When EMDR stops moving

A clinician's guide to blocked processing

You’re three sets in. The SUD is sitting at 7. The imagery is looping. And your client looks at you and says, again, “Same thing.”

You’ve done the history and built resources. You’ve set up the target with image, NC, PC, VOC, SUD, and body sensation. You’re deep into desensitization and nothing is moving.

You run another set.

“Same thing.”

I have been training EMDR clinicians for years, and this moment comes up more than almost anything else. People who are weeks out of basic training ask me about it. So do people who have been practicing for a decade. Blocked processing is not a beginner problem. It is a clinical reality that every EMDR therapist encounters, repeatedly, for the entire span of their career.

Before we get into the mechanics, blocked processing in EMDR must be framed as information. The stuck session is the nervous system communicating something it cannot yet put into words. Rather than push through it, your job is to figure out what it’s telling you, and there is a logical sequence for doing exactly that.

Blocked processing is not a beginner problem. It is a clinical reality that every EMDR therapist encounters, repeatedly, for the entire span of their career.

What blocked processing is

Formally, blocked processing is what's happening when reprocessing stops moving through Phase 4 (Desensitization) or Phase 5 (Installation) despite following the standard protocol. In practice it shows up as a SUD that won’t decrease across two or more consecutive sets, a VOC that won’t climb toward 7, or emotional and imaginal content that repeats without any shift in quality or intensity. Sometimes a client tells you nothing is happening. Sometimes you can see it before they say anything: the same expression, the same body posture, and no sign that anything is moving through.

Shapiro described the setup for desensitization as directing three simultaneous inputs at the target material (image, cognition, and body sensation) like three laser beams focused on the same point (Shapiro, 2018). This convergence is meant to access the dysfunctionally stored memory material so that bilateral stimulation can initiate adaptive reprocessing. When reprocessing stalls, something is disrupting that process. There are three primary sources: challenges within the primary target itself, feeder memories quietly upstream of the current one, and blocking beliefs, the implicit conclusions a client carries about what fully healing would cost them. Each has a different clinical response, and they have a logical order of investigation.

Start with the primary target

Before you look outside the target, look within the target itself. There are technical variations that can restart reprocessing when the block is internal to the memory, where the issue is about how the material is being accessed rather than what else in the system is feeding it.

The first move is often the simplest: modify the bilateral stimulation. Change the direction, speed, length, or height of the eye movements. Get consent before switching, and do it without fanfare. This works more often than you’d expect.

If that doesn’t shift things, redirect the client’s focus entirely to body sensation. Ask them to set aside the picture and the thoughts and bring their attention to where they feel the disturbance in their body. Body tension often carries suppressed verbal expression: the words that weren’t safe to say, the scream that never came out. When reprocessing has stalled on imagery and cognition, you can invite the client to tune into the tightness and ask what that sensation might want to say, if it had a voice. When something surfaces, go with that.

Sometimes the body is holding an inhibited action: a shove that never happened, a run that was impossible. Noticing the action impulse and inviting the client to slowly, symbolically complete it in session can release what imagery and cognition alone cannot access. Shapiro addresses this directly as a technique for body-sensation-based blocks (Shapiro, 2018). When you invite a client to imagine pushing someone off of them, or to hear an abuser’s voice become small and far away, you are giving the nervous system an opportunity to complete something physiological.

If the client is cognitively rigid, looping on a specific belief or image, redirect their attention to the periphery of the memory. Who else was in the room? What do they hear? What is happening in the background? A new element can shift perspective enough to restart movement.

A note on self-touch. One technique within my toolkit that I find consistently underused is what Shapiro calls pressing the location. When reprocessing is stalled and the client keeps returning to a specific body sensation, or when you notice them placing a hand near a part of their body without quite realizing it, you can invite them to apply gentle pressure directly to that area.

When a client's body is holding a sensation that BLS alone hasn't touched, putting their own hand on that place and staying with it, without interpreting, without redirecting, just making contact, can create enough physiological space for the next set to move something.

When a client’s body is holding a sensation that BLS alone hasn’t touched, putting their own hand on that place and staying with it, without interpreting, without redirecting, just making contact, can create enough physiological space for the next set to move something. Name what you observe, invite contact on their terms, redirect attention to the physical sensation under the hand, hold without interpreting for a moment, and then initiate BLS when you see a shift. For clients stuck in body-level activation, it is often the intervention that turns the session.

If the primary target isn’t the problem: feeder memories

If you have worked through the primary target strategies and reprocessing remains blocked, the next question is whether something upstream is interfering. Feeder memories are earlier experiences feeding dysfunction into the current target, memories that haven’t been reprocessed and are actively preventing the present target from resolving. Shapiro describes them as untapped memories that contribute to the client’s current dysfunction, and they are typically not the same as memories that arise spontaneously during reprocessing. They usually need to be discovered through direct inquiry, and they typically need to be treated before the original target can fully resolve (Shapiro, 2018).

To locate them, bring the client back to the negative cognition associated with the current target and ask them to scan for an earlier time when they felt that same way about themselves: “As you hold the words [NC], let your mind drift back to an earlier memory where you felt something similar. What comes up?” Alternatively, use the dominant emotion and body sensation as a bridge by inviting the client to float back to an earlier memory with the same quality of feeling in the body. This affect scan technique often surfaces memories that standard history-taking missed entirely.

When a feeder memory emerges, pivot. Reprocess it through Phases 3 to 6 before returning to the original target. This can feel like a frustrating detour, but resolving the feeder memory frequently allows the original target to reprocess much more quickly.

If no feeder memory surfaces: blocking beliefs

If primary target strategies haven’t restarted reprocessing and no feeder memory has emerged, look for blocking beliefs. These are distorted implicit conclusions that interfere with the client’s capacity to resolve the target, and they are not the same as the negative cognition identified in Phase 3. They operate at a different level. Not I am damaged but I don’t deserve to stop feeling damaged. Common examples include things like:

I would be disloyal to the people who didn’t survive if I healed.

If I feel better, it means what happened wasn’t that bad.

It isn’t safe to heal from this.

The questions that surface blocking beliefs are direct. When the SUD won’t reach 0 you might ask “What’s in the way of this being a zero?” When the VOC won’t reach 7 you can ask“What prevents the PC from feeling completely true?” You can also ask: “What concerns do you have about fully healing from this?” or “What do you imagine would happen if this was completely resolved?”

Once a blocking belief is identified, add a set of BLS and observe whether it begins to reprocess spontaneously. Often it will. If not, explore where the belief came from. What typically surfaces is a memory, the experience that taught the client this belief. And that memory becomes the next target. The blocking belief usually leads you back to something that can be reprocessed.

When everything else has stalled: cognitive interweaves

Cognitive interweaves can be used when you’ve tried other strategies and reprocessing remains stuck, or when you are approaching the end of a session and need to bring the client to a stable place before closing. They are a proactive, therapist-initiated intervention where you deliberately introduce information to link the client’s reprocessing to an adaptive memory network it cannot reach on its own.

The key word is link. The cognitive interweave doesn’t convince the client of anything, but it creates a neural bridge. As Shapiro describes it, when spontaneous adaptive reprocessing has stalled, the interweave lays down new tracks manually, and bilateral stimulation reinforces the connection (Shapiro, 2018). Offer the interweave between sets, when processing is visibly stuck. If it lands, say “notice that” and add a set. If it doesn’t, don’t push. The most important structural principle is that, whenever possible, offer the interweave as a question rather than a statement. A statement presents a conclusion, but a question opens a channel.

Interweaves tend to cluster around four informational plateaus. Knowing which plateau a client is stuck on guides which interweave to reach for.

When the client is caught in responsibility and shame, you can ask: “Were you a bad child, or a child who was treated badly?”or “Whose job was it to protect you?” If the client has children of their own, one of the most powerful interventions available is, “If that had happened to your child, would it have been their fault?” When the client is physiologically stuck in threat, use present-orientation and ask “Where are you right now?” or “Look at your hand. How old are you now?” These help the nervous system distinguish the past from the present which is something that trauma has scrambled. When the client feels helpless or believes they had more agency than they did, ask what choices they have now that they didn’t have then, what they know now that they didn’t know at the time, or how they are different now from who they were then. And when the client feels fundamentally alone, offer the relational: “What’s it like to know that I’m here with you right now?”

One caution I emphasize in every training is to not let a cognitive interweave become a segue back into talk therapy. Offer it, add BLS when it lands, and return to reprocessing. The interweave is a bridge to adaptive information processing.

The sequence

When reprocessing stalls, move through this progression: work the primary target first, then look for feeder memories, then assess for blocking beliefs, then reach for cognitive interweaves. Having a clear sequence means that when you hit a wall, you are moving through a logical progression of hypotheses rather than improvising from scratch.

Blocked processing is some of the most interesting and creative work in EMDR. The session that stalls is often the session that tells you the most about where the real material lives. Stay curious long enough and it will show you where to go.

The session that stalls is often the session that tells you the most about where the real material lives.

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This essay draws from one of the trainings inside the Manhattan Center for Trauma Studies membership, a community and continuing education platform for trauma therapists. The blocked processing training goes deeper into all three categories with full case examples, cognitive interweave frameworks organized by informational plateau, and strategies for managing abreaction. If you're not a member yet, this is a good reason to become one. Learn more here.

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