Why is EMDR controversial? It depends on who you ask

If you’ve heard of EMDR, you may have heard it’s a bit strange. A therapist waves their hand back and forth while you follow it with your eyes, and somehow this heals deeply rooted trauma. It’s not hard to see why people’s first reaction is skepticism. It looks less like therapy and more like a bad stage hypnosis bit.

And yet, EMDR therapy is one of the most well-researched trauma therapies available, endorsed by the World Health Organization and used by therapists worldwide. So why is EMDR controversial, given all that evidence behind it?

It really depends on who you ask.

From the client’s perspective

One source of controversy around EMDR is straightforward: some people have had bad experiences with it. Negative reviews and cautionary stories are easy to find online, and they’re important to take seriously.

EMDR is a frontline treatment for trauma, which means the people seeking it out tend to carry significant trauma histories. And unlike some other therapeutic approaches, EMDR is a powerful tool that doesn’t leave much margin for error. In less skilled hands, it can destabilize a client or, in some cases, lead to additional trauma.

Part of this is just the nature of how EMDR works. The process brings trauma material to the surface so it can be processed and resolved. There are ways a skilled therapist can manage this, but there’s no way to entirely eliminate the discomfort inherent to working with trauma. For some people, things genuinely get harder before they get better. And if the process gets interrupted or isn’t handled well, that material can be left at the surface in an unresolved state.

This doesn’t mean EMDR is inherently dangerous. It means that, like a lot of powerful things, it matters a great deal who’s administering it and how. Finding a therapist who is well-trained and who takes stabilization seriously goes a long way. If you want to go deeper on this topic, I’ve written a full post on the dangers of EMDR therapy that covers what to watch for.

From the researcher’s perspective

A second source of controversy comes from the research world, and it’s a bit more technical. The core debate is this: we don’t fully understand why EMDR works. Bilateral stimulation—the eye movements, or sometimes tapping or auditory tones—is the most distinctive feature of EMDR, but some researchers argue it doesn’t actually do anything. Their position is that the real therapeutic work happens through exposure and processing, and that bilateral stimulation is just for show.

This is a legitimate scientific question worth asking. But some context that often gets left out of this conversation is that debates like this are completely normal in psychotherapy research. Even CBT—widely considered the gold standard of evidence-based therapy—is mired in controversy. Therapy is genuinely difficult to study. You can’t blind participants to what treatment they’re receiving, control for the quality of the therapeutic relationship, or run the kinds of large-scale trials that pharmaceutical research can. As a result, the research in this field will almost always lag behind the lived experience of the people actually being helped.

So when researchers debate EMDR, they’re doing important work, but it’s worth remembering that “we don’t fully understand the mechanism” is very different from “it doesn’t work.”

From the therapist’s perspective

Therapists are the third group with strong opinions about EMDR, and the dynamics here are a little different. Any therapy that moves quickly from obscurity to widespread popularity—and EMDR has done exactly that—tends to attract skepticism from within the field. Labels like “fad” or “just a repackaging of existing techniques” get thrown around. Some of this criticism and critical analysis is appropriate—healthy debate among clinicians makes the field better.

But there are some less-discussed forces at play, too. Specialized therapy trainings are often expensive, which naturally makes therapists cautious about where they invest. When a new modality gets a lot of buzz, it’s reasonable to wonder whether it’s the real thing or “snake oil.”

And then there’s professional insecurity—something that rarely gets talked about. When a particular style of therapy rises in popularity, it can stir up anxiety for therapists who aren’t trained in it—am I keeping up? Will clients still want to work with me? This kind of uncertainty can color how therapists talk about approaches they haven’t trained in. Many therapists who push back on newer modalities aren’t acting in bad faith. But some of them may be navigating the professional pressures and insecurities that anyone in a changing field has to work through.

My take

So, is EMDR controversial? Yes, but so is pretty much every other therapy, depending on who you ask. They all have their critics, and those critics all have their reasons.

But the most important piece of controversy isn’t about EMDR itself. It’s that you can’t know for sure whether a style of therapy will work for you—or cause you harm—until you try it. And even after you try it, the benefits can take months or years to fully emerge, if they do at all. This means therapy requires a leap of faith and a process of trial and error that can be frustrating, emotionally draining, and expensive. This is a serious problem in the field of psychotherapy that has yet to be solved.

What people do in the meantime is make the best decision they can with the information at hand. This means doing basic research, interviewing therapists before working with them, and looking for a therapist who feels like a genuine fit. It also means paying attention over time to whether you feel more grounded and functional, or like you’re spinning around in circles. And it means being willing to move on when something doesn’t feel right.

And more than anything, I want to say this: therapy works, and is worth the hassle. It’s changed my life for the better, and I’ve seen clients work through trauma they’ve carried for decades. Finding the right therapist and the right approach won’t happen overnight—but when therapy clicks, it can genuinely change the trajectory of your life.

If you’d like to talk through whether EMDR might be a good fit for you, feel free to get in touch.