Updated: 10/25/2026
To borrow an apt description “EMDR therapy is an integrative, client-centered approach.” It helps clients whose negative life experiences still negatively impact their lives.
EMDR therapy is built on the understanding that we all have the natural ability to heal.
Then, EMDR therapy takes this natural healing ability and helps our beautifully designed brains to reprocess distressing memories and emotions.
It also addresses images, sounds, and thoughts we associate with these memories. And the stress our bodies hold as a result of holding onto distressing stuff for years.
Reprocessing means that our emotions, beliefs and body sensations we hold onto, often unknowingly, are integrated – we take from it what’s useful and ditch the rest.
The honey is in the reprocessing. It’s in allowing our brains to do what it couldn’t when we first lived through the traumatic or distressing experience (or years of them).
Allowing our brains to actually fully process these experiences.
Discovered and initially researched by Francine Shapiro in the late 1980’s, EMDR therapy has been continually researched, tweaked, improved, and perfected since then. And it’s now available worldwide, including in Minnesota.
EMDR can be done in person and online. And, inn addition to regular 90-minute EMDR sessions, EMDR therapy is also available in an intensive therapy format (usually three or more hours at a time).
About the Author
Ania is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) with over 9 years of experience supporting clients throughout Minnesota. As the founder of Empower You Therapy, she specializes in relationship therapy and trauma recovery, using evidence-based approaches including EMDR, mindfulness-based therapy, the Gottman Method, Relational Life Therapy, and Developmental Model of Couples Therapy to help clients heal relational hurts and build healthier relationships. Ania offers both weekly therapy and therapy intensive programs, providing compassionate, personalized care through in-person sessions in Shoreview and virtual therapy for clients across Minnesota.