Enhancing positive emotion and performance with EMDR

The scripts included in this chapter exemplify how an EMDR therapist might talk with a client when the focus is on positive psychology and performance enhancement: reaching for a goal not yet realized, looking for a way to strengthen a positive quality, or hoping to fine-tune existing skills. The scripts accompany a model that has been taught in a number of countries to therapists, coaches, and human resource advisors. The model combines elements of coaching and psychotherapy. Coaches attend to a client's skills and deficits, look for solutions that are behavioral and strategic, and focus on the present and future while downplaying the past. Psychotherapists, on the other hand, attend to the client's internal experience: emotions, self-talk, beliefs, and other not-so-observable factors. The focus is largely on the past and present. It follows that the model will be most useful to persons who practice both coaching and psychotherapy. As a coach, the practitioner is familiar with the situation in which the client seeks to perform, whether the client hopes to run faster, lead more effectively, parent better, or study smarter. Competency issues for coaches have been detailed by Hays. As a psychotherapist, the practitioner—it will be assumed—will be comfortable using EMDR in the treatment of traumatic memories and other matters that interfere with the client's personal growth. This chapter provides appropriate scripts.

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English

John Hartung