EMDR Therapist Los Angeles

EMDR Therapy: A Powerful, Effective Approach to Healing and Transformation

by Mihaela Ivan Holtz, Psy.D., LMFT

EMDR therapy (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy) is a healing and transformative journey we use in Los Angeles, CA, that helps you reconnect with the fullness and wholeness of who you are. It reaches deep inside you to clear emotional blocks or trauma in the way of you being connected to the core of who you are, your True Self. This can be from a traumatic event or any other occurrences that have happened in your life. It releases the unhealthy imprint, and it brings out the essence of who you are so you can live with emotional freedom and authenticity in your love, creative expression, and sense of agency.

Your past experiences and unresolved emotions from traumatic memories can interfere with the sense of “emotional freedom” and hinder your ability to live with love, creativity, and productivity.

If you’re seeking a deep, lasting way to heal old emotional wounds or a traumatic event, EMDR Therapy, short for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy, is an empirically validated and effective treatment plan.

My clients come to me because they are looking for an EMDR certified therapist who can help them transform the feelings, beliefs, and embodied emotional states that have been holding them back.

At the start of our work, people often think and say things like:

• “I can’t be successful at…”
• “I don’t trust…”
• “my shame gets in the way when…”
• “rejection stops me from…”
• “guilt is not letting me…
• “I feel empty inside…”
• “my fears take over, and I can’t…”
• “I doubt that I can…”
• “I don’t have the self-confidence to…”
• “I am not worthy of…,”

Emotional states like these can really hold you back from a fulfilled life. Together, we can reshape your mind to foster healing, wholeness, and the emotional freedom to live a fulfilling life of creativity, success, and genuine connections.

Are old emotional wounds holding you back?

Maybe you have heard yourself say many of the things on that list. Maybe you haven’t been aware of your own inner dialogue and you notice  things never seem to be going your way. Your relationships, creativity, or sense of agency are suffering, and you’re seeking answers.

Perhaps you still feel the imprint of some traumatic event or traumatic memories that you have been unable to face and work through. You may have a history of emotional abuse, emotional neglect, being bullied, violence, or sexual abuse that you have been trying to cope with or just “get past.” 

Some people who have had these experiences can feel blocked or stuck in their lives. Seeking help from an EMDR therapist in Los Angeles can provide a safe space for addressing emotional conflicts and traumatic experiences. Trauma therapy, especially EMDR therapy, can help release the emotional burden and support your healing journey.

There is help. You can heal and live a full life!

Luckily, in recent decades, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy (EMDR) has proven to be a powerful psychotherapy approach that helps people find freedom from painful emotional states or traumatic memories that keep them from living their fulfilling lives. According to the Cleveland Clinic, dozens of clinical trials confirm that EMDR works and often delivers results faster than other methods, without the need to discuss disturbing details repeatedly. While therapy EMDR is often the treatment of choice for those who suffered major traumas—such as wars, disasters, accidents, or assaults—it’s also a very effective treatment plan for healing childhood trauma, attachment issues, emotional conflicts, or any feelings -i.e., fears, doubts, insecurities that interfere with your ability to invest yourself and create your life. 

Los Angeles EMDR helps to resolve complex trauma that emerges from subtle and repeated instances of shame, humiliation, and rejection. It is also used to treat PTSD. All of these forms of trauma can manifest in your mental health such as anxiety, depression, panic attacks, relationship difficulties, self-esteem issues, performance anxiety, and creative blocks.

Do you need help resolving emotional trauma? Is EMDR Los Angeles, CA, for you?

Many of our emotional struggles come from being stuck in a past experience that was particularly painful or traumatic. The tricky part is that you may not even be aware that you’re repeating the same old story over and over again.

Unprocessed, emotional conflicts traumatic memories get stuck in your mind and body. When triggered, they can make you feel and act like you are back in the past. You respond to the present with the emotions and attitudes of your past self. You get triggered into an emotional flashback. This pattern keeps you stuck and gets in the way of your ability to grow and transform.

You’re repeating old, narrow, and rigid stories instead of creating your own fulfilling life story.

You may hear that you need to “live in the present” and “just have a positive mindset,” but this kind of well-intentioned advice can actually leave you feeling even more isolated and misunderstood.

Overcoming a traumatic event or painful experience isn’t as simple as choosing a new mindset. Fear, doubt, shame, and self-criticism can quickly take over. When you try to push through your emotions, you find yourself lost in anxiety, depression, relationship issues, performance anxiety, and creative blocks.

How does Trauma Counseling Work?

EMDR Therapy (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy) is a revolutionary and effective treatment that incorporates bilateral stimulation (eye movements, tapping, or sounds) to help the brain process and integrate upsetting memories. Clinical studies have validated EMDR’s efficacy in reducing symptoms tied to trauma and emotional pain, making it a reliable path toward healing.

A trained therapist can help heal the pain and the disturbing memories connected to traumatic experiences and trauma symptoms. At the same time, it also frees you from challenging feelings and beliefs, distressing body sensations, and trapped emotions.

What Does an EMDR Therapist Do?

An EMDR therapist is a licensed mental health professional trained in Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), a powerful, research-backed form of psychotherapy designed to help individuals heal from trauma and emotional distress. At the core of a therapist EMDR approach is guiding clients through a structured, eight-phase treatment protocol that uses bilateral stimulation (such as guided eye movements or tapping) to help the brain reprocess distressing memories and release their emotional charge.

Many people searching for the best EMDR therapists in Los Angeles are looking not only for expertise but also for someone who can offer genuine care, safety, and attunement. That’s where working with an experienced EMDR specialist can make a life-changing difference.

• In EMDR trauma therapy, your therapist may:
• Create a safe and compassionate space for your healing process
• Help uncover and gently process painful, unresolved memories
• Use targeted EMDR techniques to reduce the emotional impact of past experiences
• Guide you in transforming negative beliefs into more empowering truths
• Work at your pace, always honoring your comfort and readiness
• Provide individualized support, especially for childhood or relationship-based trauma

With the help of a trusted EMDR Los Angeles therapist, you can begin to feel more grounded, more present, and more connected to who you truly are, beyond the trauma.

8 Stages of Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing

EMDR therapy is a eight-phase approach designed to help you  process and heal from traumatic memories and/or emotionalconflicts. Guided by a skilled EMDR therapist, each phase builds upon the last, ensuring a safe and effective journey toward

Here’s what to expect at each step:

1. History Taking

In this first phase, you and your therapist will explore what led you to experience EMDR therapy. You’ll share key experiences, identify patterns, and pinpoint specific memories—known as “targets”—to work through in later sessions.

2. Preparation

Before diving into deeper processing, your therapist will explain how therapy EMDR works and answer any questions. You’ll also develop coping strategies, such as deep breathing or visualization, to help you manage your emotions that may arise during sessions.

3. Assessment with EMDR therapists

Together, you’ll select specific memories to focus on. Your therapist will guide you in identifying the emotions, body sensations, and beliefs tied to it.

4. Desensitization

During this phase, you’ll engage in bilateral stimulation (BLS)—such as eye movements, alternating sounds, or gentle taps—while recalling the target memory. This process helps reduce the emotional intensity of the memory, making it feel less distressing over time.

5. Taking in a new imprint.

With your therapist’s support, you’ll replace self-defeating beliefs associated with the memory with healthy, empowering ones. For example, a belief like “I am unsafe” may be replaced with “I am safe now.” BLS is used again to strengthen this new, healthier belief.

6. Body Scan

Since trauma is stored in the mind and in the body, this phase helps ensure that distressing sensations are fully processed. You’ll mentally scan your body while thinking of the memory and your new belief, addressing any lingering discomfort until it fades.

7. Closure

Each session ends with a grounding process to bring you back to the present moment, leaving you feeling stable and calm. Even if a memory isn’t fully processed yet, closure ensures you leave the session in a safe emotional space.

8. Re-evaluation

At the start of each new session, your therapist will check in to see how you’re feeling and assess whether the memory worked on in previous sessions still holds any distress. If needed, further processing will continue.

EMDR therapy is a powerful tool for healing, helping you release the weight of past trauma or emotional conflicts and step into a future of greater emotional freedom, resilience, and connection to your authentic self. 

How To Prepare for Your Trauma Treatment Session

First, start by learning the basics of EMDR, and note down any questions or concerns you may have. I highly encourage my patients to vocalize any doubts or queries before we begin, so they can feel more comfortable about the treatment. 

It’s also helpful to reflect on your therapy journey — try identifying any triggers or issues you’d like to address. This can be something as simple as “I want to feel less anxious at social gatherings”. Write down these insights in a journal you can bring to the session with you. 

In the days leading up to EMDR, prioritize self-care. Be kind to yourself, get rest, eat well, and practice relaxation techniques to help you stay grounded. Trauma counseling can be an emotionally intense process, and taking care of yourself should remain your first priority. 

What Is AF-EMDR Therapy?

Many trauma-related emotional problems benefit from a specifically adapted therapy model of EMDR called Attachment-Focused EMDR (AF-EMDR). If your trauma is relationally based, you need AF-EMDR.

AF-EMDR is a targeted, research-supported, empirically validated form of traditional EMDR therapy. It combines the latest scientific insights and research on the neurobiology of relationships and psychotherapy with the EMDR treatment framework. This attachment-based modification of EMDR therapy is particularly helpful if you have childhood attachment trauma. It’s designed to treat relational trauma – emotional trauma due to unhealthy relationships – which is at the root of most emotional issues.

Childhood Trauma

Perhaps traumatic childhood experiences or a traumatic event in your childhood here in Los Angeles, CA, interfere with your ability to form genuine relationships. Unprocessed, traumatic memories get stuck in your mind and, when triggered, take you back to an emotionally hurtful place in your mind. You cannot respond to the challenges of the present moment when you are busy reacting to these invisible memories from the past.

Other Symptoms

Maybe you’re experiencing performance anxiety, creative blocks, or problems in your career. Or you may be feeling depressed, anxious, or like you just don’t feel fully alive. You may not realize these symptoms are related to past experiences or complex trauma in your life. You are likely working with relational trauma.

How AF-EMDR Therapy Works

AF-EMDR therapy helps you access these unprocessed emotions, which other forms of therapy often can’t tap into so fast and efficiently. Instead of just treating the trauma symptoms or practicing mindfulness techniques, it addresses the root of your difficulties. AF-EMDR work can break through the trauma and help you process it, creating healthier and more empowering emotional mindstates.

For instance, if you lack self-esteem and find it hard to trust your own abilities even though you’re very capable, an EMDR therapist can help you function with more confidence in who you really are. EMDR Therapy can help you reconnect to your unique mix of talent, gifts, and weaknesses.

EMDR work doesn’t just reframe emotional pain. It actually heals your deep-rooted pain and connects you with a sense of grounded confidence in your true self so you can experience true growth. As an EMDR therapist, I use a combination of proven therapy techniques based on the neurobiology of complex trauma, psychodynamic, cognitive behavioral, mindfulness, EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy), and psychoanalytic approaches along with EMDR. With the help of EMDR and a therapeutic relationship, you’ll be able to finally step outside of the trauma box into emotional freedom.

You can’t change the past, but you change how you feel about it and hold it inside you. After treatment, you no longer live in an emotionally painful and conflicting place, and you have access to who you really are to create your life.

When Trauma Blocks Access To Your Abilities and Talents and Limits Your Creative and Professional Potential

Trauma can affect people from all walks of life, but I often work with a unique group of individuals here in Los Angeles, CA, who tend to suffer from relational or developmental trauma: professionals in the creative arts, including performers, musicians, fine artists, and screenwriters.

As an artist, you navigate a high-pressure environment as you frequently deal with rejection, abandonment, and more. Unresolved traumatic memories and the limiting emotions and beliefs that come with them can diminish your creative potential and hinder your career.

EMDR Therapist Los Angeles: Helping Artists & Creatives with Therapy

One of my areas of expertise is in helping those in creative and artistic careers to move past complex emotional and developmental trauma. I’m particularly drawn to “true artists”—people who don’t see artistic expression as just a job but who see their art as the source of their life energy. They have to create to feel alive!

Throughout my 20-plus years of practicing psychotherapy, my deep appreciation for my clients’ creative energy has helped me to relate and connect with them on an intimate level so that they feel safe and comfortable bringing up anything they need during treatment sessions.

By utilizing EMDR therapy, I’ve been able to help these clients reach a place where anxiety, depression, panic attacks, complex trauma, performance anxiety, and creative blocks no longer negatively affect their professional growth.

Time and again, I have walked beside creatives as they set off on their healing path. Once their trauma was processed in a healthy way, they could finally access their true selves. Thanks to our psychotherapy process, I see artists and performers become fully present in their lives, ready to showcase their abilities and talents in a renewed way. With a new sense of confidence, they step into greater career opportunities and success. I would like to help you do the same.

My Personalized Approach As an EMDR Therapist

I always approach therapy with the intention of making it an in-depth, rich, emotional, relational experience that helps you thrive in the long term.  My expertise allows me to be timely and efficient and create healing and changes from the inside out.

As we attune to the specifics of your journey to healing and transformation, we identify what’s not working in your life, get to the root of the problem, and break through what is keeping you stuck in our therapeutic relationship.

I’ve been trained in Attachment-Focused EMDR at the Parnell Institute, where I developed an appreciation for just how amazingly powerful the AF-EMDR therapy method is in trauma treatment. As I worked with a variety of clients, I was able to see first-hand that EMDR work can even help those people who were getting stuck when using other modalities.

And I realized that EMDR gives me the ability to add an extra layer to my treatment, to help my clients even faster and more effectively, along with my previously established psychotherapy approaches.

In our sessions, I may blend EMDR work with other psychotherapy approaches, such as talk therapy. Most likely, we will merge the more “traditional” therapeutic approach with EMDR throughout the therapy journey, depending on your needs and goals in the treatment.

Additional approaches that we may use in session—such as psychodynamic/psychoanalytic techniques—are all based on the neuroscience of psychotherapy. I found that these modalities can work very powerfully together with EMDR.

Psychotherapy is a science, an art, and a craft, all at the same time.

Find Lasting Healing From Traumatic Memories

If you’re ready to break free from the limitations of trauma and live with emotional freedom, please contact me to find out what EMDR therapy in person near Los Angeles, CA, or EMDR therapy online is appropriate for you.