Unleashing the Magic of EMDR – London, CCPE, April 7/8 2018

Mark Brayne and Annabel McGoldrick explaining left brains (braynes?) and right brains in EMDR.

With a small but select cohort of Attachment-Focused EMDR enthusiasts, a rich and rewarding time was had by all as on the first post-Easter weekend we launched the first of EMDR Focus’s new two-day workshops delivering intense and practical skills training in using EMDR with the most complex clients.

As far as we know, practical and supervised coaching sessions, in the UK at least, are offered only during Parts 1 to 3 of EMDR basic training.

So, drawing generously on the inspiration of Dr Laurel Parnell in the US, our workshop gave experienced EMDR therapists a unique (literally!) opportunity to try out new skills on themselves and each other – for real and with full-length sessions supervised and coached by our new EMDR Focus facilitator support team.

The feedback has been most gratifying – and here are a few quotes to illustrate.

Brilliant! I was staggered at the speed of the modified / simplified protocol.

Plenty of opportunity to practise and get your teeth into the process.

I’d like to say a big thank you for the weekend. I found it so very useful and inspiring. Your passion and enthusiasm is contagious and your knowledge incredible. I feel a lot more confident to use an attachment-focused approach.

It was a wonderful and inspiring weekend – learning on so many levels, and this approach certainly expands the possibilities for EMDR within psychotherapy.

What several participants appreciated was the absence of Powerpoint, and the simple (and repeated) explanations of Attachment-Focused EMDR principles in action, notably:

• Resource development and imaginary team-building (in Phase 2);
• Target identification in Phase 3, with proactive use of Bridging to track back down the survival system’s associative networks to the very roots of so much present dysfunction;
• The importance of relationship between therapist and client, and the space for intuition, dance, flair and imagination to rewire the old neural networks that continue to get in the way of the client’s ability to function properly in the present;
• And – a dimension that surprised and delighted many of those present, especially as illustrated in Mark’s demonstration session on day one – the creative willingness to go right into the intergenerational past to work with and even resource those caregivers who were unable to be what the client needed in their own childhood.

Mark enthusiastically, as ever, illustrating a point.

The CCPE, slap bang on The Basin and the Grand Union Canal at Little Venice a stone’s throw north of Paddington station, is such a lovely place to do this training, and with formal CPD approval for this training secured from the EMDR Association UK & Ireland, we look forward to further trainings in July, and very probably in November (2018).

Inspired perhaps by some more feedback from this first weekend, if you’re an EMDR therapist keen to take your practice to a new level, do consider joining us next time.

I found the weekend well designed and nicely balanced. (Thank you for avoiding ‘death by PowerPoint’). It never dragged or felt laboured.

The ratio of instructors to delegates was very nice. I know it wasn’t planned that way but the additional benefit was welcome. Having credible experienced facilitators was also much appreciated.

The fellowship with other professionals and the practicum was crucial to my learning. There is a real lack of EMDR courses out there WITH LIVE PRACTICE and yet with practicum a confidence and self trust is engendered which supports and benefits the professional and the public.