EMDR Therapy in NYC for Trauma and Childhood Wounds

If you have been struggling with the lasting effects of trauma, whether it’s PTSD, childhood wounds, painful memories that keep resurfacing, or anxiety and reactivity that talk therapy alone hasn’t been able to reach, EMDR therapy may offer a way through. EMDR is a widely researched, evidence-based trauma therapy that helps the brain heal from experiences it couldn’t fully process at the time, so what’s been stuck can finally move through and settle.

What Is EMDR Therapy?

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is an evidence-based, integrative trauma therapy developed by psychologist Francine Shapiro in the late 1980s. It is grounded in the Adaptive Information Processing model, which proposes that emotional pain becomes “stuck” when the brain isn’t able to fully process an overwhelming experience at the time it happens.

When a memory remains unprocessed, it doesn’t behave like an ordinary memory. It lives on in your nervous system: in body sensations, intrusive emotions, hyper-vigilance, or the way you brace before certain conversations. You may know intellectually that you’re safe now, yet still feel as though something is happening now.

EMDR helps the brain do what it couldn’t do at the time: integrate the experience. Through bilateral stimulation (usually guided eye movements, but also tapping or auditory tones), we gently activate the brain’s natural processing capacity while you stay connected to the memory in a safe, titrated way. Over time, the memory begins to lose its emotional charge. What once felt raw and reactive can finally become something you can simply remember, without being pulled back into it.

EMDR is widely researched and recognized as a frontline treatment for PTSD by the World Health Organization, the American Psychological Association, and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

EMDR for Complex Trauma and Childhood Wounds

Traditional descriptions of EMDR often focus on single-event trauma, such as a car accident, an assault, or a sudden loss. EMDR is highly effective for these, but it is also a powerful tool for the kind of trauma many of my clients carry: trauma that didn’t happen in one moment, but accumulated quietly over years.

This is sometimes called complex trauma, or developmental trauma: the relational wounds of growing up with caregivers who, for whatever reasons of their own, couldn’t fully see you, soothe you, or make space for your emotional truth. It includes:

Chronic emotional neglect or invalidation
Growing up with a critical, controlling, or emotionally unavailable parent
Being parentified: having to take care of a parent’s emotions before you could have your own
Repeated experiences of feeling unsafe, unseen, or “too much” in your family
Loss, separation, or migration that was never fully grieved
Cultural or intergenerational wounds passed down from parents and grandparents

These experiences shape what trauma researchers like Bessel van der Kolk describe as implicit memory: the felt sense of who you are, what you can expect from others, and whether the world is safe. Trauma isn’t just stored as a story; it is stored in the body.

EMDR is uniquely suited to reach these earlier, often pre-verbal layers, because it works with how trauma is actually stored: not as a coherent narrative, but as fragmented sensations, images, beliefs, and somatic responses. In our work, EMDR helps these stuck memories finally find their way into integrated, adaptive memory, so that the past can become past, and your nervous system can rest into the present.

EMDR for Asian and Asian American Clients: A Culturally Attuned Approach

For Asian and Asian American clients, EMDR can be especially meaningful, and it also requires a clinician who understands the cultural terrain.

Trauma in our families often doesn’t look like a single dramatic event. It looks like a mother who survived hardship and learned to never speak of grief, a father who showed love through pressure and sacrifice rather than warmth, the unspoken messages: don’t bring shame to the family, don’t waste our sacrifices, don’t be too much. This is intergenerational trauma, and it lives not only in stories, but in the body, the nervous system, and the patterns we inherit without realizing.

EMDR is uniquely suited to reach these wounds, because so much of what we carry as Asian Americans never had words to begin with. Whole emotional registers, like grief, anger, longing, tenderness, may have been suppressed in your family of origin, or never named in either Chinese or English. EMDR doesn’t require you to articulate everything. It works with how the trauma actually lives in you, beneath language.

In our sessions, I bring an awareness of:

The bilingual self. Memories from your Chinese-speaking childhood may carry different textures than those from your English-speaking life. We can work in whichever language the memory lives in, and switch when needed.
The cultural meaning of “trauma.” In many Asian families, what Western frameworks call “trauma” was simply called “love,” “discipline,” or “how things were.” Naming these experiences requires care, not pathologizing.
Filial and family loyalty. Healing doesn’t have to mean rejecting your parents or your culture. Together, we hold the complexity of loving your family deeply and being wounded by them at the same time.
The body’s cultural literacy. Somatic experiences are expressed differently across cultures. I make space for how your body, your nervous system, your embodied history speaks.

If you’ve been searching for a bilingual EMDR therapist in NYC who can hold both your Chinese and English selves, both your individual story and your family’s history, this is the work I do.

What to Expect in EMDR Sessions With Me

EMDR is one of several evidence-based approaches I draw on to support trauma healing. My broader work is bottom-up, attachment-based, emotion-focused, and experiential, and EMDR weaves into that integrative therapy rather than being practiced as a stand-alone short-term protocol. The trusting connection between us becomes the holding environment in which the deeper reprocessing can do its work.

Rather than following EMDR’s traditional eight-phase protocol in a rigid, step-by-step way, I integrate EMDR organically into our ongoing relationship. We begin by spending meaningful time getting to know your history, your nervous system, and the patterns that bring you in, building the internal resources and felt sense of safety that allow deeper work to unfold.

When the time feels right, we move into reprocessing specific memories or felt experiences, using bilateral stimulation while you stay connected to what’s arising. I’m with you the whole way, attuning to your pace and titrating carefully, staying within your window of tolerance, the nervous system zone where transformation can actually happen. What emerges in EMDR sessions becomes material we continue to integrate together over time.

My EMDR Training

I completed my EMDR Basic Training through an EMDRIA-approved program in May 2026, the recognized training pathway for EMDR practitioners. My EMDR work is informed by broader training in experiential, attachment-based, and trauma-focused approaches.

Logistics

Sessions. Sessions are 45 minutes, typically held weekly or twice weekly. EMDR can be done effectively in both in-person and online formats.

In-person and online. I see clients at my office in Manhattan (71 West 23rd Street) and online over Zoom, available to clients located anywhere in New York State.

Fees and insurance. The fee is $175 per session. I am an out-of-network (OON) provider and do not bill insurance directly. I can provide a monthly superbill that you can submit to your insurance for possible reimbursement, with the amount varying by plan.

Sliding scale. A limited number of sliding scale spots are available. If cost feels like a barrier, please bring it up during our consultation. I’d rather have an honest conversation than have it quietly stand in the way.

Is EMDR Right for You? Let’s Talk.

If you’ve been carrying something for a long time, something that talk therapy alone hasn’t been able to reach, EMDR may be the way through. I offer a free 15-minute consultation to talk about what brings you in, whether EMDR feels like the right fit, and what working together might look like.

You don’t have to keep carrying this alone.