EMDR and trauma therapy for Nairobi, online
For clients in Nairobi and across Kenya, Dr Philippe Jacquet offers EMDR therapy online by secure video. He has practised EMDR for more than twenty years, alongside integrative psychotherapy and Jungian analysis, and works from Harley Street in London.
Nairobi is a working hub for the UN, the diplomatic missions, the major humanitarian agencies and the international press covering the Horn of Africa and the Great Lakes. It is also a city where security incidents are part of ordinary risk assessment. Both of those facts produce trauma of a particular kind, and neither is well served by general counselling.
What EMDR actually does
Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing is a structured trauma treatment. It is recommended by NICE in the United Kingdom and by the World Health Organization for post-traumatic stress disorder.
The working idea is straightforward. Ordinary difficult memories are filed away: they lose their charge, they take their place in the past, and recalling them is unpleasant rather than overwhelming. Traumatic memories are not filed. They stay live, stored with the sensory and emotional intensity of the moment, so that a smell, a sound at the gate, a particular quality of light can return you there completely, years later, as though it were happening rather than remembered.
EMDR works on the filing rather than on the event. Under controlled conditions, while holding the memory in mind, the client engages in bilateral stimulation — classically eye movements, and online usually alternating sounds or taps. What tends to happen is that the memory loses its immediate physical charge and becomes something that happened, rather than something happening.
It is not hypnosis, it does not erase memory, and it is not a matter of talking the event through repeatedly until it stops hurting.
The trauma Nairobi actually produces
Three patterns come up often enough to name.
Single-incident trauma. A carjacking at a junction, a home invasion, a road traffic accident, a security incident at a hotel or mall. These respond to EMDR particularly well, and often faster than people expect, provided the person is otherwise stable. Many clients arrive apologetic, saying it was months ago and they should be over it. Time is not the variable that matters. Whether the memory was filed is.
Cumulative exposure in field and humanitarian work. Rotations into Somalia, South Sudan, eastern DRC or Sudan, followed by a return to Nairobi where the contrast between the field and a Westlands restaurant is itself disorienting. Here the difficulty is rarely one memory. It is a sediment of many, none of which felt significant enough at the time to warrant attention, and which have accumulated into a numbness that the person mistakes for professionalism.
Vicarious and secondary trauma. This is the most under-recognised of the three. Protection officers, case workers, investigators, translators, journalists and researchers take in accounts of atrocity as a matter of routine. Nothing happened to them. That is precisely why they do not seek help: they hold, quite genuinely, that the suffering belongs to someone else and that claiming any of it would be indecent.
The symptoms are nonetheless the symptoms — intrusive images, sleep that does not restore, irritability at home, a flattening of ordinary feeling — and they respond to the same treatment.
Why people here often do not use the help they already have
Most of the international organisations in Nairobi provide staff counselling or an employee assistance programme, and many people will not touch them.
The reason is not usually the quality of the service. It is that the service sits inside the same institution as the career. Even where confidentiality is genuinely maintained, the counsellor attends the same briefings, knows the same people, and may one day be asked, in some general way, about staff wellbeing in a team. For someone whose next posting depends on being seen as robust, that proximity is enough to keep them quiet for years.
An independent practitioner in London removes the calculation entirely. There is no organisational relationship, no local record, no shared file, and nothing that can reach a mission, an employer or a security clearance.
Twenty years of EMDR, and what that changes
Length of practice matters less as a credential than for what it teaches about restraint.
The commonest error with EMDR is using it too early, and it is an error made in good faith: the protocol is effective, the distress is visible, and beginning feels like helping. But opening traumatic material with someone who has no stable ground to return to afterwards can leave them worse. Where the drinking is active, where the situation is still dangerous, where the person is holding themselves together to get through a deployment, the correct first move is stabilisation rather than processing.
That judgement — when not to start — is the part that experience actually buys. On this, the risks of EMDR sets out the position at more length.
The second thing twenty years changes is what EMDR is used for. Applied to a single incident it is a fairly contained technique. Applied to the developmental trauma underneath an addiction or an eating disorder, it becomes slower, more careful work that has to sit inside a broader therapeutic relationship. Dr Jacquet is Hazelden-trained in addiction and holds a doctorate on male eating disorders, so where trauma, drinking and the relationship with food run together, they can be treated by one clinician rather than three.
How the work is arranged
Sessions are online by secure video, in English and French. East Africa Time is two hours ahead of London, so early morning and evening appointments both work without difficulty, and the work continues uninterrupted through deployment, travel and relocation.
A first conversation establishes what happened, what is currently stable, and whether EMDR is the right instrument at all. Sometimes it is not, and saying so is part of the assessment.
Related services for Nairobi
See all services for Nairobi and Kenya, read how online therapy works here, or what EMDR involves.
A first conversation is confidential and without commitment: get in touch.
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 available online in Nairobi?
Yes. EMDR is delivered online by secure video using the same protocol as in-person work, with bilateral stimulation adapted for the screen. It has been practised this way at scale since 2020 and the evidence to date shows it holding up. Sessions are scheduled around East Africa Time, which sits two hours ahead of London and makes both morning and evening appointments straightforward.
How experienced is Dr Jacquet in EMDR?
He has practised EMDR for more than twenty years, alongside integrative psychotherapy and Jungian analysis, and has used it extensively with addiction, eating disorders and complex trauma rather than single-incident trauma alone.
Will my employer or my organisation know?
No. The practice is independent and based in London, entirely outside any Nairobi-based organisation, mission or staff welfare structure. Nothing is disclosed to an employer, an HR department, a staff counsellor, an insurer or a family member without your consent, save for the narrow legal and safeguarding limits every registered practitioner is bound by, which are explained at the outset.
Is EMDR right for everyone?
No, and it is worth saying so plainly. Where someone is currently unsafe, actively drinking or using, or has no stable ground to return to after a session, opening traumatic material can do harm rather than good. In those cases the work begins with stabilisation, and EMDR is introduced later if and when it is appropriate. A first conversation establishes which of those situations applies.
What can EMDR treat?
It is recommended by NICE and the World Health Organization for post-traumatic stress disorder. In practice it is also used for the effects of single traumatic incidents such as an assault, a carjacking or an accident; for cumulative exposure in humanitarian and security work; and, more slowly, for the developmental trauma that sits underneath addiction and eating disorders.