EMDR Therapy for Moms

You can love your child deeply and still end the day feeling like you got everything wrong.

Maybe you replay the moment you lost your patience after a day spent trying to keep the house together. Perhaps asking for some alone time brings up more guilt than relief. Or, when your child gets dysregulated, you’re overwhelmed by the thought “I should be better at handling this.”

You want to feel present with your family, but stress and anxiety keep getting in your way. 

Motherhood brings real demands: interrupted sleep, competing responsibilities, and the ongoing work of caring for someone whose needs keep changing. Sometimes, those demands trigger deeper feelings of helplessness, shame, or inadequacy.

If you’ve noticed anxiety, guilt, or self-doubt affecting your experience of motherhood, therapy can offer space to understand those reactions and work toward feeling more grounded.

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 a difficult moment with your child brings up the thought “I’m not good enough,” we can explore experiences that may have shaped or reinforced that belief. As those memories become less distressing, there may be more room for a thought like “I can make mistakes and still be a loving, capable mom.”

For a closer look at the process of EMDR, read Is EMDR Right for Me? 

How can EMDR help with parenting stress?

Negative beliefs can be loud and persistent. “I’m a bad mom.” “Everyone else should come first.” “I have to get everything right.” “Taking time for myself is selfish.”

Imagine you’re trying to settle your child into bed, but they keep crying. You’ve offered comfort, tried to understand what’s wrong, and stayed longer than you planned. The crying continues. Your shoulders tighten, your chest feels heavy, and you start thinking, “Nothing I do helps. I’m failing.”

You lose your patience and raise your voice, then spend the rest of the evening feeling guilty. You know that children get upset and that one difficult bedtime doesn’t define your parenting. Still, that reassurance doesn’t seem to reach the part of you that feels ashamed.

In therapy, we might explore what feels most painful about that moment. Is it not being able to make things better? Raising your voice instead of staying calm? Believing that someone else’s distress means you have done something wrong?

We’ll explore where these beliefs and insecurities comes from and identify specific memories to target. For example, you may remember being criticized as a child when you couldn’t calm a younger sibling. Maybe you felt responsible for preventing your own parent’s anger while growing up. Or perhaps you can remember a recent incident when your parenting skills were criticized by someone you look up to.

Those experiences may have shaped a belief that you must be perfect to be “good enough”. Now, when your child is upset and can’t be calmed, those familiar insecurities are triggered.

By reprocessing selected target memories, “I’m responsible for everyone’s feelings” may become “I can care for others without controlling how they feel.” Those earlier experiences can begin to feel more firmly in the past, giving you room to respond with purpose to your child in the present.

The next time bedtime is difficult, you may find it easier to remind yourself, “My child is having a hard time. That doesn’t mean I’m failing.” 

With less self-doubt in those difficult moments, there’s more room to stay patient, offer comfort, and trust yourself to respond to your child’s needs.

Processing your birth experience with EMDR

The early months of motherhood can feel overwhelming. You may be recovering physically, getting to know your baby, and trying to make sense of a birth experience that was painful and emotionally intense. 

Perhaps you keep replaying a moment during delivery when you were afraid your baby might not survive. Or maybe you felt powerless when your concerns weren’t taken seriously by your medical team. Now, even reminders of the hospital can leave you tense, bringing back thoughts like “I had no control” or “My body failed me.”

For some women, the distress of a difficult birth stays with them long after delivery. Research suggests that about 3–4% of women experience PTSD after childbirth (Grekin & O’Hara, 2014; Yildiz et al., 2017), while many others experience symptoms without meeting the full criteria for a diagnosis. Trauma symptoms may show up as unwanted memories, avoiding reminders of the birth, feeling disconnected from others, or finding it hard to let your guard down (Creedy et al., 2000; Hendrix et al., 2021).

Even when a delivery is considered “medically uncomplicated”, it can still feel traumatic to the person experiencing it (Hendrix et al., 2021).

Research has shown that EMDR can reduce PTSD symptoms after a traumatic birth (Hendrix et al., 2025). Reprocessing can be used to work through distressing birth experiences so they feel less overwhelming in the present. In treatment, we might focus on a specific moment when you felt frightened, powerless, or unheard, along with the beliefs, emotions, and physical sensations connected to that memory. Through reprocessing, the experience can begin to feel more firmly in the past, and beliefs like “I’m helpless” may shift toward “I am safe now”. 

You can love your baby and still wish parts of their birth had been different. Therapy can give you space to make sense of that experience while focusing on your own recovery. 

Let’s get started together

I offer EMDR therapy tailored to moms navigating anxiety, guilt, self-doubt, and distressing experiences, with virtual sessions available across New York State.

We’ll start by exploring what’s feeling difficult in your life right now, whether that’s feeling overwhelmed by your child’s emotions, struggling to make time for yourself, or carrying distress from an earlier experience. Together, we’ll explore the beliefs connected to those reactions and identify memories that may be helpful target with reprocessing.

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

Creedy, D. K., Shochet, I. M., & Horsfall, J. (2000). Childbirth and the development of acute trauma symptoms: Incidence and contributing factors. Birth, 27(2), 104–111. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1523-536x.2000.00104.x

De Vries, S. J. A., & Kuiper, C. H. Z. (2017). Conceptualization of parenting stress in the context of EMDR therapy. Journal of EMDR Practice and Research, 11(3), 139–146. https://doi.org/10.1891/1933-3196.11.3.139

Grekin, R., & O’Hara, M. W. (2014). Prevalence and risk factors of postpartum posttraumatic stress disorder: A meta-analysis. Clinical Psychology Review, 34(5), 389–401. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2014.05.003

Hendrix, Y. M. G. A., van Dongen, K. S. M., de Jongh, A., & van Pampus, M. G. (2021). Postpartum Early EMDR therapy Intervention (PERCEIVE) study for women after a traumatic birth experience: Study protocol for a randomized controlled trial. Trials, 22, Article 599. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13063-021-05545-6

Hendrix, Y. M. G. A., van Pampus, M. G., Hofman, A., Henrichs, J., van der Horst, H. E., & de Jongh, A. (2025). Treatment of traumatic birth experience with postpartum early eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy: A randomized clinical trial. American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajog.2025.07.051

Rajeswaran, P., Eapen, V., Lee, C., & Kohlhoff, J. R. (2026). Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing for parenting-related outcomes: A scoping review. Journal of EMDR Practice and Research, 20, Article 0036. https://doi.org/10.34133/jemdr.0036

Yildiz, P. D., Ayers, S., & Phillips, L. (2017). The prevalence of posttraumatic stress disorder in pregnancy and after birth: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Affective Disorders, 208, 634–645. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2016.10.009

Zaccagnino, M., & Cussino, M. (2013). EMDR and parenting: A clinical case. Journal of EMDR Practice and Research, 7(3), 154–166. https://doi.org/10.1891/1933-3196.7.3.154