Hong Kong’s English-speaking professional community has a specific problem: excellent medical provision, and very little of it in English at the level of depth this work requires.
For the expatriate and internationally educated population in finance, law and the professions, that gap matters more than it sounds. Psychological work happens in language. Conducting it in a second language, or through a clinician whose English is functional rather than fluent, produces sessions that are polite, articulate and largely ineffective, because the material is being translated before it can be felt.
Add that the professional community is small and interconnected, and that the hours leave almost no room, and the ordinary outcome is that nothing happens for years.
Which is one reason EMDR suits some people
EMDR requires less narration than talking therapies. You do not have to give an ordered account of what happened, or explain it to somebody’s satisfaction, in order to work on it.
For someone who has spent a decade not speaking about something, that lowers the threshold considerably. It is not a trick and it is not avoidance: the memory is worked with directly rather than described.
What it can and cannot do
For a discrete traumatic event, properly processed, EMDR can be remarkably effective and sometimes quick. The memory remains accessible but loses its power to intrude.
Where trauma was prolonged, or ran through childhood, the work is slower and broader, because there is no single target. Anybody promising to resolve that quickly is overstating it. On that distinction.
Practical
Hong Kong is seven or eight hours ahead of London, so London mornings suit Hong Kong evenings. No referral required. UKCP-registered psychotherapist and Jungian analyst, HCPC-registered art psychotherapist, twenty-five years of practice and over twenty using EMDR. Both registers are public and can be checked independently.
EMDR therapy in London and trauma therapy.
Dr Philippe Jacquet is a UKCP registered psychotherapist, a Jungian analyst and an HCPC registered art psychotherapist, with twenty-five years of clinical practice. His Doctorate of Professional Practice at the University of Essex examined male eating disorders from the perspective of analytical psychology. Registration can be checked on either public register.
How the work is delivered from here
All international sessions are by secure video, in English or French. Online therapy is not a reduced version of consulting room work: it is the format that lets weekly work survive living abroad, travelling, or relocating. Sessions run in United Kingdom hours, which suits most regions, and if your time zone makes none of it workable, say so when you enquire rather than assuming it rules you out.
For clinicians and treatment services
Dr Jacquet supervises clinical teams in private residential addiction treatment and in a private psychiatric hospital. For treatment centres, psychiatric units and group practices looking for external clinical supervision, including in places where no supervisor of this seniority is available locally, team supervision is also delivered by video. For individual practitioners, see clinical supervision.
Common questions
Is EMDR effective online?
Yes, and it has been used remotely for years. The protocol adapts. What matters is an experienced clinician who can tell when to slow down.
I have never talked about this. Is that a problem?
No, and it is extremely common. One of the reasons people choose EMDR is that it requires less narration than talking therapies. You do not have to give a full account of what happened in order to work on it.
Is it confidential from my employer?
Nothing is disclosed to any employer or insurer without your consent, save for the narrow legal and safeguarding limits every registered practitioner is bound by, which are explained at the outset, and nothing is held in Hong Kong.