Five Things Every Newly Trained EMDR Therapist Wished They Knew

The suspense, appropriate skepticism, and excitement that I felt as I sat at the table on the first day of my EMDR training was enormous. Before signing up, I thoroughly read about EMDR’s beginnings with Dr. Francine Shapiro. I read journals and psychotherapy magazines. I watched YouTube® videos of masterful and not-so-masterful EMDR therapy sessions and consumed healing stories from EMDR clients sharing how much it changed their lives. I was all in.

Then it started…

The heavy and constant flow of information included a complete glossary of new terms, SUD, VoC, BLS, DAS, “Back to Target,” Float Back, Phases, Stages, and Protocols. Let’s not forget all of the necessary neurobiology terms needed to understand what we would be doing to our client’s brain, body, and memory systems. Yep, AIP, the window of tolerance, memory forming, memory retrieval, memory consolidation…for those of you who have been through it…you know this list could go on and on. It was a new language that the trainer was speaking, and I was not fluent.

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