a one-and-done intervention. It’s a neurobiological process that continues long after you leave the therapy room. The hours and days following a session are where some of the deepest integration occurs. Clients often notice emotional shifts, somatic changes, vivid dreams, or even a temporary increase in anxiety or intrusive memories within 24–72 hours.
These experiences can feel unsettling. Clinically, they’re not signs of “backsliding” but instead they’re signs your brain is actively reprocessing, reorganizing, and forming new neural pathways.
Acknowledging all the above is well and good.
Knowing how to move through the discomfort, fatigue, or emotional static that may follow is another.
1. Notice & Track (the TICES method)
When sensations, memories, or emotions show up between sessions, think of them as your brain tapping you on the shoulder—not to annoy you, but to integrate what’s being processed. Instead of pushing the experience away, pause and jot down a quick TICES entry:
Trigger — What set this off?
Image — What flashed through your mind?
Cognition — What belief popped up?
Emotion — What feeling came with it?
Sensation — Where did you feel it in your body?
This doesn’t need to be a dissertation. It can be five scribbles on a grocery receipt, a voice note or something in a notes app. The point is awareness, not perfection. Reviewing these together helps identify new targets, emerging themes, and the brain’s natural movement toward healing.
2. Engage Your Senses
Sensory grounding is one of the most accessible ways to remind your nervous system that the present moment is different from the past.
Ideas:
Listening to music that soothes or shifts your state
Using a scent tied to safety or comfort (lavender, eucalyptus, coffee beans, that candle you only light after bedtime)
A short journaling check-in, such as:
Five things you’re grateful for
A simple plan for the day
Two to three things that may be triggering
Two to three intentions or strengths you want to practice
These practices come straight from mindfulness and trauma research: they help rebuild agency, presence, and a sense of internal steadiness without requiring an hour of uninterrupted silence.
3. Move Your Body
Movement is one of the most effective ways to support the brain’s integration process. Nothing fancy needed. A walk around the block. Gentle stretching. A few yoga poses. Dancing in your kitchen to one song from 2003 that still activates your entire soul.
The goal isn’t to perform. It’s to let your body metabolize what your mind is reorganizing.
4. Grounding & Breathwork (like the SHIFT approach)
Bring to mind a calm or resourced memory. Notice where you feel that sense of safety or ease in your body—maybe your chest softens, maybe your shoulders drop one millimeter. Place your hand there, breathe into that spot, and quietly remind yourself:
“I am safe.”
“I am present.”
This form of resourcing is part of standard EMDR preparation and helps your nervous system recalibrate between sessions.
5. Rest, Nourish, and Be Gentle With Yourself
Healing is taxing—physically, emotionally, and neurologically. Your brain is doing an enormous amount of behind-the-scenes work. Rest when you can, hydrate, eat something nourishing, and avoid stacking your calendar with every obligation that comes knocking.
Sometimes the most therapeutic act between sessions is lowering the bar. A single slow breath or naming one thing you’re grateful for absolutely counts.
6. Trust the Process (even the messy days)
Some days you’ll feel clear, light, and hopeful. Other days may feel heavy, foggy, or raw.
This is not a sign of failure; it’s a sign of reprocessing. Healing rarely moves in a straight line. Over time, the emotional charge associated with old memories decreases, and your brain learns new patterns of safety, resilience, and meaning-making.
Curiosity and compassion will get you farther than self-judgment or punishment ever will.
What Healing Actually Feels Like Over Time
One of the most remarkable parts of EMDR therapy is this: once a memory is fully processed, it often loses its emotional charge.
Clients describe it in different ways:
“the sting is gone,”
“I can remember it without my whole body reacting,”
“it’s like the thought is still there, but it doesn’t hijack me anymore.”
The memory remains, but the fear, shame, tension, or negative beliefs attached to it no longer run the show. This is your brain doing what trauma once interrupted—finishing the story, integrating it, and placing it in long-term storage where it belongs.
When to Reach Out Between Sessions
Some tenderness or emotional wobbliness is completely normal, especially after processing deeper material. But reach out sooner (don’t wait a week) if you notice:
– Persistent overwhelm or emotional flooding
– Intensifying physical symptoms (headaches, panic attacks, dissociation)
– Suicidal thoughts or urges to self-harm
– Feeling “stuck,” confused, or unable to regulate despite using your tools
Please remember: You are not “doing EMDR wrong.” You are not failing the process.
Some material simply requires more pacing and more co-regulation as your system reorganizes.
Final Reflections: Your Healing Is Happening
Healing isn’t linear, and it definitely isn’t tidy. But by leaning into grounded, doable practices—tracking, sensing, movement, breath, nourishment, rest, and gentleness—you support your brain in building new neural architecture for safety and resilience.
Give yourself permission to go slowly.
Trust the small shifts.
Let your body guide you.
A Note on Finding an EMDR Therapist Who Fits
If you’re still looking for an EMDR therapist, a few reliable places to start:
– EMDRIA’s Therapist Directory
– Psychology Today
– A general search (yes, ChatGPT can help), while confirming EMDRIA Certification or perinatal specialization
Therapy starts the moment you decide you deserve support—not when the eye movements begin. And remember: what happens between sessions isn’t extra credit. It’s part of the work.
If you’d like to explore whether Tilted Root could be a good fit, you can schedule a free 15-minute consultation here:
I’m along the ride with you,
Sarah Donovan, LCPC, PMH-C
Mom, Wife, Daughter, Sister, Friend and Therapist in Burnout Recovery
EMDR-Certified Therapist & Consultant
Founder, Tilted Root Counseling
For educational purposes only. This blog is not a substitute for therapy or medical treatment.