EMDR Phase One: History And Treatment Planning
You might have been thinking about starting therapy for a while, or you may have recently decided it’s time to begin working through your past. You may be noticing how those experiences are showing up in your relationships, your reactions, or the way you move through your day. At some point, it starts to feel like something you don’t want to keep carrying on your own.
Either way, you probably want to know what you’re getting yourself into before you commit yourself to treatment. There are a handful of treatment modalities that are ideal for treating trauma - and EMDR has emerged as one of the most helpful.
If you’re learning about EMDR Phase 1, what happens next often depends on what you’re looking for clarity about:
• If you’re wondering what to expect in your first sessions → this phase focuses on understanding your history and building a clear plan for treatment
• If you’re trying to make sense of how your past connects to your current symptoms → this is where those patterns begin to be identified and organized
• If you’re curious how therapists decide what to work on first → there are specific ways clinicians identify and prioritize targets to guide treatment
Once we’ve identified these patterns and built a clear plan, the next step is beginning the process of working through them. My clients often tell me that the situations that used to trigger their anxiety or bring up their past don’t actually bother them anymore. They find themselves noticing that they aren’t reacting the way they normally would in a particular situation - and this is freeing for them. You can get there too!
EMDR Therapy Occurs In Eight Phases
Most people don’t know that EMDR actually has eight phases of treatment:
History and Treatment Planning
Preparation
Assessment
Desensitization
Installation
Body Scan
Closure
Reevaluation
If you’d like to understand how EMDR treatment is structured across all eight phases, including how history taking and treatment planning fit into the overall process, you can start here:
→ View the EMDR Treatment Planning Hub
EMDR History and Treatment Planning
EMDR Phase 1 involves an in depth discussion about what brings you to treatment. Most people come in for their first session and just need a place to “dump” everything - and I’m here for it! These venting sessions are quite helpful as the problems that are bothering my clients the most come up organically.
So during your first session with me, I’ll be doing a lot of listening and a lot of writing! I’m completing the “History Taking” and “Treatment Planning” simultaneously. Once you’ve gotten everything off your chest, I’ll take over for a bit and assess for specific symptoms to make sure we didn’t miss anything.
Overall, I want to know what’s bothering you the most now and why you decided to get help. I also want to know about your childhood, what it was like growing up in your home and your relationship with your family (then and now). I also want to know what your goals for treatment are so I can help you get there! This usually takes several sessions - at which point we create a treatment plan together.
Once we’ve gathered this information and started to build a treatment plan, the next step is identifying and organizing the experiences we’ll focus on in EMDR.
EMDR Treatment Planning
In EMDR, it’s typically best to address the past traumas in your life that are driving your current symptoms. I’ll typically create a treatment plan that has three sections:
Past Events: These are the events that get triggered by present day situations. A simple example would be a car accident - if you’ve been in an accident and feel a lot of anxiety about driving a car again, then we’ll want to tackle the actual car accident first.
Present Triggers: Using the car accident as an example, we’ll target the recent times you’ve been anxious driving your car - or other symptoms that are being caused by the accident (nightmares, reactions when other people are driving, etc).
Future Templates: During this part of treatment, our goal is to prepare you to be able to drive your car again - with minimal to no symptoms.
What to Expect in Your First EMDR Sessions
Starting therapy can feel intimidating, especially if you’re not sure how much you’ll need to share or what the conversation will look like. The first phase of EMDR is not about diving into your most painful memories right away. Instead, it’s about helping me understand your story and helping you feel comfortable in the process.
You can share at your own pace. Some people talk a lot in the first session, while others take more time to open up. There’s no right or wrong way to do it. My role is to guide the process, ask questions that help us understand the bigger picture, and make sure we’re not missing anything important.
Many people are surprised to find that this phase feels more like a conversation than anything else. You’re not being analyzed or judged—you’re being understood. And by the end of these first few sessions, most clients feel a sense of relief knowing that there’s a clear plan in place and that they don’t have to carry everything on their own anymore.
For Therapists: Structuring EMDR History Taking and Treatment Planning
If you’re a therapist, Phase 1 is where the foundation for the entire EMDR process is established. The challenge is often not understanding what to ask, but having a clear way to organize what you’re hearing into meaningful targets and a usable treatment plan.
If you’re looking for a structured way to guide this process and collaborate with clients during history taking, the EMDR Target Selection Client Handout provides a simple way for clients to identify current symptoms, connect them to specific memories, and begin recognizing negative beliefs and patterns that can inform target selection in session.
→ EMDR Target Selection Client Handout
From there, once you’ve identified potential targets, the next step is using a structured method to clarify and elicit those targets more precisely. The EMDR Target Selection: Clinician Guide outlines multiple approaches, including symptom-based questioning, timeline methods, negative belief approaches, and floatback techniques to help translate a client’s narrative into clearly defined targets for treatment.
→ EMDR Target Selection: Clinician Guide
Once targets are identified, organizing them into a clear sequence becomes the next step. The EMDR Target Sequencing: Clinician Guide provides structured models for grouping targets into clusters and determining where to begin, including symptom-informed, developmental, and Two Method approaches so you can build a coherent, clinically meaningful treatment plan.
→ EMDR Target Sequencing: Clinician Guide
Whether you’re a therapist guiding this process or someone considering EMDR for yourself, having a clear understanding of how treatment unfolds can make the next steps feel more manageable.
If you’re considering EMDR and want to better understand how this process might apply to your specific situation, a brief consultation can help you get a clearer sense of what treatment would look like and whether it feels like the right fit for you.
