Reflections in EMDR Certification

EMDR Training
Written By Jenn Shields

Hi everyone!

This weekend I’m so pleased to share that I’ve submitted my certification application to the Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing International Association (EMDRIA) for approval, and I can finally call myself a Certified EMDR therapist!

I wanted to take an opportunity to reflect and share about the process, for those who are interested in training in this modality or trying out EMDR for themselves.

EMDR - A client perspective:

I first came across EMDR as a client many years ago.

Sitting in my therapists’ office, I passionately described my mind’s creation of what my “presenting problem” was at the time, when the practitioner asked me a question that forever changed my life.

“Okay.. you’ve got this situation going on in your life, and what does that say about you?”.

I was befuddled. I had just told her the story about an external situation, and she was turning it around on me.

She asked me to consider how the event felt in my body, and was curious about if it made me feel:

  • Out of control?

  • Unsafe?

  • Responsible?

  • Not good enough?

She asked me to notice the felt sense of that in my body, and consider whether I had felt this way historically, because the level of distress indicated that the feelings were “old”.

What I learned through this process was that present events often “poke” at memories that are frozen in developmentally arrested time, which is essentially the definition of a traumatic experience.

I learned that when we experience current triggers, our bodies can often revert back to thinking that we are stuck in the old trauma, and we make the mistake of interpreting current events as being disproportionately dangerous and misinterpret our current selves as having no agency.

EMDR helps us “clear out” old experiences, so that when we look back at life events, we can appreciate that there were some scary times, but that they are in the past, we didn’t like them, but they’re over now.

We can then use this knowledge to build the ideas that “I’m good enough, I can control what I can, and I’m not responsible for everything around me”.

We can also react to current situations with the understanding that there are always going to be problems in life, but we can pretty much guarantee that we have what it takes to manage.

Life changing, if I may say so myself.

EMDR Training:

Fast forward to 2019 where I made the best decision I could have towards deepening my understanding of trauma treatment - I took the Basic EMDR training, offered by Roy Kiessling.

At the time I had spent almost a decade working in the community with children and their caregivers in a number of settings - I provided therapy and advocacy with the families of young people removed from their homes and school classrooms due to challenging behavior, adolescents in detention, and young people with histories of sexual abuse. I credit my years in the community sector as having shaped so much of what I know about treating trauma, and I am so grateful for these experiences.

What I came to realize as a social worker is that trauma is everywhere - without exception, every family tree is touched by experiences of war and/or gender based violence, even if we don’t want to admit that as a community (as brilliantly outlined by Judith Herman).

After learning about the efficacy of EMDR to treat trauma and starting my own practice as a side endeavor, I decided to leave my community agency job in order to free up the time needed to fully devote myself to studying EMDR and trauma treatment, and I’m so happy that I did.

EMDR Certification:

Leaving my agency job freed up the time I needed to commit to the study necessary to really learning the theory and applications of EMDR.

The truth is, you can call yourself an EMDR therapist and practice the modality if you have a Master’s Degree, are a Licensed Therapist, and have attended the Basic Training.

Basic EMDR training consists of:

  • 20 hours of instruction

  • 20 hours supervised practicum

  • and 10 hours consultation (consultation being presenting cases to an experienced-level clinician and getting feedback about whether you’re maintaining fidelity to the model).

In my experience, though, a week of in-person training and 10 consultation hours wasn’t enough to fully understand and integrate knowledge of how the brain stores memories and how to process them, which led me to set out towards completing my EMDR certification.

EMDR certification requires an additional:

  • 12 hours of training (although most people will attend many more hours…)

  • 20 hours of consultation

The key to my success here was finding an experienced practitioner to help guide my learning.

In the consultation process, twice a month I would meet with my consultant to review chapters of Barbara Hensley’s EMDR Therapy Primer, which is not an entertaining read, per se, but is integral to understanding the theoretical underpinnings and manualized process of practicing this type of therapy.

I also became shamelessly addicted to trainings and well surpassed the 12 hours needed for certification, by attending the following trainings in the last 2 years during my certification process:

I also read the following books, which I can’t recommend enough:

Onwards:

I’m so excited to continue my learning in the field of EMDR, trauma, and dissociation, and working up to my next endeavor of becoming an EMDR consultant and contributing to the training of future clinicians.

For those of you who are interested, my future training list includes:

If you recommend any books/trainings, are interested in trying out EMDR or learning more about training in this modality, feel free to contact me.

Have a great day!

Jenn Shields
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