EMDR and Beyond

I have two trainings posted on the Midwest Training page, but wanted to emphasize that THE two best EMDR for children/adolescents, Ana Gomez, MA and Dr. Robbie Adler Tapia, will be in our area this year.  Both are fabulous trainers as well as wonderful human beings. I have seen both in my HAP facilitator volunteer role and if I worked with children and adults, I would not miss this opportunity. Check it out!

   I know I know I have been sadly neglecting my blog postings due to a heavy spring schedule, but am hoping to get back to it soon. 

Bonnie the Blogger

I missed this post when I restored my blog, so here it is. I gathered this from the Listserve and several other resources for a beginning selection when using EMDR with children. Dr. Robbie Adler-Tapia (www.emdrkids.com) was the EMDRHAP trainer I facilitated in Kansas City. She is phenomenal and took responsibility for gathering the research on EMDR with children to secure  Level 1 preferred treatment status for EMDR on the California Evidence-Based Clearinghouse for Child Welfare (www.cebc4cw.org). Continue Reading

Kenya Randall, LMHC (www.mosaicfamilyinc.com) , shares this Resourcing process that she routinely uses with her clients. It’s similar to the Healing Circle resources that Shirley Jean Schmidt (www.dnmsinstitute.com) created, along with ideas from Laurel Parnell (www.emdrimfo.com) and her own creativity. Kenya uses this for skill building as well as affect management and increasing the sense of safety. Here’s her procedure: Continue Reading

Interweaves and Other Techniques for Under Accessing

          I continue reviewing techniques and interweaves for clients who are under accessing, as promised in the previous post on over accessing.  This material is adapted from Dr. Joany Spierings’ EMDRIA Conference 2011 presentation, (Non) Cognitive Interweaves for EMDR, She gave a day’s worth of specific ideas and techniques, fully developed and applied to client examples.  These are summary samples, with a few additions from my own practice. Continue Reading

One of the challenges with the history taking or most often, the reprocessing phase of EMDR,  is to assist clients who over access or flood when addressing targets. Facilitating for EMDR HAP trainings has allowed me to see updates since I was trained 13 years ago.  The updates on interweaves is one I found most valuable from the 2009 EMDR Part II manual. It is so valuable to add to our tools for managing over accessing and under accessing clients. I also heard Dr. Joany Spierings, a Trainer/Consultant/Therapist from the Netherlands, at the 2011 EMDRIA Conference in Anaheim. She presented on Cognitive and Non Cognitive Interweaves, having developed her techniques by working with the most severely traumatized clients that her colleagues could not help. Continue Reading

Francine Shapiro’s opening plenary address at this year’s EMDRIA conference  in Anaheim not only provided the expected updates on EMDR therapy and research, but also issued a strong challenge for practitioners to sustain the standard protocol fidelity for effective EMDR practice. Continue Reading

Welcome

…to my new and improved website blog. I lost it again, but thanks to my Webmaster, Chris (my wonderful and talented son), it  is ready again for sharing our thoughts and knowledge about EMDR and trauma treatment. I am sorry it was in maintenance mode for so long, but  Chris needed to take care of college studies first. Now that I have my Tech Consultant in house (home for the holidays), I should have all the assistance I need.

I have reposted previous blog information after editing and revising. I must say the latest breakdown gave me opportunity to make the posts more clear and readable.  Chris has changed something so we shouldn’t go through this again.  Since I post when I have time, rather than regularly, you might want to sign up to receive notification of posts in the “sign up for posts” place on the Home Page. I look forward to more fruitful sharing of the vast arena of EMDR and trauma topics.

Bonnie the Blogger

As an EMDRIA Approved Consultant, I keep up with the EMDR Listserve moderated by Roy Kiessling, LISW, finding it a rich source of clarification, new information and case consultation.  Occasionally I have posted my own or consultees’ questions and get excellent responses from the best in the EMDR world–how awesome is that?!  I alsou nderstand why some bail out on the Listserve or never sign up (this would be the majority of my consultees) due to the occasional high volume of posts. I do read the Listserve and learn a great deal, keeping up on the wisdom and sometimes debate in the EMDR world, sharing what’s relevant with consultees and occasionally summarizing on this blog. This time my ‘gleanings’ relate to differing views on type of BLS to use. Continue Reading

Francine Shapiro’s Plenary “EMDR Theory, Research and Practice

Francine’s repeated plea was for all of us to contribute to the research needed to validate what we know clinically to the scientific community, so that more can receive EMDR treatment.  She suggests doing at least single case studies. Assistance such as consultation, help with writing for journals or whatever us ‘non researchers’ need is now available) from EMDRIA’s new Foundation for Research.

Summary of Research on EMDR, Exposure Continue Reading

The Two Hand Interweave is a technique I use more frequently than any other. I learned about the two hand interweave in my first EMDR consultation experience, and it has many adaptations. Now it is in Robin Shapiro LICSW’s (www.emdrsolutions.com) in her book EMDR Solutions Pathways to Healing. This is an EMDR book I highly recommend as essential to your EMDR library.  She edits a number of critical EMDR approaches, including Roy Kiessling’s RDI chapter, A. J. Poky’s DeTur protocol for addictions, a wonderful chapter by Elizabeth Turner on EMDR for children using storytelling, art and other techniques, and Chapter 6, The Two Hand Interweave, by Robin Shapiro herself.  Get the book!

Applications

Shapiro uses the Two Hand Interweave when a client is stuck between two varying positions, Continue Reading

A recent hot topic on the EMDR Listserve came about with one therapist asking how to score the DES.  Of all the responses, Sandra Paulsen’s (www.bainbridgepsychology.com/Sandra.html) in depth response to working with dissociation as an EMDR therapist. She summarized concerns I have had as well and I received her permission to repost her comments here. She mentions (highlighted below) that unexpected appearances of parts with clients who did not present as dissociative can scare a newly trained EMDR therapist away. Continue Reading

Belief Focused EMDR

The participants in Des Moines Pt II EMDRHAP training got several bonuses from Roy Kiessling, LISW, including a demonstration of Belief Focused EMDR (a presentation I heard and enjoyed at the EMDRIA conference in Minneapolis last fall) and the Contained (EMD) procedure. I was fortunate to have Roy mentor me in completing my HAP facilitator process also, so I should be able to ‘channel’ Roy pretty well by now! Following are some points, tips, metaphors and tidbits from Roy’s training:

Roy likes to use the phrase ‘life altering events’ rather than disturbing events or large T/small t trauma, as some of us were taught initially. I prefer a description that leaves out the word trauma, as most of us work with people who don’t think or realize they are traumatized and thus can’t relate to themselves as survivors of ‘trauma’.  Continue Reading

I really love volunteering as a facilitator for EMDRHAP because I get in on the best trainers! Roy Kiessling, LISW, is moderator of the EMDR ListServe and the lead Trainer for HAP. Roy is clear, practical, the best trainer I have seen yet to keep Pt 1 contained to that beginning EMDR level and normalize where we start in changing our practice to EMDR. He is concise and uses many metaphors as well. I wanted to blog about what I learned from Ro in the first EMDRHAP Pt 1 training in Des Moines, August 2010. You will also find a video of Roy “Introduction to EMDR” in another post, all used with permission. Below are tidbits gleaned during the training, along with my occasional elaborations.

The Adaptive Information Processing Model

Roy reminds us that the cornerstone of the EMDR approach is the adaptive information processing model or AIP. Memory networks are the basis of clinical symptoms and of mental health. Continue Reading