Attachment-Focused EMDR

Well, let’s begin with what is EMDR?

EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. It’s a deeply effective therapy for the treatment of trauma. EMDR therapy uses eye movements or other forms of bilateral stimulation to help consolidate (processes through) and release information trapped in the mind and body (conscious and sometimes unconscious traumatic memories). This can often finally help to put some space between clients and their chronic disturbing images, body sensations, emotions, and negative beliefs.

EMDR was created decades ago to treat trauma and it has innumerable studies backing it up. It’s about trauma that’s been fragmented and stuck in the body. EMDR works to consolidate this trauma and move it through to resolution.

Trauma is “not the story of something that happened back then, but the current imprint of that pain, horror, and fear living inside [the individual].” -Bessel van der Kolk, M.D.

“Trauma is in the nervous system, not in the event.” -Peter Levine

Why Attachment Focused EMDR?

I was trained in Francine Shapiro’s standard EMDR protocol I and II back in 2012-2013. I tried using it with clients, but it all felt so prescriptive, so manual-based that I became worried I would end up shutting down my clients with the clear misattunement happening in the room. So I put that tool down.

In 2015 I took a weekend course with Laurel Parnell and felt way more connected with her approach to EMDR. She focuses much more on creating resource tapping for clients. This means creating what has been missing (the resources that were needed) for each individual client during their life, that can now help support them as they work to move through trauma. This model of AF-EMDR is much more accessible to a wider range of overlooked and undervalued people. It’s coupled with talk therapy, and goes at the pace needed for each client.

I was retrained in AF-EMDR I, II, and III though the Parnell Institute, and I’m now a certified clinician.