What To Do Between EMDR Sessions to Support Your Nervous System
December 10, 2025
EMDR therapy can be profoundly transformative, yet the days between sessions are just as important as the sessions themselves. In fact, what happens between EMDR sessions often determines how smoothly your nervous system processes trauma, how grounded you feel, and how integrated your healing becomes over time. Because EMDR activates deep neural networks, the brain and body may continue processing information for hours or even days afterward. Therefore, having a supportive plan helps your system stay regulated, safe, and steady.
Whether you’re working through childhood trauma, narcissistic abuse, panic symptoms, or long-standing patterns of anxiety, this guide will help you understand what to do between EMDR sessions so you can get the most out of your therapy. More importantly, you’ll learn how to care for your mind, body, and nervous system with compassion and intentionality during this powerful healing process.
1. Ground Yourself Daily With Simple Nervous-System Tools
After EMDR, many clients experience increased emotional sensitivity, body sensations, or vivid memories. These experiences are normal — the brain is making new connections and integrating old material. Yet grounding exercises can help regulate your system so processing feels manageable rather than overwhelming.
Try these daily grounding practices:
• Exhale-focused breathing
Extend your exhales longer than your inhales (ex: inhale for 4, exhale for 6). This activates the parasympathetic nervous system and slows the body’s stress response.
• Orienting (look around the room slowly)
Let your eyes rest on objects, colors, textures, or shapes. This signals to your brain that you are safe in the present moment.
• 5-4-3-2-1 sensory grounding
Identify 5 things you can see, 4 you can touch, 3 you can hear, 2 you can smell, and 1 you can taste.
• Weighted blankets or deep pressure
These help soothe the vagus nerve and decrease hyperarousal.
• Temperature shifts
Cold water on your wrists or a warm shower can recalibrate your system when emotions feel intense.
Integrating these tools daily — even for 5 minutes — builds stability in your nervous system, which makes EMDR processing smoother and less triggering.
2. Prioritize Rest and Reduce Overstimulation
After a session of EMDR, your brain is doing an enormous amount of behind-the-scenes work. Sometimes clients describe this as feeling “tired,” “floaty,” or “emotionally full.” These sensations are signs that your brain is organizing, decongesting, and integrating traumatic memory networks.
Support your brain by giving it space to rest.
• Get extra sleep if your body asks for it
Healing requires energy. Don’t interpret increased fatigue as a setback.
• Limit excessive screen time, especially doomscrolling
Your brain is already processing; adding more stimulation can overwhelm your system.
• Avoid emotionally intense content
This includes horror movies, heated social media debates, or triggering relationship conversations.
• Keep your schedule lighter than usual
You don’t have to be “productive” during trauma healing. Slowing down is part of the work.
Rest isn’t avoidance — it is integration. When the nervous system is calm and supported, EMDR processing deepens and becomes more effective.
3. Move Your Body in Gentle, Non-Overwhelming Ways
The body holds emotional and somatic residue from trauma. Movement helps release stored tension, metabolize emotional energy, and signal to your system that it is safe to soften.
You don’t need intense workouts; in fact, gentle movement is typically more supportive after EMDR.
Some therapeutic movement options include:
• Slow yoga or stretching
This helps unwind tension and reconnects you with your physical body.
• Walking outside
Rhythmic bilateral movement mirrors the motion of EMDR and can support continued processing.
• Shaking or somatic discharge
Gently shake your arms or legs to discharge pent-up stress energy, much like animals do after a threat has passed.
• Trauma-sensitive movement practices
These focus on tuning into your body without pushing past your window of tolerance.
The goal is not to “exercise” but to move at a pace that feels nourishing and safe.
4. Journal — Not to Analyze, but to Witness Yourself
Many EMDR clients think they need to journal intensely or analyze their trauma between sessions. However, EMDR works best when we don’t over-intellectualize.
Instead, journal in a way that helps you witness your inner experience without judgment.
A helpful EMDR journaling approach might include:
• What emotions came up today?
Name them without trying to fix them.
• What body sensations did I notice?
Tight chest, warm stomach, heavy shoulders — all normal.
• What memories popped up?
Sometimes unexpected moments surface as your brain reorganizes.
• What do I need right now to feel supported?
Compassion, rest, reassurance, grounding, connection.
Think of journaling as tracking your journey rather than dissecting it.
5. Practice Self-Compassion and Meet Yourself Gently
Healing trauma is not linear. One week you may feel empowered; the next you may feel tender or activated. EMDR opens layers of memory networks, which means emotions can shift rapidly.
Self-compassion is one of the most powerful nervous-system regulators available.
Ways to practice self-compassion between sessions:
• Please don’t judge your reactions
Your responses are not “too much” — they are your brain healing in real time.
• Talk to yourself the way you would talk to a client
“You’re doing the best you can.”
“This is hard, and it makes sense that it feels intense.”
“You’re allowed to take your time.”
• Acknowledge your progress
Even feeling emotions more clearly is a sign of integration and healing.
• Allow yourself to need support
You don’t have to carry everything alone. EMDR is a collaborative process, not a solitary one.
Self-compassion keeps your window of tolerance open so processing continues smoothly.
6. Use Bilateral Stimulation (Lightly) If Emotions Build Up
Some clients benefit from gentle bilateral stimulation between sessions, such as:
- Butterfly tapping
- Walking with left-right noticing
- Tactile tapping devices (if recommended by your therapist)
However, it’s important not to activate trauma memories or “DIY EMDR.”
Use bilateral stimulation for grounding, not processing.
Good uses include:
- Calming anxiety
- Slowing racing thoughts
- Settling the body at bedtime
- Supporting emotional regulation
Always follow your therapist’s guidance on what is appropriate for your system and your phase of treatment.
7. Strengthen Your Support System and Healthy Attachments
Trauma often leaves people feeling isolated, self-reliant, or disconnected from others. EMDR can reopen emotional pathways that were once blocked, creating opportunities for deeper connection.
Between sessions, connection can be profoundly stabilizing.
Consider:
• Spending time with supportive people
Not necessarily to talk about trauma, but to experience co-regulation.
• Letting someone know you’re doing trauma work
You don’t need to share details — just enough so they understand if you seem more tender.
• Scheduling comforting interactions
A walk with a friend, a calm evening with a loved one, or even connection with a pet.
Humans regulate through safe relationships. Support between sessions strengthens the healing happening in therapy.
8. Pay Attention to Your Triggers — Not to judge them, but to understand your system
As your brain rewires through EMDR, certain triggers may become clearer. This is not regression — it is increased awareness.
You may notice:
- Irritability
- Emotional waves
- Sudden sadness
- Old memories resurfacing
- Feeling “activated” with no obvious cause
These are signs that the trauma network is reorganizing.
When this happens:
• Ground yourself first
then
• Take note of the trigger
then
• Bring it to your next session
You do not need to fix anything on your own. Awareness is enough.
9. Know When to Reach Out to Your Therapist
Part of EMDR is learning to track your own experience and communicate your needs. You should feel empowered to reach out if:
- You feel overwhelmed
- You’re unsure how to ground yourself
- A disturbing memory keeps resurfacing
- You’re struggling with dissociation
- Nightmares or panic intensify
- You feel unsafe
Your therapist can provide grounding strategies, modify your treatment plan, or offer a brief check-in.
10. Remember: You Don’t Have to “Do” EMDR Between Sessions
Your only job between sessions is to support your nervous system.
You do not need to:
- Keep processing trauma
- Force memories to come up
- Analyze everything you’re feeling
- Push through intense emotions alone
Your brain will continue to integrate naturally. Your job is simply to create the conditions for healing to unfold: safety, grounding, connection, rest, and regulation.
Final Thoughts: Supporting Your Nervous System Makes EMDR More Effective
Between EMDR sessions, your system is doing extraordinary work. The more you support your body and nervous system with gentleness, grounding, and connection, the more deeply EMDR can help you heal.
You’re not just “waiting” between sessions — you are participating in your healing in quiet, powerful ways.
