In Support of EMDR Online – an Internet Discussion

With thanks to my EMDR Consultant colleague Deb Fish for the following article, summarising an online discussion of using the internet and video-conferencing for remote, online EMDR with clients. We spoke in November 2017, and the article appeared shortly afterwards in the house journal of the EMDR Association UK and Ireland EMDR Now.

(Deb works in private practice, and also for the NHS in Dorset, within secondary services, and fuller summary here Some key points from EMDR Online discussion Dec 8 2017.)

EMDR ONLINE DISCUSSION

In response to a Jiscmail question for do’s and don’ts when offering EMDR therapy online, Mark Brayne, EMDR Europe Consultant, kindly and very deftly organised and chaired a well-structured and informative online discussion – in the process introducing most of the participants to the professional, online platform, called Zoom.

EMDR and the Transpersonal

A weekend workshop for Qualified Professionals. Friday June 23 - Sunday June 25 2017. The Turning Point, Sheringwood, Norfolk, NR26 8TS

EMDR – Eye Movement Desensitisation & Reprocessing – is one of the hottest and best-researched new approaches to psychotherapy, recommended for PTSD by organisations around the world.

What’s less well known is how perfectly EMDR, with its understanding of trauma and neuro-biology, meshes with the transpersonal and the relational in psychotherapy, and how powerfully it can enhance an integrative, person-centred approach to healing.

In this first-of-its-kind workshop, EMDR-Europe Accredited Consultant and Parnell institute training facilitator Mark Brayne from the Centre for Counselling and Psychotherapy (CCPE) in London offered 16 psychotherapist colleagues, all but two already trained in EMDR, an introduction to how EMDR with a transpersonal and attachment-focused dimension can enhance and support their own work with clients and patients.

Unleashing our EMDR

We've been having an exciting time with Laurel Parnell this long weekend at the CCPE in London, as she introduces 36 enthusiastic and experienced EMDR therapists to ways of unleashing their work-in-depth with a new understanding of attachment and deep processing.

Dr Laurel Parnell at work in London

EMDR is increasingly evidence-based as a therapy of choice in addressing and clearing the symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - but as we've been hearing this weekend, when used in a client-focused and undogmatic way, it is also brilliant at drilling into the deepest roots of childhood distress, and releasing trauma that can have been locked into the system for a lifetime.

There are those in the international EMDR community who challenge Dr Parnell's way of working as somehow "not authentic EMDR."

We can only recommend that sceptics experience her training and this way of working themselves to clear misunderstandings about how powerful and appropriate this work can be for the widest range of clients.

Unleashing EMDR, London, Round One (2015)

Dr Parnell's first two long-weekend Unleash your EMDR trainings in London on working at depth with complex clients were a resounding success, with enthusiastic feedback from the total of 72 participants.

Working with rich imaginary figures of protection, nurture and wisdom, with a highly effective bridging technique to identify key past experiences still affecting a client's present life, and with proactive interweaves, trainees quickly found that targets, as they're called in EMDR, can be resolved completely and effectively in a sometimes astonishingly short time.

As one participant emailed after the course was over:

I attended on the first weekend and from the Monday morning started working differently with my clients. Even in one week the benefits I am seeing are amazing.