What Is This Workbook?
EMDR Between Sessions is a trauma-informed EMDR workbook for adults who are preparing for or participating in EMDR therapy. It is designed for the space around appointments: the days when you may be trying to understand what happened in session, notice what is surfacing, practice resources you have already developed, or prepare useful observations to bring back to your therapist.
Across 16 modules organized into four parts, the workbook explains EMDR as a complete eight-phase psychotherapy—not simply eye movements or tapping. It supports preparation, reflection, regulation, and integration while keeping trauma processing within the therapeutic relationship.
The Space Between Sessions
Trauma can leave experiences feeling unfinished. A reminder may bring immediate body activation, shutdown, distress, a harsh belief about yourself, or the sense that the past is happening again. During EMDR, you may also notice new memories, emotions, dreams, insights, or periods when your mind feels blank. These reactions can be confusing even when they are understandable within the process.
The workbook helps you recognize what your nervous system may be communicating without treating every reaction as a setback. It distinguishes remembering from reliving, being safe from feeling safe, and productive observation from independent trauma reprocessing. The emphasis is on orientation, choice, pacing, and bringing what you notice back into the room.
How Does the Workbook Work?
Each module pairs accessible psychoeducation with structured exercises for active engagement. Depending on the topic, you may map body responses, identify negative and preferred beliefs, use distress-rating scales, notice signs of activation or shutdown, reflect on changes between sessions, practice grounding and orienting, strengthen resources already established in therapy, or prepare language for communicating with your therapist.
Clear safety labels distinguish exercises that are appropriate for ordinary reflection from practices that should be used only as rehearsed with your therapist or completed during a therapy session. If an exercise increases flooding rather than steadiness, the workbook directs you to stop, orient to the present, and seek support.
What Does the Process Look Like?
16 modules · 4 parts
- Understanding EMDR: Learn what EMDR is, how its eight phases work, how trauma affects the brain and body, and why you remain an active participant with choices throughout treatment.
- Building Safety and Meaning: Explore the difference between being safe and feeling safe, examine trauma-related beliefs, understand distress ratings, and identify what you would rather believe about yourself.
- The Work of Processing: Understand why memories may change or feel stuck, what can surface after a session, why the mind sometimes goes blank, and how bilateral stimulation supports processing.
- Integration and Moving Forward: Consider how much of your story you want to share, what it means for a memory to feel like the past, and which tools, supports, and observations you want to carry forward.
You can move through the workbook in order or return to the sections that fit your present needs. The pace is guided by safety, not by pressure to complete every page.
Look Inside
This workbook is designed for participation rather than passive reading. Its pages invite you to notice, write, rate, orient, and prepare for conversations with your therapist without asking you to process trauma alone. The sample pages offer a closer look at the combination of clear psychoeducation, structured reflection, regulation practice, and explicit safety guidance used throughout the book.
Educational material for reflection and use alongside EMDR therapy. It does not replace individualized clinical care and is not intended for independent trauma reprocessing.
