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Combining EMDR and Talk Therapy to Enhance Patient Outcomes: A Collaboration between Talk Therapists and EMDR Therapists

  • Writer: Budd Therapy
    Budd Therapy
  • Jul 13, 2025
  • 3 min read

Updated: Dec 23, 2025


Combining EMDR and Talk therapy
Therapy Session in New Jersey

Combining EMDR and Talk Therapy

In the world of mental health, no single approach holds all the answers. Clients are complex, and healing often requires a multifaceted treatment plan. One increasingly effective way to meet those needs is through collaborative care—specifically, when a talk therapist partners with an EMDR therapist.


Rather than replacing traditional therapy, EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) can complement and enhance it, especially for clients stuck in long-standing patterns or trauma responses. Here’s how these two modalities can work together to support deeper, more lasting healing.


Talk Therapy (Psychodynamic, CBT, etc.) helps clients:

  • Process thoughts and feelings in real time

  • Build insight and self-awareness

  • Strengthen coping skills

  • Improve communication and relationship patterns


EMDR Therapy helps clients:

  • Access and reprocess traumatic or distressing memories stored in the nervous system

  • Reduce physiological symptoms (e.g., hypervigilance, nightmares, flashbacks)

  • Shift negative beliefs formed in early or traumatic experiences

  • Resolve emotional blocks that talk therapy alone may not reach


When Collaboration Can Help

Therapists often encounter clients who make intellectual progress in talk therapy—they understand the “why” behind their behaviors—but still feel emotionally stuck. They might say things like:

  • “I know it wasn’t my fault, but I still feel shame.”

  • “I’ve talked about it so many times, but it still haunts me.”

  • “I’m tired of coping—I want to feel free.”

These are often signs that trauma or emotional memory is still stored somatically and hasn’t been fully processed. This is where EMDR can help. Rather than replacing talk therapy, EMDR can target specific symptoms or memories while the talk therapist continues the broader therapeutic work.



A Team Approach: What It Looks Like

When EMDR and talk therapists work together, here’s how it often flows:

  1. Initial Coordination - The talk therapist and EMDR therapist connect (with client consent) to share background, goals, and what the client is currently working on.

  2. Targeted EMDR Sessions - The client may engage in short-term EMDR work through intensive sessions focused on specific issues like:

    • PTSD or traumatic memories

    • Medical trauma or phobias

    • Childhood attachment wounds

    • Triggers that interfere with current relationships

  3. Ongoing Communication - With appropriate releases, therapists may check in periodically to ensure continuity of care and avoid duplication or confusion.

  4. Return to Talk Therapy - Many clients return to talk therapy with significant relief, ready to dive deeper into relational or long-term work.


Benefits for the Client

  • Faster symptom relief - for issues rooted in trauma

  • Greater emotional integration - of insights gained in talk therapy

  • More sustainable progress - with fewer setbacks

  • A sense of being truly supported - by a team that communicates and collaborates


Collaboration doesn’t require you to give up your client or change your approach. Combining EMDR and talk therapy can benefit both therapists and most importantly, the client.


When done thoughtfully, it enhances your work and allows you to focus on your strengths while providing clients with well-rounded, trauma-informed care.





Research:

Integrating Adjunctive EMDR Within the Primary Therapy Being Provided to Clients

Using EMDR’s powerful information processing component to resolve the underlying dysfunctions, stemming from traumatic memories may greatly enhance the effectiveness of other therapeutic approaches (Lawrence, 2011). Some researchers postulate that using EMDR as an adjunctive therapy enhances the strengths of each treatment, resulting in a synergistic effect (Sun, Wu, & Chiu, 2003) making the combined treatment approach more effective than the sum of its parts. In their research, Dunne and Farrell (2011) found that practitioners using cognitive and integrative-based therapies were more likely to integrate EMDR treatment into their own practices. They theorized that clinicians with these theoretical frameworks and orientations more easily understand EMDR concepts than analytically trained and humanistic therapists.


 
 
 

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