EMDR for the yips: freeing a stroke that has stopped trusting itself

If the yips have crept into your game, here is the encouraging part: they are not a loss of skill, and the trusting stroke you are missing has not gone anywhere. This page explains what the yips are and how EMDR — Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing, a therapy that helps the nervous system settle reactions that have become stuck — can help free a stroke that has stopped trusting itself. There is also a free guided audio you can try at home to begin, and many people find that, with a little practice, the dread before a key shot starts to loosen.

What the yips are

The yips are an involuntary disruption of a movement you have made well, automatically, thousands of times. In golf they show up most often in the short game — a flinch, a freeze, or a jerk in the hands over a four-foot putt or a simple chip from just off the green. They are not a failure of skill. The skill is still there. What has broken down is the easy, unthinking trust between you and a stroke your body knows perfectly well how to make.

They are surprisingly common. Estimates vary, but studies suggest somewhere between a third and a half of serious golfers experience the yips at some point, and they tend to arrive after many years of play — often in players who have given the game decades of practice and care.1,2 They also affect cricketers, darts players, snooker players, archers and musicians: anywhere a fine, well-grooved movement has to be performed under pressure.

Researchers describe two threads, often tangled together. One is more physical — a task-specific focal dystonia, where the muscles involved in that one movement misfire.3,4 The other is more psychological — what gets called "choking" or conscious interference: under pressure, the thinking mind tries to take over a movement that is meant to run automatically, and in steering it, disrupts it.5,6 For most people the experience is a mix: a small physical glitch that fear and over-attention then magnify, until the anticipation of the yip becomes as disabling as the yip itself.

Why EMDR can help

EMDR is an evidence-based therapy, best known for treating trauma and recommended by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) for post-traumatic stress.7 It is also used much more widely: for performance anxiety, panic, perfectionism, and exactly the kind of conditioned, anticipatory fear that sits at the heart of the yips.

Here is the link. Every missed short putt, every chip that skittered across the green, every cringing memory of it happening in front of others leaves a residue. Over time those moments stack up and the nervous system starts to brace before you have even taken the club back. That bracing is the over-attention and the conscious interference that the research keeps pointing to. EMDR works on two fronts: it helps the nervous system reprocess the specific memories that are keeping the fear alive, so they lose their charge; and it lets us install a different template — a vivid, rehearsed sense of the trusting, automatic stroke you already own — so that the trained part of you can be let through rather than fought.

I want to be honest about the evidence as well as the hope. EMDR's strong, trial-based evidence is for trauma and post-traumatic stress; its use for performance difficulties like the yips is promising but not yet established by clinical trials. So I offer it as a reasonable, individualised approach rather than a proven treatment, and no one can promise a cure. That said, for many people, taking the fear out of the memory and rehearsing trust in its place can give the stroke back much of its freedom.

Start with the Safe Place

Before any work on the yips, please begin with the Safe Place exercise. In EMDR we always build resources first — a calm internal place you can return to — so that you are steady before you go anywhere more difficult. It is a short, gentle practice, and it makes everything that follows work better.

You will find it, with two short orientation videos and the guided audio, on the

EMDR and the Safe Place page

. Spend a few days with it until returning to your safe place feels easy, then come back here.

A guided audio for the yips

This is a generic resourcing and rehearsal exercise, drawn from an EMDR technique called the Future Template. It is not EMDR treatment in itself — full EMDR is therapist-led and follows a structured protocol — but it lets you rehearse, while calm and steady, the kind of golf you would like to play: the first tee, your pre-shot routine, a short chip, and an unhurried putt on a quiet green. Throughout, it pairs the imagery with slow butterfly taps — a gentle form of bilateral stimulation — and a simple phrase to hold onto. This is a deliberately gentle, light-touch version; the fuller, higher-strength Future Template — which rehearses the pressured moments where the yips actually bite — is something we build together in private sessions, where there is support if anything difficult surfaces.

Your browser does not support the audio element. You can

download the file here.

Headphones recommended. Find somewhere quiet where you will not be disturbed for the next few minutes.

Before you begin

For most people this is a calm, pleasant exercise, and you can simply enjoy it. A few quick checks first:

• It is best used when you are reasonably steady in yourself. If you have post-traumatic stress or a significant trauma history, if you sometimes feel detached or "not quite here" (dissociation), or if you are under the care of a mental-health professional, it is worth a quick word with them first.
• If anything difficult comes up, simply stop, open your eyes, and return to your Safe Place — there is no need to push through. If you would like to talk to someone, you can call the

Samaritans

on 116 123, contact NHS 111, or call 999 in an emergency.

• The yips can also have a physical cause, so if you have pain, or a tremor or stiffness that shows up away from the course too, it is worth seeing your GP to rule out a medical or neurological cause.

This is a general self-help resource for adults, not personalised therapy, and you use it at your own discretion.

Read the full audio transcript

Find a comfortable place to settle, and let your shoulders soften, just a little, away from your ears. Take a slow breath in through your nose, and a longer breath out through your mouth.

Before we begin, a gentle word. This is meant to feel calm. If at any point something difficult comes up, you can simply pause, open your eyes, and return to your safe place. There is nothing you need to push through here, and nothing you need to get right. We are only going to rehearse, quietly, the kind of golf you would like to play.

If it feels right, you can tap along as you listen — slow butterfly taps, at whatever pace feels soothing.

Begin by remembering. Somewhere inside you is a version of you who has hit tens of thousands of strokes. Decades of practice. A body that knows, in its bones, what a good putt feels like, what a clean strike feels like, what the club feels like through impact, what the right tempo feels like coming back. That version of you is not gone. It has not left. It is still here, under all of this — patient, unhurried, waiting to be trusted again. It does not need to be coached. It only needs to be let through.

Picture yourself on the first tee. The morning is still. The grass is fresh under your shoes. You take in the fairway, the trees, the soft light. You are not bracing. You are simply here, on a course you love, doing the thing you have loved doing for most of your life.

You walk to the ball. Your pre-shot routine arrives, the way it always has — the look, the practice swing, the breath, the settle. Your body knows the sequence. Your hands know the grip. You are not making it happen. It is happening, the way it always has, because you have done it ten thousand times.

You stand over the ball, and you feel the small, familiar quiet that comes just before a good stroke. There is no need to steer. Your body knows. You let your body know. You take the club back, and the stroke goes through — smooth, committed, trusting. The ball does what it does. You watch it without grasping.

Now picture a short chip, from just off the green. You assess the lie. You pick your landing spot. You make your practice swing. And then you simply commit. The hands stay soft. The club brushes the grass, the ball pops up, lands, and releases toward the hole. It does what it was always going to do, because you let it.

Now picture a putt. A few feet, on a quiet green, with all the time in the world. You read the line. You set up. You make your practice strokes. And when you stand over the ball, you let the trained part of you take the club back. The stroke happens, smooth and unhurried. The ball rolls. Wherever it ends up, you stay yourself.

Hold this with the words: I trust my stroke. I let it happen. Say them slowly, inside. I trust my stroke. I let it happen.

See yourself moving through a whole round like this, in your own time. Tee shot to fairway. Fairway to green. The chips, the pitches, the putts. Some pure. Some not. None of them ruined by trying too hard. None of them made smaller by you. You are playing, again — playing the game you love, with a body you trust.

Take a slow breath in, and a longer breath out. Carry this with you: the smooth quiet, the words I trust my stroke, and the trained part of you that has always known how to do this. It is here. It never left. It has been waiting, patiently, for you to let it take the club again.

And now, gently, let your awareness come back to the room. Feel the support beneath you. Wiggle your fingers. Wiggle your toes. And when you are ready, open your eyes. Your safe place is always here, whenever you would like to return to it.

How to use it

• Do the Safe Place first. Make sure that practice feels comfortable before you use this one.
• Watch the butterfly-taps video on the Safe Place page, so the hand position and rhythm are familiar.
• Find a comfortable, quiet place where you will not be interrupted. You may want to close your eyes.
• Let the trained part of you take over. The audio's whole aim is to let your body do what it already knows, rather than to coach or steer it.
• Practise regularly, ideally when you are calm — even a few minutes a day. The more well-worn the path to a trusting stroke, the more reliably it will be there on the course.

If the audio isn't enough: working together over four sessions

A generic audio can only do so much — and this one is deliberately gentle. The most powerful part of a Future Template is rehearsing the very moments where the pressure bites: the putt that matters, the shot in front of others, the situation your nervous system most wants to avoid. Done alone, that can stir up more than is wise to meet without support, so the public version above leaves it out. The recording also cannot know which particular shots have become hardest for you, which memories are holding the fear in place, or what the yips have cost you in confidence and enjoyment. For some people it is enough to loosen things. For others, the yips need a more personal — and more powerful — approach.

If that is you, I offer focused EMDR for the yips, usually beginning with a short block of around four sessions. Together we would identify the specific memories and triggers that keep the stroke braced, reprocess them so they lose their grip, and build a full-strength Future Template tailored to your game — one that can safely rehearse the high-pressure moments the generic audio leaves out, working with your course, your distances, and the shots and moments that matter most to you, with support there if anything difficult arises. A short initial block is usually enough to explore whether EMDR is likely to help; some people need fewer sessions, some need more, and — as with any approach — it does not work for everyone.

I am EMDR Europe-trained and working towards accreditation. If you would like to explore this,

get in touch

and we can arrange a short conversation about what you are working with and whether this is the right approach for you.

A few practical notes

• This is a resource, not a clinical assessment, and it is not a substitute for therapy. If your difficulties extend beyond your game and you are struggling, please speak to your GP — and if you are in acute distress, contact the Samaritans on 116 123, NHS 111, or 999 in an emergency.
• Be patient and kind with yourself. The stroke you are looking for has not gone anywhere — it is waiting, patiently, to be trusted again.

References and further reading

• Smith AM, Malo SA, Laskowski ER, et al. A multidisciplinary study of the "yips" phenomenon in golf: an exploratory analysis. Sports Medicine. 2000;30(6):423–437.

doi:10.2165/00007256-200030060-00004

• Smith AM, Adler CH, Crews D, et al. The "yips" in golf: a continuum between a focal dystonia and choking. Sports Medicine. 2003;33(1):13–31.

doi:10.2165/00007256-200333010-00002

• McDaniel KD, Cummings JL, Shain S. The "yips": a focal dystonia of golfers. Neurology. 1989;39(2):192–195.

doi:10.1212/WNL.39.2.192

• Adler CH, Crews D, Hentz JG, Smith AM, Caviness JN. Abnormal co-contraction in yips-affected but not unaffected golfers: evidence for focal dystonia. Neurology. 2005;64(10):1813–1814.

doi:10.1212/01.WNL.0000162024.05514.03

• Masters RSW. Knowledge, knerves and know-how: the role of explicit versus implicit knowledge in the breakdown of a complex motor skill under pressure. British Journal of Psychology. 1992;83(3):343–358.

doi:10.1111/j.2044-8295.1992.tb02446.x

• Beilock SL, Carr TH. On the fragility of skilled performance: what governs choking under pressure? Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. 2001;130(4):701–725.

doi:10.1037/0096-3445.130.4.701

• National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. Post-traumatic stress disorder. NICE guideline [NG116]. London: NICE; 2018.

nice.org.uk/guidance/ng116

• Stinear CM, Coxon JP, Fleming MK, Lim VK, Prapavessis H, Byblow WD. The yips in golf: multimodal evidence for two subtypes. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. 2006;38(11):1980–1989.

doi:10.1249/01.mss.0000233792.93540.10

• Dhungana S, Jankovic J. Yips and other movement disorders in golfers. Movement Disorders. 2013;28(5):576–581.

doi:10.1002/mds.25442

• Shapiro F. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) Therapy: Basic Principles, Protocols, and Procedures. 3rd ed. New York: Guilford Press; 2018. ISBN 978-1-4625-3276-6.