Is Adjunctive EMDR Therapy Right for Your Client?
Many therapists are familiar with EMDR but may not know how to utilize it to benefit their clients. There are a few different ways that clients can benefit from EMDR: EMDR intensives, adjunctive EMDR, or fully transitioning to an EMDR therapist. How do you know which one would be best? It really depends on the client and your comfortability as a therapist. Let’s break it down.
EMDR Intensives
EMDR intensives are, well, intense! The length of these depend on the client’s goals and what they need to reprocess. For some clients, working with an EMDR therapist for several hours over the course of several days (say, a weekend) can help them quickly accomplish their therapeutic goals. This can be particularly helpful for clients with a single-incident trauma (for example, a car accident) or a more recent event, as those as processed differently than other memories. It can also benefit clients looking to make a lot of progress quickly around a single issue, usually reprocessing a group of memories over a short period of time. If a client has more of a complex PTSD history, they can start with an intensive but they may not necessarily get through everything over the course of those few days.
Example: A client with a history of miscarriages and difficulty TTC wants to reprocess these issues before (or after) giving birth. Client spends one long day completing memory reprocessing on these specific scenarios.
Adjunctive EMDR
This kind of EMDR therapy can be helpful if the client wants to remain with their current non-EMDR trained therapist while completing EMDR. The most important element of this is communication between the therapists involved, both in terms of each of their roles and what the client will be accomplishing with each therapist. Clients who have significant life stressors occurring or who like to verbally process in therapy may benefit from doing EMDR in this way, as they would have one therapist to talk to about their week and one specifically for EMDR. This allows the EMDR therapist to focus on case conceptualization, working with the client on past-present connections, memory mapping, and reprocessing the actual memories. Any crises that arise can be talked about with their other therapist. This also means there is less likelihood of overlap in sessions, as one in more present-focused and one is more about building connections with the past from an EMDR lens. In my experience, this works best with therapists who trust each other, who understand the role of EMDR for the client, and let each other focus on their particular treatment goals. Truthfully, some therapists struggle with this, as it can feel a bit like the EMDR therapist is encroaching on their work with the client if there isn’t a mutual understanding of what each clinician is bringing to the table. This is why open communication is the most important part of a client seeing an EMDR therapist in an adjunct capacity.
Example: A client with an eating disorder is working with an eating disorder therapist, but wants to begin EMDR around the childhood abuse that is foundational in the maintenance of the eating disorder. Client would see eating disorder therapist weekly (or biweekly) and EMDR therapist weekly.
Fully Transitioning to an EMDR Therapist
For some clients, they find it helpful to have one therapist who is getting all the information from them over an extended period of time. There’s an understanding that some sessions will look like more traditional talk therapy, while others will be more focused on EMDR and reprocessing. For most of the clients on my caseload, they know that I am conceptualizing their issues through the EMDR framework, so we can begin reprocessing when they are ready. This type of transition is helpful for therapists who may be feeling stuck with a client and believe that EMDR would be beneficial, but that their relationship with the client has reached the end of the road. Some therapists also aren’t comfortable having multiple therapists see the same client - which is totally fair - and would rather make the transition to avoid any kinds of overlapping in sessions.
Example: A client is struggling with motherhood and recognizes that her own childhood and current marital issues are contributing to her anxiety and depression. She looks specifically for a therapist who specializes in using EMDR to treat moms with mood disorders and burnout so that she can talk about current issues while building connections to the past, eventually completing memory reprocessing.
If you’re interested in learning more about EMDR therapy and how it could help you or your client, reach out today!
