I’m going to share with you an email I received from a therapist and my response relating to EMDR Therapy.
Recently, I had a new question from the parent of an adult client. The parent is paying for the client’s care and encouraging the client to do EMDR for past trauma caused by the other parent who is no longer in the picture. The client does not recall details of childhood trauma but acknowledges abandonment and other related issues. The parent asked if it would be helpful for them to disclose details of past events to the client to facilitate treatment with EMDR. I said that I preferred to work with whatever memories of the event (or recent, related events) the client had.
However, I acknowledged that this was the first time I had heard this question, so I would reach out to a trainer.
What are your thoughts on this? Grateful for any advice you might have.
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Thanks for contacting me.
It is a good question and I think it could go either way. I haven’t had this come up in my practice but I’m happy to share my ideas.
I think from the AIP model perspective, while it’s true we don’t need all the information of what happened, more information is good. I don’t think knowing more would get in the way of processing.
Of course, it depends on the people involved and what your client wants. So, if your client is open to it, a joint session or two with mom might be good. My guess is that Mom could use a little EMDR herself.
Issues like abandonment are complex and take time to process. I’ve gotten to where I take a longer view of processing and working with trauma, such that, it’s more than just clearing one or two traumas to help a person get on track and free of maladaptive neural networks.
In these types of cases, EMDR can help clear traumas and it can be used to help with the attachment wound. Although they may have been formed from the same experiences, they can also be approached differently with EMDR protocols. For example, the EMDR Standard Protocol is more about clearing target memories and events and Attachment EMDR processing is more about enhancing bonds. That looks more like resource development (RDI).
In thinking about it, and re-reading your email, I think I’d want the client to have full information as that might help him get more relief, and strengthen the connection with mom, as well.
Hope that helps and let me know how it goes!
Thanks,
Jordan