While most of our clients respond to EMDR treatments with ease and surprising success, others are inexplicably resistant or become flooded, numb, sleepy, or blocked. Faced with the client who cannot tolerate affect, who becomes overwhelmed by traumatic targets, who cannot stay grounded, manage self-destructive impulses, differentiate past and present experience, or create a Safe Place inside— is there any way that EMDR can be helpful?

The answer is, “Yes.” Fortunately, the use of simple body-centered interventions drawn from Sensorimotor Psychotherapy to modulate autonomic arousal and address somatically-driven trauma responses can often make EMDR treatments accessible even for blocked, de-stabilized and dissociative clients.

This advanced workshop will introduce a conceptual model for understanding how EMDR treatments can be made more effective even with dysregulated clients and offer a “crash course” in Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, a body-centered talking therapy developed specifically to treat post-traumatic symptoms. Participants will be taught simple, body-centered interventions that can be easily woven into both trauma processing and Resource Development protocols. Using lecture, videotape, session demonstration and practice opportunities, the workshop will offer EMDR therapists the chance to integrate these simple but effective approaches into their clinical practice.

Upon completion of this workshop, participants will be able to: · Diagnose blocks to effective EMDR treatment · Describe body-centered interventions for regulating autonomic arousal · Integrate body-centered strategies into EMDR trauma processing · Increase effectiveness of resource development strategies in preparation for EMDR trauma processing