The most common thing that goes wrong in a remote EMDR set has nothing to do with the stimulus. It is that one of the two faces disappears for the length of the set — usually yours, on the client's screen, because the stimulus has taken over the frame.

That is a clinical cost, not a cosmetic one. Dual attention is the mechanism: the client holds the disturbing material and attends to something in the present at the same time, and a large part of "the present" is you. A client who is reprocessing while looking at a moving shape and an empty rectangle where their therapist used to be is doing something other than what the protocol describes. Some clients read the disappearance as withdrawal at exactly the moment they are least able to check that assumption.

The other half of the same problem is yours. If the stimulus fills your screen too, you have lost the face you need in order to decide when to stop the set — and stopping the set is your job, not the timer's.

Why does this happen at all?

Three arrangements, three different ways of losing a face.

A stimulation tool in a second window. You send the client a link, they open it beside the call. On a laptop with two windows tiled, this can be made to work. On a phone, it cannot — a browser tab and a video call do not share a phone screen, so whichever one is in front, the other is gone.

Screen-sharing the stimulus. You run the tool on your machine and share your screen. Many meeting tools replace the sharer's camera with the shared content on the receiving side for the duration of the share, so the client gets the stimulus and loses your face. Whether yours does is worth testing before a session rather than during one.

Stimulation carried inside the session. The stimulus and the video are parts of the same surface, and the camera tiles stay where they are. This is the arrangement that solves the problem structurally rather than by careful window management.

How do I test what my client actually sees?

Not by asking them mid-session. Test it once, before the session, with a second device.

Open a session with your phone or a tablet as the second participant, in another room or with the audio muted. Start the stimulus the way you normally would. Then look at the second device: is your face still there? How big? Where?

This takes five minutes and answers a question that is otherwise unanswerable from the practitioner side, because your own screen looks fine in every one of the three arrangements above. It is the client's screen that changes.

What can I do if my setup takes my face away?

A few real workarounds, in rough order of how well they hold up.

Two windows, side by side, on both sides. Works on a desktop or laptop, fails on a phone. If you go this route, spend the first session helping the client arrange their screen rather than assuming they will.

A second device for the client. The stimulus on a tablet propped in front of them, the video call on the laptop beside it. Clunky, but the faces stay. Some practitioners keep this as the fallback for a client whose only device is a phone.

Audio-only stimulation. If the visual is what is eating the frame, drop it. A set on sound alone, with both cameras running normally, is a complete set and keeps the co-regulating presence intact. Worth considering as the default for phone-only clients rather than as a downgrade.

A tool that doesn't take the frame. If you are choosing a platform anyway, this is a reasonable thing to select for.

Where should the faces be?

Two things matter more than size.

Yours needs to be visible without competing. A small persistent tile in a corner is enough. The client does not need to study your face — they need to be able to find it without looking away from the stimulus.

Theirs needs to be big enough for you to read. You are watching for eye movement quality, breathing changes, a hand that starts moving, colour draining out of a face. A postage stamp will not do it. If your layout shrinks the client during a set, that is the layout to change.

Ask clients to sit slightly further back than they would for a talking session, so their hands are in frame. A lot of what you would normally read from posture lives just below the crop.

Does the client need to see themselves?

Usually not, and often better not.

Self-view during reprocessing splits attention in a way that has nothing to do with the protocol, and some clients find watching themselves cry actively intrusive. If their setup lets them hide their own tile, offer it. If it doesn't, mention that they can turn it away from themselves.

You still need to see them. That is not negotiable, and it is worth naming in the first session so a client who covers their camera in a hard moment knows that changes what you can do.

The short version

Before the first remote EMDR session, look at your own setup from the client's side using a second device. If your face vanishes when the stimulus starts, change the arrangement — window it, move to a second device, drop to audio, or use something that keeps the tiles. And keep their face large enough to read, because you are the one who decides when the set stops.

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