Phase 3: Assessing and activating the target

Phase 3 is where a memory stops being something the client talks about and becomes something they're in, just enough to reprocess. It's a precise, almost ritualized sequence, and its precision is the point: you're activating the full memory network — image, thought, feeling, body — so that bilateral stimulation has something live to work on.

The six components, in order

1. Image — "What picture represents the worst part of the memory?"
2. Negative cognition (NC) — the irrational, self-referencing belief that goes with it now: I'm powerless. I'm in danger. It's my fault.
3. Positive cognition (PC) — the adaptive belief the client would prefer to hold: I have choices now. It's over. I did the best I could.
4. Validity of Cognition (VOC) — how true that PC feels, gut not head, on a 1–7 scale.
5. Emotion — named, so it can be tracked.
6. SUD and body location — the 0–10 disturbance rating and where it lives physically.

The negative cognition is the client's; if you supply it, you're reprocessing your memory, not theirs.

Why the order matters

You establish the PC and VOC before desensitization deliberately. Naming a direction — where the client wants to end up — primes the adaptive network you'll later strengthen in Phase 5. And taking the SUD baseline now gives you the number that tells you, in Phase 4, whether reprocessing is working.

Common Phase 3 errors

The frequent mistakes: accepting an NC that's a fact rather than a belief ("he hurt me" is true, not a cognition to reprocess); a PC that's the mirror image rather than a genuinely believable direction; or rushing past the body location, which is often where the reprocessing signal is clearest.

With the target fully activated and baselines set, you move without pause into Phase 4: Desensitization. The components you gathered here are the coordinates the rest of the protocol steers by. If any term is unfamiliar, the glossary defines each.