EMDR: The Breakthrough Therapy for Overcoming Anxiety, Stress, and Trauma

by Francine Shapiro, Margot Silk Forrest

When EMDR was first published in 1997, it was hailed as the most important method to emerge in psychotherapy in decades. In the twenty years since, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy has successfully treated psychological problems for millions of sufferers worldwide. In this updated edition, Francine Shapiro offers a new introduction that presents the latest applications of this remarkable therapy, as well as new scientific data demonstrating its efficacy. Drawing on the experiences of thousands of clinicians as well as a vast research literature on depression, addiction, PTSD, and other disorders, she explains
how life experiences are physically stored in our brains, making us feel and act in harmful ways, and how EMDR therapy can bring relief, often in a remarkably short period of time. Applicable to survivors of trauma as well as people suffering from phobias and other experience-based disorders, EMDR is essential reading for anyone who seeks to understand why we hurt, how we heal, and how we get better.

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction, Self Help, Health, Mental Health, Counselling, Social Work

381 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1997

Reviews

[Elizabeth Jennings · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book when preparing to undergo EMDR therapy, and in and of itself it gave me a lot of hope and perspective. It has some truly horrendous stories of people's experiences, which were then healed through EMDR. It contains descriptions of the sessions, which is helpful to begin imagining what they will be like. Highly recommend.

[Sunny · Rating 5 out of 5]

So here’s the dealio. One day Francine Shapiro, the writer, was going for a walk through a park and had a few issues that she wanted to clean up (shout out to the art of walking – wanderlust indeed). When she got back she realised that she felt a lot better about what she was thinking about and then she made the ground breaking discovery. As she had been walking she had been looking left and right (ducks in the pond on the right (as you do) and mothers sitting with their kids enjoying picnics on the left (as you do do)). When you walk and think about any topic there is a chance that you can help clear up the issue in your mind but she wanted to see if it was the eye movement tracking specifically left and right that had had any impact – and it did.

This book was another game changer – so much so that I’ve already started “using” this technique on my little 8 year old who is afraid of the dark etc. So what is EMRD? It stands for Eye Movement Desensitisation & Reprocessing. Desensitisation and reprocessing of those images and traumas that are glued into those outer leaves of your mind that you can’t break away from. It’s a holistic psychotherapy technique that touches on the REM process we sometimes go into when in deep sleep. I never knew this but the theory goes that when you are in REM sleep when dreaming (rapid eye movement) - that’s essentially a way that your mind literally cleanses the stuff (good and bad) that’s happened during the day. I have a picture of a set of wind screen wipers swishing left and right in my mind wiping away any of the negativity and damaging “stuff” that’s happened to me in recent days. Your dreams are a way that you are able to almost file and clean up your mind at the end of the day – hence the importance of sleep.

EMDR therapists do a lot more than just get you to move your eyes left and right but the eye movement as the name suggests sits at the heart of the technique. A therapist will sit in front of you and get you to focus on the key thoughts or images that are troubling you. It’s been used on PTSD war soldiers that came back from Iraq, firefighters that helped in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing, victims of rape and a whole host of other issues and cases that the book beautifully details. Once you have that image in your mind the therapist will ask you to rate how emotionally disturbing the image or trauma is on a scale of 0-10 (SUD scale – Subjective Units of Disturbance) and also ask you what your utopian vision is of how you would like to be and feel and where you are on that scale from 1-7 (Validity of Cognition VOC). So for example, you could be piss scared of spiders and have had a traumatic episode when a spider crawled over your face when you were young. The SUD would be a 10! And your VOC at the start of the therapy could be a 1. A score of 7 could equate to a statement such as “I’m no long scared of spiders at all and can now hold them in my hands comfortably". The therapist will then get your scores and through a series of eye movement sessions get your SUD score to 0 and your VOC to 7. She will do this by getting you to sit in front of her and get you to envision your traumatic event and holding a finger about a foot away from your face get you to track her finger as she moves it fairly rapidly left and right about 2 feet horizontally. She will do this for various lengths of time circa 60 seconds for each EMDR burst and gauge how you feel after each one. The book states that individuals begin to feel incredibly better almost instantly. Shapiro also writes that a lot of major trauma that people have can be resolved in 3 ninety minute EMDR sessions – an incredible fact if true.

I’m not sure I understood exactly why it works but it says that “the orienting in EMDR is actually an investigatory reflex that results in a basic relaxation response that happens after realizing that there is no threat. By pairing this relaxation state with the previously upsetting memory the client now has a new way of experiencing the memory and may notice a decrease in distress. This process is known as reciprocal inhibition.”

Other good bits in the book were:

• “The amount of time proportionately devoted to REM sleep appears to lengthen as the night progresses. Depriving people of REM sleep can cause a variety of reactions including irritability, increased anxiety and disorientation.”
• There was a heart breaking story about a little boy (Davy) born with a cleft lip who need surgery when he was about 18 months old. From the day after his surgery for a good few years he started having nightmares and something different called “night terrors” which verged on the demonic at times. His parents were at their wits end and could not understand what had happened to their boy. The way he was treated and saved was incredible and the entire book was worth reading just for his story alone. I will say no more other than the description of his night terrors: “Davy would sit up in bed eyes open and scream. Jack and Claire (his parents) thought he was awake and were confused and upset that the did not calm down when they tried to comfort him, they didn’t realise that according to some writers who experienced night terrors as children, attempts to restrain and comfort the child can be frightening because the parents are entering the child’s horrifying dreamworld. In an irony of evolutionary process gone wrong instead of having his pain dispelled by dream sleep or finding comfort in his parent’s touch, Davy was being traumatized over and over again. “ :(

Stunning book. Highly recommended if you have suffered from trauma in the past or if you know anyone that has.

[Kells Perry · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am currently in the midst of EMDR treatment so I picked up this book to learn a little more about it. Overall, the book was enjoyable but I would have liked a little more balance in the case studies it presented as well as updated information on how EMDR is practiced today. My EMDR therapist actually told me the hand motions are outdated now because of how they trigger people who have been physically or sexually abused (we only use alternating tones so I asked why).

I also think that it's a bit unbelievable that every case was more or less successful, which I think reflects the bias that comes from being the creator of the treatment. In any case, I still thought it was a good introduction to the topic and had some valuable information within.

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was required reading for weekend 1 of EMDR clinical training, and only book I've finished so far (I'm working on the basic text now). It's aimed at a general audience, members of which might be considering having some therapy for themselves, but you can also consider it a Casebook Lite. Shapiro shows how the therapy can be applied in a wide range of problems. I suspect the reason we were meant to read it was to give us some faith that it actually works. Amazing thing is that it does actually work, I've seen it work.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full of inspiring stories, this book is at great pains to tell us that the new breakthrough therapy that involves moving your eyes rapidly from lower left to upper right is more complicated than it sounds. That it works is undeniable; trauma victims, victims of post-traumatic stress disorder, war vets, rape victims – all report near-miraculous cures after just a few sessions of eye-moving.

So how is it more complicated than that? Not clear, but it seems to require trained therapists, thoughtful questioning, and 8 steps, from preparation to asking how you feel now.

I wasn’t impressed with the claims of complexity, but I was deeply impressed by the efficacy of the technique, which may be similar to REM eye movement in sleep, as one study suggests. If you have any kind of buried pain, get thee to an official EMDR therapist and shed the past.

[Howard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Totally incredible. I found that EMDR has been used on many issues beyond PTSD. I love the flexibility of the treatment, the number of treatments are usually small. There are great stories in the book. Some brought tears to my eyes. Thank you so much, Jennifer Diehl for bringing this to my attention. I grabbed her "Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) Therapy, Third Edition" for further study. This subject is so much fun for me! (Now I gotta go charge my Kindle so I can use its Text-To-Speech!).

[Whitney Dahlberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love reading case study books- I get a lot from hearing theory in applied practice. As some readers noted, info could be updated and also some cases are presented in a somewhat best case scenario (it doesnt always go quite as smoothly as is presented) but I still gained so much from this book! 4.5

[Neda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ova knjiga me je zaista ganula. Neke ispovesti su mi bile dosta potresne, naročito jedna u kojoj majka pokušava da se pomiri sa gubitkom deteta. Nadam se zaista da ovakva tehnika kao što je EMDR može da pomogne ljudima sa posttraumatskim tegobama i da im promeni kvalitet života.

[Mark Mattek · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant read for a very specific audience: recently trained EMDR therapists who want further exposure to detailed case studies. Aka, me. :) A thorough and inspiring collection of diverse stories that showcase the power of tapping into body’s natural healing processes to move forward in our lives with less heavinesses and hurt.

[drowningmermaid · Rating 4 out of 5]

TBR #5

Very optimistic— she may have hit on something worth trying.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was drawn to this book after reading endorsements of the power of EMDR by Robert Scaer and Bessel Van Der Kolk. Francine Shapiro's updated edition of her classic work, proved to be an excellent resource. Shapiro provides a detailed review of her methodology and many excellent and useful case examples. Shapiro covers the clinical spectrum from PTSD, to panic, to depression, to somatic difficulties to addiction and her case studies are all powerful illustrations of how traumatic or overwhelming life experiences can underly seemingly intractable or inexplicable difficulties. She also demonstrates how to unlock, process and transform these memories so as to accomplish remarkable healing with surprisingly short interventions. An excellent reference that I highly recommend.

[Maria · Rating 3 out of 5]

Excellent for its type, well-researched, explicitly footnoted and interesting, EMDR is some kind of new, perhaps trendy, therapy that is treated here with respect and gravity, and more detail than may necessary, almost in a "protests too much" sort of way. If it really does work this quickly for horrific trauma particularly, it's a miraculous breakthrough. Also discusses EMDR for stress relief, anxiety and minor trauma, but focuses on major.

[Chava · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great introductory work on EMDR, but it doesn't compete with full training. This is definitely NOT a substitute for the training, but should be read as either an introduction or as a deepening of the material.

[Sasha Lopez · Rating 2 out of 5]

DRY DRY reading!

[Kathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

EMDR is the most extensively studied and proven effective treatment for PTSD.

[Keith · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good introduction to the practice of Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), as written by the woman who invented this novel type of psychotherapy. Francine Shapiro, PhD originally created EMDR to address Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) but she and her co-author Margo Silk Forrest show in this book how the technique can be applied to a variety of problems. As a therapist myself, I would love to be trained in EMDR.

The Contents:
Introduction
1. The Journey of Discovery
2. Laying the Foundation
3. The Spirit and the Sword: Combat’s Tragic Legacy
4. The Fabric of Treatment: Uncovering the Hidden Depths of Pain
5. The Many Faces of Fear: Phobias and Panic Attacks
6. When Terror Stalks the Night: Sleep Disorders and Childhood Trauma
7. The Ties That Bind: Disorders of Attachment
8. Healing the Ravages of Rape
9. Laying Grief to Rest
10. Breaking the Iron Grasp of Addiction
11. The Final Doorway: Facing Disease, Disability, and Death
12. Visions of the Future: The Global Reach of EMDR

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[Image: Book Cover]

Citation:
Shapiro, F., & Forrest, M.S. (2020). EMDR: The breakthrough therapy for overcoming anxiety, stress, and trauma (audiobook, J. Walker, Narr.). Basic Books. https://www.audible.com/pd/EMDR-Audio... (Original work published 2004)

Title: EMDR: The Breakthrough Therapy for Overcoming Anxiety, Stress, and Trauma
Author(s): Francine Shapiro, Margot Silk Forrest
Year: 2020 (revised and updated edition), 2004 (original publication)
Genre: Nonfiction - Psychology, Psychotherapy
Page count: 384 pages
Date(s) read: 5/26/25 - 6/1/25
Book 113 in 2025
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[Jessica Fraser]

"How far can we progress when our fears and barriers are removed?" (247)

"The truth is that being unable to process one's own suffering has nothing to do with intelligence, personal strength, fortitude, or spirituality. . . . We can see in EMDR that one's unprocessed feelings are at the core of the problem. We can have intellectual understandings that have no impact on the emotions or on physiologically driven negative behaviors. People of the highest order and intelligence can eat too much, drink too much, overwork, or hurt others because of their level of pain. Knowing the reason is not the same as healing" (261).

"The thing to remember is that some of the fears we all face are merely earlier life experiences that are locked in our nervous system. This book has revealed how they can be released how we can learn what we need to know from these experiences and discard the rest. Once we have done this we can choose our actions rather than being propelled by automatic reactions" (268).

[Jeffrey Howard · Rating 4 out of 5]

The fact we understand relatively little about how or why EMDR works is one of its larger obstacles to becoming more popular than it currently is. As a big proponent of talk therapy (in addition to literature-as-therapy and mindfulness), I've remained rather skeptical of EMDR.

Or maybe ignorant is the proper word.

Following recent conversations with those who employ EMDR in their clinical practices and testify of its transformative qualities, as well as reading Shapiro's book, I've become open to it, to the point that I plan to try it with some things that have kept me "stuck" for years.

When all is said and done, the fruits of something are far more important than the roots. We may not know much about the physiology or psychology behind EMDR, but if it happens to help people heal, then I'm for it.

[Julie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ehn. As someone currently doing EMDR I didn't really find this book to be helpful, as it is mostly a detailed and horrific recounting of other peoples trauma experiences (the experiences of the man with the sadistic dentist grandfather will stay with me forever - great). And, if your experience with EMDR doesn't align with what is presented (the repetitive 'the person was cured in 1 session!' narrative) then it can be a bit alienating. I get that Francine wanted to include the most sensational examples of her clients experiences but I think there is more current and nuanced information about EMDR out there and particularly for folks with CPTSD.

[Teri Uktena · Rating 2 out of 5]

Does not talk about what the therapy is or how it works, just that it does. There are lots of generic stories of people having experienced good results with it which doesn't mean much since we're not being told what "it" is. There are resources in the back referencing research which has been done on it and resources for getting the treatment, but nothing about where to go to find out what "it" is.

[Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

For EMDR therapists. I liked the book and it added to the knowledge I gained from some of Francine Shapiro's other books. But, this one was somewhat of a repeat of what I had learned in EMDR trainings and in some of the other books. Well written book though and would have been great help had I not been trained in EMDR and read some of the other books.

[Jess Marks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book for clinicians initials to provide 4 clients or family members of clientsGreat book for clinicians initials to provide 4 clients or family members of clients To give to give insight into what EMDR is and what to expect. My one fatigue is that the timelines that she sets areNot realistic and outside of a research study not probable.

[Kali Jean · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting review of the application of EMDR therapy in all sorts of traumatic pasts and experiences although I wish there was at least some discussion of anything potentially negative or times where it may not have worked to get a full picture instead of the idea it painted of it as an almost miracle therapy

[John Thomas Haller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Opened my eyes to emotions

Good book on how people can not always move on because of emotions getting in the way. Shapiro shares some very helpful examples of how EMDR transitions people to productive loving lifes.

[Sophia Ralston · Rating 5 out of 5]

I‘m not up to date enough to judge if this is currently still the preferred method, my therapist uses EMDR in a slightly different way than described. But overall hearing about the technique and success stories is incredible. Highly recommend to read/listen and to try the therapy.

[Dragana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting method presenting very confronting moments of somebody's life. Knowing of a few other things in this sphere, I can see why it would work, but you need to be a really skilled psychologist in order to use this tool properly.

[Brian Hagerty · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is absolutely riveting. I came to it as a skeptic and ended up a convert. The narrator is particularly wonderful, and she brings every description of a therapy session vividly to life. Listen to this if you can.

[Tiff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow very illuminating

[Rene Reyes · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think that this is a fantastic book about EMDR. It's really eye-opening to see how it helps people.

[Maria Fledgling Author Park · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've had EMDR and this book explained the process well.