Transitioning & Integrating into EMDR Phases 3-8

Attachment trauma negatively impact adults in the development of a strong sense of self, a balanced personality structure and functioning, the ability to form healthy attachments in present-day relationships including the therapy relationship, and the capability to benefit from EMDR therapy.

Part 2 is 2-day training teaches participants strategies that assist clients in effectively transitioning from AFTT-A protocols that focus on and deepen positive affect to protocols that introduce and titrate experiences of negative affect through the creation of a new bonding contract and therapeutic story.

Participants will acquire skills and be offered opportunities to practice assisting clients to utilize reconstructed parts and attachments within their internal personality system and integrate newly acquired adaptive information in order to successfully move into and complete EMDR Phases 3-8. The training instructs participants to implement EMDR therapy Standard Protocol more safely with complex clients through “contained reprocessing” and inverted protocols as well as utilizing cognitive interweaves to access internal support of the restructured personality system.

Lecture, films, demonstrations, Q & A, handouts, experiential reflections and practicum sessions will allow participants to apply strategies immediately with their own clients.

With adaptations and consideration for the increased complexity of the internal personality system, AFTT-A protocols can be utilized within overall treatment for DID, although such application is not the focus of this workshop.

The Objectives

Participants will leave the training prepared to:

1. Demonstrate strategies to strengthen Competent Adult part of Self through positive updates to old Bonding Contract rules.

2. Develop a therapeutic story for adults in the format designed by Joan Lovett MD.

3. Choose strategies to provide an emotionally corrective experience in the therapeutic relationship to improve clients’ attachment patterns.

4. Explain components of attachment-focused trauma therapy to assist clients in successfully transitioning to and completing EMDR Phases 3-8.

5. Apply inverted protocols to enhance affect regulation while reprocessing traumatic material.

6. Define “contained reprocessing” and explain how the strategy prevents clients with developmental trauma from accessing too much material at the same time during standard protocol.

7. Identify at least 2 cognitive interweaves that integrate elements from the preparation phase into the desensitization and reprocessing phases of EMDR for safer or more efficient reprocessing.

8. Employ new information about participants’ own internal personality structure, internal attachments, and history to enhance their mindful awareness and attunement in the therapeutic relationship.

9. Integrate AFTT-A strategies and protocols into clinical practice.