EMDR
Take the protocol apart. Use the pieces.
EMDR is an arrangement, not an invention. Its components ~ alternating bilateral stimulation, dual attention, systematic desensitization, interweaves ~ predate the protocol and work outside it. This site shows you the pieces and how to use them: as components inside any therapy you already practice or as modifications for clients the standard protocol wasn't built for ~ complex trauma clients.
The print companion to this site. Worksheets, scripts, decision trees, and the full Chapter 5 compulsive-behavior protocol.
Two audiences. One toolkit.
Audience A ~ Any clinician. Use EMDR's components inside whatever modality you already practice. No EMDR credential required. These are basic clinical tools ~ not Shapiro's intellectual property. This site shows you which components, when, and how they fit alongside the work you already do.
Audience B ~ Any EMDR-trained clinician whose complex trauma and dissociative client becomes destabilized with use of the standard protocol. You need to modify it for the population that it was NOT tested on: restricted vs. unrestricted processing; in-session tools like Back-of-Head Scale and CIPOS, grounding practices, and somatic interventions, when ego-state work has to come first, and, sometimes, when not to start memory processing at all. The deconstruction here is clinical risk management.
Linda A. Curran, BCPC, LPC, is a Certified EMDR Practitioner/Instructor/Advisor and Certified Gestalt Therapist who has spent twenty years training clinicians in complex-trauma treatment. She is the author of Trauma Competency: A Clinician's Guide (2010) and 101 Trauma-Informed Interventions (2013), and produced eleven programs in PESI's Master Clinician Series. The critique on this site comes from inside the EMDR community, not outside it.
Three ways into the work.
Components for Your Therapy
For any clinician. EMDR's component tools ~ systematic desensitization, alternating bilateral stimulation, dual attention, guided imagery, behavioral rehearsal, imaginal and cognitive interweaves, and somatic tracking ~ used inside the modality you already practice. No EMDR credential required.
Modifying EMDR for Complex Trauma and Dissociation
For any EMDR-trained clinician whose client falls outside the standard protocol's tested population. Restricted vs. unrestricted processing, BHS, CIPOS, the dissociative table, ego-state work, when to slow down, when not to start memory processing at all.
The Eight Phases
Shapiro's standard protocol, in order, with the rationale for each step. Not a prerequisite for the rest of the site ~ this is the assembly we're taking apart, available when you want it.
The frameworks underneath the work.
Deconstruction only makes sense if you know what holds the pieces together. The concepts any trauma modality leans on ~ Window of Tolerance, Structural Dissociation, Polyvagal Theory, Attachment ~ are here as self-contained references, written for working clinicians.