Written by Dee Keller, Licensed Professional Counselor
Once you've gathered history and begun identifying potential EMDR targets, the next step is Phase 2: Preparation. This phase is about helping kids and their caregivers develop the skills, resources, and emotional readiness they need before processing begins. Below are tips and strategies for using Teleo during this phase.
✨ Therapeutic Benefit
EMDR Phase 2 focuses on increasing emotional regulation and stability, strengthening internal and external resources, helping clients understand the EMDR process, and building predictability, trust, and collaboration.
Preparation is about helping clients feel ready.
Teleo makes it easy to keep coping strategies, helpful resources, and next steps at the client's fingertips — accessible to both the clinician and the client, exactly when they're needed.
Preparing Clients for What to Expect
The core question you'll answer during preparation for EMDR is simply:
What is EMDR?
Both children and their caregivers will want to understand what the process looks like before it begins. Teleo helps you answer that question through visual, engaging, and repeatable resources, so you spend less time planning how to explain and more time building trust.
In the Activity Bank, you'll find:
The EMDR 8 Phases Infographic — written in simplified, non-clinical language, perfect for kids.
Psychoeducational videos like What is EMDR? Explained for Kids, and another What is EMDR? that can be helpful for caregivers who need clarity too.
The ability to upload your own custom activities — videos, PDFs, digital downloads — directly to your Private Activity Bank. Think of it like a virtual bookshelf: tag and organize everything so it's easy to find and reuse across future clients.
⭐Quick Tips
Add the EMDR 8 Phases Infographic, as activity, as Snapshot in the Client Album, or create a Poster by using a snapshot. Three different ways to make it accessible every session.
Open the Activity Bank, filter by EMDR and Videos and you will quickly find psychoeducational videos to answer the question "what is EMDR?".
Organize your own Custom Activities by renaming and customizing filters to make it easier to find later.
Building and Practicing Resources
Preparation is about helping clients experience regulation, not just learn about it. If you've hesitated to do EMDR virtually, a one-sided shared screen doesn't give a child much to do. Teleo fixes that. The room is a shared space where clients can move through it, interact with tools, and engage with resources directly. It's not you presenting to them. It's both of you, in it together.
💡Pro Tip:
Preparation looks different for every client. Some children move through this phase in one or two sessions, while others benefit from weeks or even months of skill-building.
Clinicians may also return to Phase 2 at any point in treatment if a child needs additional support, regulation, or stabilization.
Teleo's Activity Bank lets you move beyond talking through strategies into a personalized, immersive experience. Clients engage with resources directly inside the room, modifying and co-creating them rather than passively receiving them.
Preparation rooms can include child-centered activites like:
Safe or Calm Place activities
Containers for worries, images, or difficult sensations
Coping and regulation tools
Window of Tolerance, SUDS or other visuals
Mantras, grounding posters, and strength reminders
Each activity is interactive within Teleo — clients can engage, modify, and make resources their own. And because the virtual room is a shared space, you get richer clinical information than a typical virtual session allows. EMDR is ultimately about helping children reclaim a sense of agency. Teleo lets you observe that in real time.
When activation shows up in a therapy session, ask yourself:
Do they independently reach for a tool, or do they wait for permission?
Which resource do they go to first?
Do they move through the space with confidence, or do they get stuck?
⭐Quick Tip
Clients can pause, navigate to a resource they trust, and regulate — on their own, mid-session. That's not just a platform feature. That's the goal of this entire phase. Teleo makes it possible virtually.
Continuity Across Sessions with Client Albums
Preparation doesn't happen in one session and it shouldn't feel like you have to recreate the process each time.
Teleo's Client Album allows you to capture and reuse what clients create across sessions. Albums can include completed resources and visuals, including "helper" reminders and coping tools, and images clients associate with calm or safety.
Before moving into processing phase, a quick album review gives clients a grounding reminder of what's already working, they can tweak and edit as they learn more. This preparation gives you confidence that they're truly ready to hold the hurt again.
Making Preparation Easier for Clinicians
The best preparation happens when you're not scrambling to find resources mid-session. Teleo keeps everything in one place so you can focus on the clinical decisions that actually move treatment forward.
⭐Quick Tip
4 easy steps to be client ready:
Create a room and add your EMDR preparation tools
Duplicate this room when you have a new client
Rename it as the client's room
Add any personalized touches, like client's go-to tools.
This eliminates the need to search, bookmark and keep multiple tabs open. You show up to session ready, with some mental energy to spare, because the preparation was already done.
When clients feel genuinely ready, they move into processing with more stability and trust. That's what this phase is for. Teleo makes it a lot easier to get there virtually.
Did you try these tips? Let us know how it went in the Teleo Clinician Community!
✍🏼Dee Keller, LPC, is a licensed professional counselor, parenting consultant, and owner of Sunnyside Counseling, a virtual practice based in Virginia. Dee focuses on supporting kids, college students, and moms in navigating anxiety, perfectionism, and overwhelm. She is dedicated to helping clients uncover their strengths and embrace balance and growth in their lives.
Learn more about Dee’s work at sunnysidecville.com