The EMDR Coach

10/31/2025

Ever notice how your thoughts can spiral you into feeling worse?
🧠 Dr. Daniel Amen explains it perfectly: write the thought down and ask, “Is this true?”

As therapists (and humans), we see how powerful it is to challenge distorted thinking.
When you pause to notice → question → and reframe, you’re literally rewiring your brain.

This is what we do in EMDR therapy and trauma work all the time — taking those automatic, shame-filled, fear-based thoughts and bringing them into awareness so they lose their power.

You don’t have to believe every thought your brain serves up.

Try this:
✍️ Write down the thought
💭 Ask: Is it true? What happens when I believe this?
✨ Flip it: What would change if I didn’t?

That’s how healing starts — one thought at a time.

🗣️ Credit: Dr. Daniel Amen –
🎥: The Diary Of A CEO –

📘 Want to track and reframe your thoughts with structure and intention?

Comment “Journal” to get The EMDR Therapy Progress Journal — your daily space for insight, grounding, and growth.

10/30/2025

💭 “Trauma-informed” isn’t just a buzzword — it’s a mindset.

A trauma-informed therapist understands that your symptoms aren’t “what’s wrong with you,” but rather, what happened to you.

In our latest blog, Dana breaks down:
✅ What “trauma-informed” really means (beyond the trend)
✅ How to know if a therapist truly practices it
✅ What to ask during a consultation to find the right fit for you

If you’ve ever wondered whether your therapist gets it — this one’s for you.

✨ Read the full post here: https://wix.to/mnwZJDj

Loss never disappears, but EMDR helps you carry it with more peace.

10/30/2025

Dear Therapists, burnout is real — and it doesn’t mean you’re doing something wrong.

You can be passionate about this work and feel completely drained by it.
You can love helping others and feel disconnected from yourself.
You can show up for your clients and still need to pause, breathe, and reset.

That doesn’t make you weak — it makes you human.

Therapist burnout happens when your nervous system has been holding too much for too long.
And while you can’t always change your caseload, you can change how you support your system between sessions.

🌿 Start small:
✔️ Take a grounding break between clients
✔️ Step away from your computer to reset your eyes + body
✔️ Simplify your systems so your brain can rest, too

That’s why I created the tools in The EMDR Coach Shop — to help therapists feel more organized, grounded, and supported in their clinical work.

🛒 You’ll find EMDR treatment planners, session forms, and therapist resources to help you focus on what actually matters — your clients and your well-being.

💬 Send us a DM to get the link to the shop, or visit https://cstu.io/0202bb to explore all my therapist tools.

You deserve systems that support your nervous system. 💛

10/29/2025

Proper case conceptualization in EMDR therapy isn’t a “nice-to-have.” It’s essential if you want your clients to get the best results possible.

If you’ve ever felt all over the place when organizing client information (🙋‍♀️ same), you know how hard it is to keep the full clinical picture clear. That’s exactly why I created my EMDR Case Conceptualization Form — one place to map everything you need for treatment planning.

It helps you track 👇
✔️ Client goals + current symptoms
✔️ Factors that may affect reprocessing
✔️ Themes, patterns, and present-day triggers
✔️ Future templates + target sequencing
✔️ Processing approach (EMD? restricted? Big R?)

When you can zoom out and see the entire clinical landscape, you can zoom in with confidence — and create targets your clients can actually achieve.

🗂️ This form is also included in The EMDR Therapy Treatment Planning Templates Complete Set, along with every tool you need to stay organized, consistent, and efficient in your EMDR sessions.

🛒 Grab it at https://cstu.io/4a8838

or send us a DM to get the link.

10/28/2025

When a child is told to “stop crying,” “calm down,” or “be tough,” they’re not learning emotional control — they’re learning emotional suppression.

They start believing that sadness, anger, and fear are wrong.
So, they bottle it up. They shove it down.
And those emotions? They don’t disappear — they resurface later as anxiety, irritability, perfectionism, or complete shutdown.

✨ Healing begins when you stop shaming your feelings and start listening to them.
Because the goal isn’t to “get over it.”
It’s to finally feel what your younger self never could — safely, gently, and with compassion.

When you do that, you become the parent (and person) your childhood self needed all along.

💡 EMDR therapy helps you safely access and reprocess those buried emotions — so you can regulate, connect, and thrive instead of just coping.

🧠 Want to understand how EMDR works and track your healing process?
Comment JOURNAL to learn more about The EMDR Therapy Progress Journal — your guide to navigating EMDR sessions and noticing real progress.
Or click the link in my bio 🔗

🚨 Disclaimer: This lightbar video is not EMDR therapy. It simply illustrates one type of bilateral stimulation (BLS), which may be used during certain phases of EMDR therapy. For a deeper understanding of EMDR and how it works, grab your copy of The EMDR Therapy Progress Journal by clicking the link in my bio or commenting “JOURNAL.”

10/28/2025

If your brain won’t slow down at night… you’re not alone.

When your nervous system has been “on” all day — managing clients, caregiving, kids, or chaos — your body doesn’t automatically know it’s safe to rest.
That’s why bedtime can turn into a replay hour for stress, memories, or worry.

The goal isn’t to force calm. It’s to teach your nervous system what calm actually feels like again.

Here are a few simple ways to reset before bed:
🌬️ Try bilateral stimulation (tapping or slow eye movements) for a few minutes
🕯️ Dim lights + lower sound to cue safety
🧠 Write down your thoughts before bed — don’t make your brain “hold” them overnight
💛 End the day with one gentle reminder: “I made it through today, and that’s enough.”

Rest isn’t a luxury — it’s regulation. And your nervous system deserves that reset.

💬 Want more tools like this? Check out my Free Resources at https://cstu.io/e0a8bb or comment “Free” to get them sent to you.

10/27/2025

Walking into the office at 8:30am after the mother of all sensory meltdowns and toddler tantrums galore 🫠

Being a therapist and a parent are two roles that mean everything to me. And there’s so much overlap in between those roles. Because both require regulation and attunement.

My job is to be a regulated and regulating presence for my clients aaaand for my children.

And I’m also a human being, with a nervous system that gets stressed and taxed, just like everyone else’s.

As therapists, we don’t get to just ignore our own nervous system because we understand it.

We still have mornings that pull every ounce of regulation out of us before the workday even starts.

And the real work isn’t pretending it didn’t happen, it’s staying present enough to notice it did.

Because if we can stay honest with our own emotions - the frustration, the overwhelm, the guilt, the exhaustion, then we can show up for our clients (and our kids) with actual attunement & authenticity.

Let today be your reminder to pause, collapse on the floor if needed (I personally love the grounding 🤣), and give yourself the same space that you hold for everyone else in your world.

10/26/2025

Ever notice how anxiety makes you forget to breathe — or makes every inhale feel shallow and tight?
That’s your sympathetic nervous system (your fight-or-flight response) working overtime.

Here’s a simple nervous system reset:
🫁 Make your exhale longer than your inhale.

Your inhale activates the stress response (sympathetic).
Your exhale activates calm (parasympathetic).
A longer exhale tells your body: “You’re safe.”

✨ Tools like CalmiGo take that concept even further — combining guided breathing, scent, and gentle vibration to help your body return to baseline faster. It’s like having a pocket-sized grounding tool that works with your biology, not against it.

Therapist takeaway:
When your clients struggle to use breathwork in moments of panic, CalmiGo can bridge that gap between knowing what helps and actually feeling safe enough to use it.

💬Explore The EMDR Coach recommended “Therapy Tools” including CalmiGo: https://www.danacarretta.com/therapytools

Use code THE_EMDR_COACH at checkout to get $30 off your order.

10/26/2025

💥if you’re an EMDR therapist and you’re working with clients who have relational issues, listen up: Many times, for attachment trauma, Phase 2 IS the work.It’s not the pre-show. It’s the nervous system learning for the very first time what safety, connection, and trust feel like.Many individuals have noooo past experience of what that actually feels like. So phase 2 is about giving them experiences that they’ve never had before, but should’ve. If you skip this and rush right into reprocessing - you’re gonna get stuck. Bc EMDR is all about adaptive information processing.BUT You can’t link to what isn’t there!!When the system starts to regulate and rewire through resourcing, attunement, and present-moment connection - the reprocessing becomes optional or effortless.Because the goal isn’t JUST to desensitize memories - it’s to connect to adaptive information (I.e, positive attachment experiences) which releases the charge and intensity that memory has in the present. Thats what helps rewire how the system responds in real time.So remember, don’t rush Phase 2. That’s where you create adaptive information that your client can connect to when you start reprocessing. Phase 2 is where the real healing begins.Have you experienced that before in sessions with your clients? ⤵️

10/26/2025

You’ve probably said it before: “That really triggered me.”
But what does being “triggered” actually mean?

It’s not about being too sensitive.
It’s your nervous system doing its job — trying to protect you from something that feels like danger, even when you’re safe.

Your body remembers what your mind may not.
That’s why a look, a smell, or a tone of voice can activate a survival response.
It’s not overreacting — it’s overprotecting.

✨ The good news? You can retrain your nervous system to respond differently.

Through EMDR therapy, your brain learns to reprocess stored trauma so your body no longer reacts as if the past is happening now.

Over time, the triggers lose their power — and you gain yours back.
If you’ve ever wondered why certain moments set you off, or why calm feels out of reach, this one’s for you.

💬 Comment “TRIGGER” and we’ll send you the link to read the full blog:
👉 “What Triggers Actually Are — And How EMDR Helps You Respond Differently.”

🧠 Looking for EMDR therapy?
At Peaceful Living Mental Health Counseling (PLMHC), our trauma-informed clinicians offer EMDR and psychotherapy:
• In person in Scarsdale, NY
• Virtual sessions for residents of NY, NJ, CT, and FL
Start where you are — healing is possible. 🌿
🔗 Send us a DM to book your free 15-minute consult.

10/25/2025

You’re in the group of people who actually get that healing happens in the body, not just the mind.

Group 7 = The ones who get that talking can only take them so far.

Group 7 = the ones who are healing their nervous system, healing for generations before them, and changing the future for generations after them.

If you use eye movements, tappers, buzzers, or any form of bilateral stimulation, you know first hand what a game changer EMDR therapy can be.

Are you in Group 7 yet?!

10/25/2025

Trauma can literally change the structure of your brain. 🧠

That’s why symptoms like flashbacks, nightmares, and triggers from certain sounds or smells are real neurological responses — not signs of weakness or “overreacting.”

Here’s what’s happening inside your brain after trauma 👇
1️⃣ The Hippocampus — your memory center.
When it shrinks after trauma, it struggles to tell the difference between past danger and present safety.
That’s why flashbacks feel like they’re happening right now.
2️⃣ The Amygdala — your internal alarm system.
If a traumatic memory is stored incorrectly, the amygdala stays on high alert, sending fight-or-flight signals even when there’s no real threat.
3️⃣ The Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex — your emotional regulator.
When this area goes offline, it becomes harder to manage big emotions — which is why you might “overreact” to something small.

Your brain isn’t broken; it’s protecting you.

✨ The good news? The brain can heal.

Through therapies like EMDR, your brain can reprocess traumatic memories correctly — helping these structures return to healthy functioning and bringing your nervous system back into balance.
You’re not broken.

Your brain has just been doing its best to keep you safe. 🌿

💬 Comment “JOURNAL” to learn more about The EMDR Therapy Progress Journal — your guided companion for tracking EMDR sessions, noticing real changes in your brain and body, and celebrating your healing along the way.