So What Does It Mean To Be An EMDR Therapist
We get excited to start implementing everything right out of basic training. We have some trepidation but are overwhelmingly eager to apply all the knowledge and insight we’ve gathered to help our clients best. While all that is true, sometimes we're not fully prepared or understand what it means to fill the role of an EMDR therapist. Being a trauma therapist is like a roller coaster, with daily ups and downs. We must learn to protect our energy and share a space with our clients as they rehash some of the hardest and most trying times. We hold space for the memories, images, and horror these individuals have experienced. In basic training, we are not necessarily taught how to manage and navigate that journey with our clients.
It is an amazing and unique opportunity to sit with our clients and experience what has been stored in their implicit and explicit minds. We work with them on creating a space where dual awareness can exist. We discuss dual awareness as the ability to revisit the past while remaining in the present moment. I’m sure you’ve heard one foot in the past and one foot in the present since it is the heart and core of EMDR. That’s what matters most both for our clients and for us.
The brain has an amazing capacity to revisit and re-process an experience without ever reliving it. Our job as the therapist is to hold that same dual awareness to have one foot in the memory with the client and one foot grounded in the present. We provide or create a safe place for clients to revisit those memories. We attune to everything that may be coming up for them and bring them back to the moment when needed. Healing is not always linear, nor is being a trauma therapist. There will be days that it is challenging to hold space, and there will be topics that are hard to hear. We not only need to ensure we are taking care of ourselves, but we also understand the job's importance. We become the safe ally that steps on this journey with them and reminds our clients that we will be with them every step.
This is the moment we talk about in basic training: meeting our clients where they are at/identifying their capabilities or capacity. We restructure and revisit those memories that may have been encoded with fear, shame, and disgust for years and sometimes decades. As we honor our clients’ resiliency, we also tap into our own. We honor that this is not always an easy career and give ourselves grace.
How have you been checking in with yourself?
Have you been feeling burnt out?
Has any resentment surfaced?
Is it challenging to see how your client’s symptoms make sense through an AIP model?
These become our checkpoints as trauma therapists just as we attune to our clients in session and use the same dual awareness to attune to ourselves.
Storytime/self-reflection: all of our experiences make us who we are. We all have our own pasts, our own grief, our own stress, and our own stories that get sent to us by the messengers within our own bodies. As therapists, we must honor these stories and make sense of them, so they don’t get in the way of holding space for our clients’ stories. Understanding our own stories helps us to be able to join our clients as they revisit theirs. Early on, I noticed that every time a client came to me wanting to process through a car crash, my stomach would light up. I was safe, and I felt safe at that moment, but I couldn’t quite understand why I also felt so woozy. Upon further investigation into my EMDR journey, I realized my storytellers were getting in the way of an accident I was in as a kid. We attune, we do our own work, and we support healing, both internal and external. That is the job of an EMDR therapist, and it is a privilege to be able to do it.
