How EMDR can help your kids | Dr. Natasha Wallace, Clinical Psychologist
Dr Natasha Wallace
Clinical Psychologist
Specialisation: EMDR, Trauma, Internal Family Systems (IFS), Children's Mental Health
Regulatory Body: HCPC
Based in: Newcastle, UK
🧠When children experience persistent anxiety, phobias, or school refusal, it is often because a difficult memory has been stored in the amygdala rather than processed into long-term memory. The amygdala is the emotional processing centre of the brain. Memories held there retain the feelings of helplessness and fear from the original experience.
Because of how those memories are stored, relatively small triggers such as a school gate, a familiar smell, or saying goodbye can produce reactions that seem disproportionate but are entirely consistent with what the brain is holding. The child is not overreacting. They are responding to something that is still active in the nervous system.
Standard approaches such as rewards, reassurance, and talking it through tend not to reach this level. They operate on the thinking brain. EMDR works differently: using eye movements or vibrating tappers, it activates both hemispheres of the brain simultaneously, allowing the stored memory to be reprocessed and shifted. When that happens, the associated reactions settle.
For any parent who has worked through the standard options without lasting change, this offers a specific and clinically grounded explanation for why.
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