EMDR for Anxiety – working with what you feel, not just what you think

emaiwald11
3 days ago
3 min read

Anxiety is often talked about as a thinking problem. Racing thoughts, worries, overthinking. And yes, that is part of it. But in the therapy room, anxiety usually shows up somewhere else first—in the body.

A tight chest. A restless feeling. A sense that something isn’t quite right.

This is where EMDR can be helpful. Not because it teaches you to think differently, but because it helps your system feeldifferently.

Is anxiety in the mind or in the body?

Both. But often, we notice it in the body before we understand it in words.

That’s something I pay close attention to in my work at Emotion Clinic Notting Hill. I work emotion-focused, which means I am interested in what you feel—when you talk about your anxiety, your relationships, your past, your everyday life.

And very often, what you feel is not immediately clear.

Sometimes there are emotional blind spots. Sometimes anxiety is sitting on top of something else—fear, sadness, anger, or a sense of not feeling safe. Sometimes it’s all mixed together.

The body usually knows first.

So how does EMDR actually help?

EMDR works by helping the brain process experiences that are “stuck.” These might be obvious memories, but often they are not. Sometimes it’s just a feeling, a reaction, a pattern.

In sessions, we might notice something like a tightness in your chest or a knot in your stomach. Instead of analysing it straight away, we stay with it.

With EMDR, your system begins to process what is held there.

People often notice that something shifts without them forcing it—the tension softens, the breathing changes, the feeling becomes clearer or less intense.

This is not about pushing feelings away. It’s about allowing them to move.

But what about thoughts? Where does CBT fit in?

Approaches like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy are still very useful. They help you understand patterns in your thinking and give you tools for day-to-day anxiety.

But many people notice something important:even when they know a thought isn’t true, the anxiety is still there.

That’s usually because the emotional and bodily part hasn’t caught up yet.

This is where EMDR complements CBT. One works more “top-down” (thoughts), the other more “bottom-up” (body and emotional memory).

And what about relationships?

Anxiety is often not just about situations—it’s about people.

How safe you feel with others.How you expect others to respond.How you learned to manage closeness, distance, or rejection.

Attachment-based work and relational therapies help make sense of these patterns. EMDR can then process the emotional experiences underneath them—often earlier experiences that are still shaping how things feel now.

Calming the nervous system

If anxiety feels automatic, that’s because it often is.

Your nervous system is doing its job—detecting threat, trying to protect you. The problem is when it stays in that state too often.

This is where Polyvagal Theory can be helpful to understand what’s happening. Anxiety is linked to a state of activation (fight/flight), where the body is preparing for danger.

EMDR helps the system learn that some of these triggers are no longer dangerous.

Over time, this allows more access to a calmer, more regulated state.

What can you do yourself?

Therapy is one part. There are also simple ways to support your nervous system between sessions.

Slow breathing is one of the most effective tools—especially breathing out longer than you breathe in:https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/self-help/guides-tools-and-activities/breathing-exercises-for-stress/

Grounding can help when anxiety feels overwhelming, bringing you back into the present moment:https://www.anxietycanada.com/articles/grounding-techniques/

If you’d like to understand EMDR more, the EMDR International Association has a clear overview:https://www.emdria.org/about-emdr-therapy/

And for a very practical introduction to working with your nervous system:https://www.rhythmofregulation.com

A final thought

Feelings are not always easy to understand.

Sometimes they are clear.Sometimes they are layered.Sometimes they don’t make sense at all.

But they are not random.

And when we start paying attention—to the body, to the emotional signals underneath anxiety—there is usually something there that can be processed, understood, and gradually eased.