Does EMDR Help FND and Functional Seizures? What the Research Shows
One question I get asked regularly is does EMDR help decrease FND symptoms? These questions come from a place of wanting to find relief. They have already tried medication and had past counseling sessions to only see minimal to no improvements. One client told me she would find herself Googling “why do I keep having seizures that nobody can explain.” The short answer is yes EMDR can help alleviate FND and symptoms and non-epileptic seizures.
Why EMDR Even Makes Sense Here
EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. EMDR was created to treat PTSD, by allowing the brain to reprocess memories that got stuck in past traumatic events and still react as though they're happening today instead of five or fifteen years ago. Most people who've heard of EMDR are aware that EMDR is a trauma therapy that uses Eye movements to reprocess past traumatic events. What most people don't know is why that has anything to do with a movement disorder or a seizure.
The piece that most people miss with FND is that FND grows out of how a nervous system learned to handle threats over long periods of time. This could involve adverse childhood experiences, Trauma and Chronic stress. Things that happened and were never fully felt or finished. It adds up, and at some point, the body starts producing symptoms nobody chooses, and nobody can just decide to stop. The brain isn't broken, it learned from early past experiences it learned that is what it had to do to keep you alive. Our Nervous system main job is for survival. EMDR works right at that layer. It helps the nervous system finally update old, stuck information so the body quits treating an old threat like it's still happening in the present.
Nobody had explained any of that to most of the people I meet. They'd been handed "it's probably stress" or "therapy might help" and sent on their way, with no mechanism attached to either sentence. Once a person understands what EMDR is doing, it stops sounding like a leap of faith. It starts sounding like the obvious thing to try next.
What The Research Actually Shows
The evidence here is fairly new It's also stronger than most people expect, including some of the doctors sending patients our way.
The MODIFI, a randomized feasibility trial published in the Journal of Neurology in 2025, the first study of its kind built specifically to test EMDR against FND. Researchers split fifty participants into two groups: one got EMDR on top of standard neuropsychiatric care, the other got standard care by itself. The EMDR group came out ahead on satisfaction and on overall FND improvement. Among the people dealing with functional seizures specifically, EMDR meant fewer seizures and more seizure-free days by the time the study wrapped. Seventy-seven percent rated their main symptom as much or very much improved. Ninety-five percent reported some improvement, even if it wasn't dramatic. Those aren't small numbers for a feasibility trial this size.
Case studies back it up. There's peer-reviewed documentation of major drops in dissociation, and in some individual cases complete seizure cessation, in people with PNES after EMDR treatment, with the gains still holding six months out. The EMDR International Association has published clinician-written work describing similar outcomes, both in functional seizures and in functional motor symptoms.
Nobody serious is calling this settled. A bigger controlled trial needs to happen, and I'd guess it will. But this isn't an experimental long shot anymore either. There's a real mechanism, a feasibility trial with numbers worth paying attention to, and a growing pile of case studies all pointing the same direction.
How We Actually Use It
EMDR is not a one-size fits all protocol. It lives inside a bigger framework we built called Neuroprotective Reframe Therapy, and the whole thing rests on one idea we keep coming back to, session after session: your nervous system isn't broken. It's protecting you. Getting someone to actually feel that, not just hear it, before we go anywhere near trauma processing, changes how the rest of the work goes.
We follow something we call the H.E.A.L. Protocol: Hear, Educate, Activate, Learn. Education comes first, every time, so a client knows what EMDR is doing before we ever start it. Then stabilization, because a nervous system that doesn't feel safe yet has no business processing trauma, full stop. Pacing matters more here than in almost any other kind of therapy I've done. FND nervous systems run hot already, and pushing too fast tends to backfire badly.
EMDR isn't the only tool either. Depending on the person, we bring in somatic therapy, polyvagal-informed work, sometimes Internal Family Systems, because FND tends to respond best when the body is part of the treatment, not just the thinking mind.
FND Healing Center works with adults in Arizona, Minnesota, Ohio, and Louisiana, all through telehealth. We accept Aetna and Cigna in Arizona through Headway, and self-pay is an option in every state we serve. More on that at fndcenter.com/services.
If You're Still Wondering
Maybe you've already been told therapy "might help" and nobody explained past that. EMDR is a lot more specific than that phrase suggests. It isn't rehashing what happened to you until it stops hurting so much. It's closer to helping your nervous system finally close a loop it's been holding open, sometimes for years, sometimes without you ever noticing the weight of it.
I don't say that work is possible just to be encouraging. It's what the research, still early as it is, is starting to show.
If you'd like to talk through whether EMDR could fit your FND or seizure presentation, we offer a free 20-minute consultation at fndcenter.com/contact. You don't have to work this out by yourself.
