When traumatic events overwhelm our client’s AIP, reprocessing doesn’t occur. Their ‘Daily Living’ part of their personality “tunes out” the Defensive part of their personality so it can continue surviving their life. Thus the defensive part of our personality becomes stuck in “trauma time” and focuses on managing the maladaptive fragments. It's ability to ‘keep secrets’ enables our clients to keep surviving! Client's who are struggling with dissociation might show little progress in therapy, depersonalization/derealization, amnesia, flashbacks, hearing voices, , somatic (chronic, unexplained symptoms), sleep disturbance and suicidal attempts. The goal of therapy is for our clients to feel safe enough to share their vulnerable parts in therapy, development an understanding of the role they played in surviving, and integrate their stuck defensive parts so their system can return to the Daily Living Action System and Defensive Action System working together. There’s no need to dissociate from trauma material because the AIP is able to consolidate it naturally on its own.

In this webinar, you’ll learn strategies to work WITH clients whose trauma response is to dissociate when overwhelmed during all phases of EMDR Therapy. Starting with a thorough understanding of what dissociation is, therapists will feel learn how dissociation presents in their clients; how to assess it using the DES and MIDD 60; how to identify and stabilize parts of their client’s personality using the dissociative table; learn how to know when a client and all of their parts are ready to reprocess; learn how to start the desensitization phase using the dissociative table, how to use it to deal with abreactions, and how to use it to re-stabilize a client when they leave their window. You’ll walk away feeling more confident in reprocessing with your clients struggling with complex traumatic symptoms.