EMDR for NYC Professionals
You can be good at your job and still spend Sunday evening dreading your return to work on Monday.
Maybe you have a habit of replaying conversations with your manager over and over in your head. Perhaps you agonize over writing the perfect email, or leave a successful presentation remembering only the moment you stuttered.
You’ve worked hard to get where you are. It would be nice if you could feel proud of it.
Building a career in New York demands a lot. Along with spending more time commuting, New Yorkers in fields like finance, advertising, and law have historically worked longer hours compared to their peers in other major cities (Office of the New York City Comptroller, 2015; U.S. Census Bureau, n.d.). And that doesn’t include those non-billable hours spent preparing for meetings, answering late night Slack messages, or spending weekends thinking about how you’re going to handle your next assignment
The high demand placed on New York professionals can have serious implications for mental and physical health. Research has found that work related stress has a significant association with depression, anxiety, exhaustion, and burnout (Aronsson et al., 2017; du Prel et al., 2024; Seidler et al., 2022).
If you’ve noticed work stress affecting your mental health, you don’t have to navigate it alone. Therapy can be a way to manage symptoms, and help you feel like yourself again.
What is EMDR?
EMDR, or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, is a structured therapy that helps people process distressing experiences and the beliefs connected to them. Along with reducing the distress associated with particular memories, it can help you unlearn negative beliefs about yourself that keep showing up.
For example, if work anxiety appears alongside a familiar thought of “I’m not good enough,” we can work to identify experiences that may have shaped or reinforced that negative belief and use EMDR to re-process them. As those memories become less distressing, negative beliefs can be replaced with more positive ones.
For a closer look at the process of EMDR, read Is EMDR Right for Me?
How can EMDR help with workplace stress?
Negative beliefs can be loud and persistent. “I’m not good enough.” “One mistake will ruin everything for me.” “Negative feedback means I’m a failure.” “Nothing I do will ever be good enough.”
Imagine preparing to present to an important client. You know the material, but your stomach drops when everyone turns to look at you. Suddenly, you’re stumbling over your words and struggling to feel confident in what you have to say.
That anxiety may be connected to a negative belief formed through earlier experiences. Perhaps you can remember deep embarrassment after making a class presentation in grade school. Maybe a parent or peer repeatedly belittled you when you spoke up. Even though you’re now an adult building a successful career, your mind and body may react to stress as though you’re back in that earlier situation, feeling helpless, embarrassed, and incompetent.
Through EMDR, we can trace back the origins of your negative beliefs, to re-process the memories that shaped them. Through this process, “I’m not good enough” may become “I deserved to be treated better” or “I am a capable person now.”
As your beliefs change, speaking up at work may start to feel different, too. When everyone turns toward you, there can be more room for a grounded thought: “I know this material. I have something valuable to say.”
Those earlier experiences can begin to feel like part of your past, with less power over how you feel in the present.
Let’s get started together
I offer EMDR therapy tailored to NYC professionals navigating work-related anxiety, self-doubt, and perfectionism, with virtual sessions available across New York State.
In EMDR treatment, we’ll start by identifying what’s distressing you at work, whether that’s anxiety and panic, depression, or burnout. Together, we’ll explore the negative beliefs about yourself connected to these symptoms, and identify earlier experiences that may have shaped those beliefs. Using EMDR, we can work through those target memories, with the goal of helping you feel more confident and grounded in the present.
To schedule a free, 15-minute consultation, email caroline@carolineroarty.com or fill out my contact form below. We’ll use this time to talk about what’s bringing you to therapy and whether EMDR is a good fit for your needs.
If EMDR doesn’t feel right for you, we can explore other forms of talk therapy that may be a better fit. You don’t need to know which type of therapy you’ll benefit from before getting started. In sessions we’ll work together to find an approach that feels helpful and right for you.
References
Aronsson, G., Theorell, T., Grape, T., Hammarström, A., Hogstedt, C., Marteinsdottir, I., Skoog, I., Träskman-Bendz, L., & Hall, C. (2017). A systematic review including meta-analysis of work environment and burnout symptoms. BMC Public Health, 17, Article 264. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-017-4153-7
Office of the New York City Comptroller. (2015, March). The hardest working cities. https://comptroller.nyc.gov/wpcontent/uploads/documents/Longest_Work_Weeks_March_2015.pdf
du Prel, J.-B., Koscec Bjelajac, A., Franić, Z., Henftling, L., Brborović, H., Schernhammer, E., McElvenny, D. M., Merisalu, E., Pranjic, N., Guseva Canu, I., & Godderis, L. (2024). The relationship between work-related stress and depression: A scoping review. Public Health Reviews, 45, Article 1606968. https://doi.org/10.3389/phrs.2024.1606968
Seidler, A., Schubert, M., Freiberg, A., Drössler, S., Hussenoeder, F. S., Conrad, I., Riedel-Heller, S., & Romero Starke, K. (2022). Psychosocial occupational exposures and mental illness: A systematic review with meta-analyses. Deutsches Ärzteblatt International, 119(42), 709–715. https://doi.org/10.3238/arztebl.m2022.0295
U.S. Census Bureau. (n.d.). QuickFacts: New York city, New York. Retrieved October 1, 2026, from https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/newyorkcitynewyork
