EMDR therapists integrating EMDR into their clinical practice

This research project investigated how EMDR Therapists integrated EMDR into their clinical practice post-training and what, if any, difficulties they experienced. A total of 74 respondents completed a questionnaire and 9 respondents were interviewed using a semi-structured interview, giving a total of 83 respondents. 40% of both samples (which came from around the world) reported experiencing difficulties with integrating EMDR into their clinical practice. The types of difficulties which they reported included differences between EMDR protocol and the therapists’ original training and orientation, patient characteristics, therapists’ own anxieties and confidence as well as organizational and management hostility to EMDR up to and including bullying of the therapist in different ways including “being sent to Coventry”. These organization & management issues are not covered in the current training model for EMDR and whilst supervision is necessary post training, it is not be sufficient to address the organizational issues relating to integration of EMDR into clinical practice. This will be highlighted in the presentation.

Conference

English

Timothy Dunne

Dunne, T. (2011, March). EMDR therapists integrating EMDR into their clinical practice. Presentation at the 9th EMDR Association UK & Ireland Annual Conference & AGM, Bristol, UK