This training explores ways to work more effectively with complex trauma using EMDR therapy in perinatal contexts with a particular emphasis on challenges and difficulties encountered in Phases Two and Four of EMDR therapy.

This training reviews the core procedural processes of EMDR and reviews the Adaptive Information Processing model to explain why some clients with complex trauma may lack much of the needed adaptive information and why they struggle to tolerably activate, slow down, be present, and notice. Helpful modifications to standard resources, attachment resources, and accommodations to facilitate more tolerable activation are explored.

Trainees will learn concrete strategies to work more effectively with severely complex perinatal clients who may have struggled in EMDR therapy when using more standard approaches. The goal of this training is to allow clients with severe trauma to resource well enough to eventually engage in unrestricted processing in EMDR therapy.