Trauma & EMDR Therapy in Cincinnati
For the wounds that still live in the body, long after the moment has passed.
Trauma doesn't always look like what you'd expect. Sometimes it's a constant sense of unease. A body that won't relax. Relationships that keep falling apart in the same way. A feeling of being on guard that you can't explain, or a numbness that settled in so long ago you forgot what it replaced.
Sometimes trauma isn't one moment. It's years of not being seen. A childhood where your feelings were too much, or not enough, or simply ignored. A home where you learned to read the room before you learned to read yourself.
If something from your past is still running your present, even if you can't quite name what it is, therapy can help.
-
Growing up in a home where your emotional needs were consistently unmet, dismissed, or invisible. Not what happened to you, but what didn't happen.
-
Learning early on that the people closest to you were unpredictable, unavailable, or unsafe. These experiences shape how you relate to everyone who comes after them.
-
The kind of sustained cruelty that rewires your sense of self and belonging, especially during formative years.
-
Surgeries, hospitalizations, diagnoses, and the helplessness of being in a body that felt out of your control.
-
The harm caused by rigid, shaming, or controlling religious environments, particularly around sexuality, identity, and autonomy.
-
The accumulated weight of living in a world that marginalizes you for who you are, including the experiences of LGBTQ+ individuals navigating rejection, discrimination, and internalized shame.
-
Betrayal, manipulation, coercive control, and the slow erosion of self-trust that happens inside harmful relationships.
What Is Trauma?
Most people hear the word "trauma" and think of a single devastating event , combat, an assault, a car accident. And those experiences are absolutely traumatic. But trauma is much broader than that, and many of the people we work with have spent years not recognizing what they went through as trauma because it didn't fit that mold.
Trauma also includes:
Trauma isn't defined by the event itself. It's defined by how your nervous system responded to it, and whether that response ever had the chance to complete. When it didn't, the body holds on. And the patterns that formed to protect you then continue running your life now, long after the danger has passed.
How EMDR Works
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, or EMDR, is one of the most extensively researched and effective treatments for trauma. It works differently from traditional talk therapy, and for many people, it reaches things that talking alone has not been able to touch.
Here's the basic idea: traumatic memories get stored in the brain differently from ordinary memories. Instead of being processed and filed away, they stay "stuck", carrying the same emotional charge, the same physical sensations, the same distorted beliefs ("It was my fault," "I'm not safe," "Something is wrong with me") as they did when the experience first happened. That's why a sound, a smell, or a tone of voice can send you right back to a moment you thought you'd moved past.
EMDR uses bilateral stimulation, rhythmic side-to-side input like guided eye movements, tapping, or handheld buzzers to help your brain reprocess those stuck memories. You don't have to relive the experience. You don't have to tell the whole story. The process allows the memory to move from its raw, reactive state into something your brain can integrate, so it becomes part of your history rather than something your body is still living through.
EMDR follows an eight-phase protocol, from building safety and identifying targets, through active processing, to integration and closure. It's structured, evidence-based, and has been endorsed by the World Health Organization, the American Psychological Association, and the Department of Veterans Affairs for the treatment of PTSD.
A few things EMDR is not: it's not hypnosis. You remain fully aware and in control throughout the process. It's not a quick fix, though many people experience meaningful shifts more rapidly than they expected. And it's not just for PTSD, EMDR has shown effectiveness for anxiety, depression, grief, phobias, and other conditions rooted in unresolved experience.
Our Integrated Approach - EMDR + IFS
What makes trauma work at Lumenso different is that we don't treat EMDR as a standalone technique. We integrate it with Internal Family Systems, and that combination changes the depth and safety of the work.
Here's why that matters.
When you've lived with trauma, your system builds protections around the wounded parts. There's the part that stays hypervigilant so you're never caught off guard again. The part that numbs so you don't have to feel. The part that controls, or people-pleases, or keeps everyone at a distance. These protectors developed for good reason , they kept you safe when you needed them. But they can also block the healing process if you try to go straight to the trauma without first building a relationship with the parts that are guarding it.
IFS does that work. It helps you understand your protectors , not fight them , and build enough internal trust that your system allows access to the deeper material. When the protectors know they're not being bypassed or overridden, the processing goes deeper and lands more safely.
Then EMDR does what it does best: reprocessing the stored experience so your nervous system can finally let it go.
This integration, preparing the system with IFS, processing with EMDR , means we're not just treating symptoms. We're working with your whole internal landscape. It's the difference between clearing a path and understanding the terrain.
Who We Help
We work with adults carrying many forms of trauma, including:
PTSD and complex PTSD, whether from a single event or a pattern of ongoing harm. Complex PTSD, in particular, develops from sustained or repeated trauma, often in childhood and shows up differently from single-incident PTSD: chronic shame, difficulty regulating emotions, unstable sense of self, and relational struggles that feel impossible to untangle.
Childhood emotional neglect: the absence of attunement, validation, and emotional responsiveness during development. This often doesn't get called trauma because nothing "happened" but the absence left a wound that shapes everything from self-worth to relationships.
Attachment and relational trauma: the ways that early relationships with caregivers wired your nervous system for connection or disconnection, and how those patterns replay in adult partnerships.
Religious trauma: experiences of spiritual abuse, purity culture, conversion therapy, and the particular devastation of being told that who you are is an affront to God.
LGBTQ+ identity trauma: the accumulated impact of rejection, concealment, discrimination, and internalized shame related to sexual orientation or gender identity.
Trauma responses in the body: chronic tension, pain without medical explanation, startle responses, dissociation, a feeling of being disconnected from your own physical experience.
What to Expect
Starting trauma therapy can feel daunting, especially if you've been carrying this for a long time, or if you've tried therapy before and it didn't go deep enough. Here's what you should know.
You don't have to be ready to talk about everything. One of the most common fears people bring to trauma therapy is: "I'm not ready to go there." You don't have to be. We don't start with the hardest material. We start with safety, building resources, understanding your nervous system, developing the internal capacity to hold what comes up. Nothing happens faster than your system is ready for.
EMDR doesn't require you to narrate the experience. Unlike traditional talk therapy, you don't have to describe what happened in detail. Your brain does the processing. You guide where it goes, and your therapist supports you through it.
The pace is yours. Some people move through trauma processing in a handful of sessions. Others particularly those with complex or developmental trauma need more time to build trust with the process. Both are completely normal. We're not in a rush.
Sessions are available in-office at our Cincinnati location or virtually across Ohio and Kentucky.
Drew Simri, LPCC-S, LICDC-CS
Yvette Nepper, LPCC
Sara Krueger, LPC
Frequently Asked Questions
-
It varies. For single-incident trauma , a car accident, a specific event , many people experience significant relief in 6 to 12 sessions. For complex or developmental trauma, the work is typically longer because there are more layers to address and more time needed to build internal safety. We'll talk about what a realistic trajectory looks like during your consultation.
-
Lumenso Wellness is out-of-network with all insurance providers. Sessions are $125–$175 depending on the therapist. We can provide a superbill for you to submit to your insurance for potential out-of-network reimbursement. Many clients receive partial reimbursement this way.
-
Talk therapy processes trauma primarily through language, narrating, reflecting, reframing. EMDR processes trauma through bilateral stimulation, which allows your brain to reprocess stuck memories at a neurological level without requiring you to describe the experience in detail. Both are valuable. For many people, EMDR reaches material that talk therapy alone hasn't been able to shift.
-
Yes. Anxiety is often rooted in past experiences that wired your nervous system for threat, even if you don't consciously connect the two. EMDR can help reprocess those experiences so the anxiety response calms at its source, rather than just being managed on the surface.
-
EMDR is one of the most extensively researched trauma treatments available and is endorsed by the WHO, the APA, and the VA. It is a safe, structured protocol. At Lumenso, we add an additional layer of safety by integrating IFS, which ensures your internal system is prepared and supported before we begin processing.
-
No. EMDR does not require you to describe your traumatic experience in detail. You remain in control of what you share. Your therapist will guide the process, but you never have to disclose more than you're ready for.
You've been carrying this long enough.
Trauma doesn't resolve on its own, but it does respond to the right kind of care. You don't need to have it all figured out. You don't need to know what to say. You just need to be ready to stop letting the past run your present.