EMDR Stepping Stones - Strategies to increase stabilisation for complex clients

Presented by Naomi Iliffe and Fiona Mawson – EMDRAA & EMDRIA Accredited Consultants 

Deepen your knowledge and skills to support complex and dissociative clients with a focus on ‘parts work’ and polyvagal interventions, so that you can interweave these Phase 2 strategies into Phases 4-7. 

Join Naomi and Fiona for three days of focused learning and practice to safely and supportively assist complex and dissociative clients in reprocessing memories.

In the first day and a half, you will learn how to

• Review the definition of dissociation and treatment implications
• conceptualise parts of self and how to introduce parts language to clients
• Describe and apply the Theory of Structural Dissociation
  • ANP, EP, action systems (approach/avoid), action tendencies (fight/flight, freeze, submit, attach), realisation & synthesis
• Use six strategies to work directly with phobias and parts of the self for trauma work
• Use Fraser’s Dissociative Table and how it is useful for working with a client’s parts of self
• Find solutions that arise from barriers and avoidance when working with parts of the self
• Observe through video how phobias and parts of self can be respected and resolved in trauma work

You will learn how to work with emotional parts to ensure they are oriented to time, safe, and able to work collaboratively to begin memory reprocessing.  

In the following day and a half, we will teach you the fundamentals of Polyvagal Theory and specific Polyvagal strategies to help your complex clients.  This part of the training will draw on the work of Stephen Porges, Deb Dana and Peter Levine.  You will learn:

• The foundations of Polyvagal Theory (Ventral Vagal State, Sympathetic State, Dorsal Vagal State)
• The role of Neuroception (safety cues, threat cues)
• Practical application including exercises to teach clients self-regulation and to understand their autonomic state

Walk away with a structured workbook to support your clients so that you will be able to guide them through strategies for distress tolerance, emotional regulation, and safety in expressing/experiencing emotions. You will walk away with increased skills to interweave phase 2 stabilisation and resourcing strategies into the standard protocol to help your complex and dissociative clients stay present, regulated, safe, and within their Window of Tolerance, so they can maintain dual attention to reprocess trauma content successfully.

This work draws on some of the work of Joany Spierings, Carol Forgash, Phil Manfield, Jim Knipe, Onno Van der Hart, Janine Fisher, Ellert Nijenhuis, Kathy Steele, Suzette Goon, Robin Shapiro, Roger Solomon and of course, Francine Shapiro, coupled with over thirty years of combined experience that Naomi and Fiona bring to their training.