How to Fix the Golf Yips: Can EMDR and Accelerated Resolution Therapy Help?

If you are searching for how to fix the golf yips, golf performance anxiety, or whether EMDR or Accelerated Resolution Therapy may help, you are not alone. The golf yips can disrupt confidence, create tension, and make a familiar movement suddenly feel unreliable. While the yips are often treated like a mechanics problem, research suggests anxiety may also play an important role, which means a nervous system approach may be worth considering.

What Are the Golf Yips?

The golf yips are a task-specific performance problem that can show up as jerking, hesitation, freezing, or loss of fluid control during a golf movement that used to feel automatic. For some golfers, the yips are not just frustrating. They can create a cycle of anticipatory stress, loss of confidence, and fear of repeating the same mistake.

That cycle matters because once the body starts linking a golf task with pressure, embarrassment, or failure, the nervous system may begin reacting before the conscious mind has time to settle it. What looks like a swing or putting problem on the outside may also involve anxiety, emotional interference, and a body that no longer feels safe doing what it already knows.

Can Anxiety Cause the Golf Yips?

Research suggests anxiety may be one factor in the development and persistence of the yips. In a case series on golfers with the yips, van Wensen et al. (2025) examined whether an EMDR-based intervention could reduce yips symptoms by reducing anxiety. That is an important shift in perspective because it suggests the yips may not be explained by mechanics alone.

From a mind-body lens, this makes sense. When a golfer has a distressing or highly pressured performance experience, the nervous system may begin encoding the movement with threat. Over time, the body may tighten, brace, or interrupt the motion automatically. More practice can help in some cases, but sometimes the deeper issue is that the body has learned to protect rather than perform.

Can EMDR Help the Golf Yips?

Early research suggests EMDR may help the golf yips when anxiety is part of the problem. van Wensen et al. (2025) reported on golfers who received one or two EMDR-based sessions and found improvement in yips symptoms and apparent performance improvement, while also emphasizing the need for larger and better studies.

A separate golf-focused case study also found that an EMDR-based intervention reduced anxiety related to distressing athletic experiences in two professional golfers and suggested EMDR may provide clinicians with an additional intervention tool for athlete populations (Curdt & Eggleston, 2023).

That does not mean EMDR is a guaranteed fix for every golfer. It does suggest that when the yips are connected to anxiety, distress, or a stuck nervous system response, reprocessing may be a meaningful part of treatment.

How EMDR May Work for Golf Performance Anxiety

EMDR is an eye movement approach designed to help the brain and body process distressing experiences differently. In performance work, that may matter when a golfer is carrying:

• fear of repeating a mistake

• tension connected to a past bad shot

• anticipatory anxiety before a putt, chip, or swing

• self-consciousness that disrupts automatic movement

When the emotional charge around the performance moment is reduced, the body may be more able to access a smoother, more practiced response. In that sense, EMDR may help not by teaching the golf skill itself, but by reducing the internal interference blocking the skill.

Where Accelerated Resolution Therapy Fits

If you are searching for Accelerated Resolution Therapy for golf performance anxiety or ART for the golf yips, the golf-specific research is still limited. There is not yet strong published research directly testing ART for golfers with the yips.

Even so, Accelerated Resolution Therapy belongs in this conversation because it is a brief eye movement approach that has shown promising outcomes in other distress-related contexts. Pang et al. (2023) described ART as a brief, time-efficient intervention and reported meaningful symptom improvement within a relatively short treatment window.

That does not prove ART fixes the golf yips. It does support why golfers, athletes, and clinicians may be interested in ART when performance problems seem tied to anxiety, emotional interference, or distressing prior experiences. If the yips are being amplified by a nervous system that is stuck in protection, a brief eye movement approach may be clinically relevant.

A golfer lines up a putt on a sunlit green, embodying confidence and focus as the ball rests near the hole.

A Nervous System Approach to Golf Performance

At Be Well Collective, we look at performance through a mind-body lens. Sometimes a performance problem is not only about mindset or mechanics. Sometimes the nervous system has learned that performance is threatening.

When that happens, the body may:

• tighten under pressure

• lose access to automatic movement

• become hyperaware and overcontrolled

• struggle with confidence and mental clarity

• react to performance as if it is danger

This is why golf performance anxiety and the golf yips can benefit from approaches that address more than behavior alone. Eye movement approaches such as EMDR and Accelerated Resolution Therapy may help reduce the emotional and physiological charge attached to performance-related stress, creating more room for focus, fluidity, and regulation.

How to Know if This Approach Might Help

A nervous system and reprocessing approach may be worth exploring if:

• your golf yips seem worse under pressure

• you feel fear, dread, or panic before a specific shot

• you have had distressing performance experiences that still feel charged

• your body feels stuck even when you know what to do

• practice alone has not solved the issue

Be Well Collective and Performance Support

At Be Well Collective, we specialize in eye movement approaches for performance, including work with athletes, golfers, performers, professionals, and performance-oriented individuals. We help clients explore how anxiety, emotional interference, and past experiences may be affecting focus, confidence, mental clarity, and execution.

If you are struggling with the golf yips, golf performance anxiety, or a performance block that feels bigger than mechanics alone, support is available.

Visit www.bewellcollective.comEmail connect@bewellcollective.comFollow @be_wellcollective

References

Curdt, A., & Eggleston, B. (2023). EMDR-based interventions for athletic traumas: A case study of two female golfers. Journal of EMDR Practice and Research, 17(2), 70–82. https://doi.org/10.1891/EMDR-2022-0036

Pang, T., Murn, L., Williams, D., Lawental, M., Abhayakumar, A., & Kip, K. E. (2023). Comparison of accelerated resolution therapy for PTSD between veterans with and without prior PTSD treatment. Military Medicine, 188(3–4), e621–e629. https://doi.org/10.1093/milmed/usab335

van Wensen, E., Nijenhuis, B., Zwerver, J., & Bogaard, P.-J. (2025). An EMDR-based intervention for the golfers’ yips: A case series. Sports Psychiatry, 4(4), 175–180. https://doi.org/10.1024/2674-0052/a000083