Transformational EMDR™ is simply practicing EMDR in the way Francine Shapiro wanted it to be practiced. Perhaps some EMDR history is necessary to explain.
The History of Integrating Other Models with EMDR
In 1989, Francine Shapiro’s discovery was called Eye Movement Desensitization (EMD). Shapiro thought she stumbled upon a therapy that simply desensitized a troubling memory or image. She noticed clients had a problem focusing on a single image. She soon realized something more was happening than desensitizing a single memory or image. The process created an abundance of related material to understand.
In 1990, she realized the processing was far more comprehensive than desensitizing a single image. She realized EMD activated a psychoanalytic process, and at its core, EMD was psychoanalytic (Leeds, 2016). She added the “R” for reprocessing, which better described what was occurring during this eye movement therapy she discovered; hence, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) was born.
When EMDR arrived on the mental health scene, every clinician was already working from an evidence-based model of therapy, from psychodynamic to cognitive behavioral therapy, gestalt therapy, etc. When clinicians started using EMDR, everyone had to figure out how to integrate EMDR with their model. The task at this time was to learn how to integrate EMDR into the pre-existing evidence-based models that clinicians were using.
Shapiro’s first offering of EMDR: Principle, Protocols, and Procedures was published in 1995, and it was preceded by numerous research studies that led to her first text. The Eight Phases of EMDR therapy were introduced in the 1995 book. EMDR was presented as a method or a therapeutic procedure, but it was not yet a model of therapy. It was a proverbial tool for the therapist’s toolbox.
Seven years later, in 2002, the American Psychological Association (APA) published a book edited by Francine Shapiro, EMDR: An Integrative Psychotherapy Approach. This book demonstrated how various experts using their original model integrated EMDR into their work. This text demonstrated how EMDR, integrated with other models, increased the therapeutic effectiveness of their original model. “When EMDR is combined with another model, profound psychological change can occur” (Shapiro, 2001, 2018).
Historically, EMDR had to be integrated into other models because everyone worked from another model.
In 2001, Shapiro’s second edition of EMDR: Basic Principles, Protocols, and Procedures introduced EMDR as a free-standing psychotherapeutic model called the Adaptive Information Processing model. At this time, EMDR was no longer a tool for the toolbox; instead, it became the toolbox. Integrating other models into the AIP model is rarely necessary. The original integration was essential because EMDR had to be combined with existing models. This is no longer the case.
EMDR, as a model, does not need help. In fact, integrating other models with the adaptive information processing model weakens it, as Shapiro warns in her 2003 keynote address. Reckless integration can causes harm. Without training, experience, and a deep understanding of what occurs during the adaptive information processing model, damage can be done. This “fixing things that aren’t broken” is a serious problem. An issue that Shapiro identified and complained about in 2003 during her keynote address at the EMDRIA Conference in Denver. Her address was titled, The Adaptive Information Processing Model and Case Conceptualization. She was upset about the unnecessary integration of other models with EMDR, especially with excessive preparation (phase two). Below is an excerpt from her address in 2003. Shapiro said,
“If you’ve done guided imagery, hypnosis, round table, inner child, those are great things, but you know you’ve distorted it, and it’s not the processing. If you’ve done any of them for whatever reason you felt you needed to because the client was going too far away or whatever it might be, you have to go back and make sure you’ve cleaned out all the associated material, okay because those things are like benzos. Hypnosis, hypnotic suggestions, positive affirmations, unless they’re constantly reinforced, they disappear. This is not what you are looking for. What you’re looking for is full and complete processing as it’s currently stored. The bottom line is preparation is not processing. We all want the same thing: we want healthy, happy clients who can bond and love and connect; that’s what we want but seeing them with a smile on their face at the end of the session is not it! (Let me reiterate seeing them with a smile on their face at the end of the session is not it!)
Shapiro continues with a complaint and warning,
“We have had an upsurge in clients calling the institute over the past year, saying I’m really confused. I’ve been doing EMDR for weeks and months, and I love my clinician. We have great rapport, and I feel great at the end of every session, but when I go home, my issues are still there. I’m just not getting any better and I read this book, and it doesn’t sound like what they’re doing is EMDR.
Preparation is great. Most people don’t need a lot of preparation. You know, that’s the bottom line because the preparation isn’t the processing, so part of the clinical work is to identify with that client how much preparation does your client need, because they’re going to have to be in a certain stance in order to handle experiential contributors.
Over the past twenty years or so the only preparation I have used is the safe/peaceful place and sometimes breathing. It takes about fifteen minutes to do. Just following Shapiro’s instruction on how to do phase two.
Why is the excessive preparation a problem? In my experience, I hear statements like this at every training I provide. Trainees who previously experienced EMDR as a patient say things like,
“We did EMDR, but it was not like this.”
“I had to meet my parts; that took over a month.”
“I had to talk to my wisdom figure and couldn’t do it. My therapist was getting frustrated with me.”
“We took a few weeks to develop a gathering committee, and then she kept forcing me to talk to a committee member whenever I was upset. I wanted to keep going, but we always stopped. I never really got anywhere.”
After hearing these stories, I often wonder why these clinicians bother attending my EMDR training given the modest if not frustrating results they experienced with their own EMDR therapy.
For the record, Shapiro never recommends any of these activities in any of the three editions of EMDR: Basic Principles, Protocols, and Procedures. Her instruction for Phase Two, in the most recent edition her discussion of how to do the Preparation Phase, is only two and a half pages, pages 117, 118, and top of 119. That’s it! Of the 568 pages, just two and a half pages are spent addressing the preparation phase.
“Preparation is not processing!” “Most people do not need a lot of preparation” (Shapiro, 2003).
The Keynote Address:
The Adaptive Information Processing Model and Case Conceptualization by Francine Shapiro
In 2003, Shapiro’s keynote address described how to apply the adaptive information processing model as a comprehensive therapy model. I was fortunate to have a copy of her address on a CD. I am sure I listened to it at least 50 times while driving to my office and back. I had been doing EMDR since 1998 using EMDR as a procedure, but EMDR as a model was different, and I wanted to understand it clearly. After a while, I could practically recite her entire talk.
I also started doing what she said to do in my practice. I was getting extraordinary results, but it wasn’t easy. Developing a high tolerance for intense emotional outbursts took time. Her instructions were clear.
Clinician’s Fear Impedes the Process
Shapiro said,
“It’s very important to know who you are and what do you need to do to feel present and not be afraid of what the person is going to be experiencing. Are you alright with what they need to experience, or are you going to say to them, no, you don’t have to feel that right now? Everyone has different tolerance levels of affect. What is your tolerance level?
If you see a client feeling their disturbance, do you have the sense it’s dangerous for them? Or are you telling your client don’t feel, be afraid of your feelings? Are you giving them the same messages that they got early on? Don’t feel it, don’t express it. Your client will run away. They will think it’s shameful.
Or can you disintegrate all those messages that are within you. Have you cleaned them out of your system? Have you done your own work, because processing means the client will go where they need to go and are you ready to let them do that?”
I knew I had crossed the Rubicon when a client wailed, slid off the chair, and ended up in a fetal position on the floor while holding tappers. She said, “Do not stop!” Surprisingly, stopping never even occurred to me. I had no intention of stopping. She was not dissociating, she was present, and after twenty minutes, she was healed.
Trusting the process took time. Knowing that whatever I needed to do would occur to me in the moment took time. Learning to stop thinking and just wait, watch, and listen took time. Starting EMDR sessions by following the client rather than imposing my plan or ideas took time. This different approach was self-reinforcing because the results were undeniably better. In fact, they were transforming.
Transformational EMDR™ is nothing more than doing EMDR how Shapiro said it should be practiced. Anything you find a Transformational EMDR therapist doing, you will find in Shapiro’s EMDR: Basic Principles, Protocols, and Procedures text.
In my next blog, we will explore EMDR as an individuating accelerant. Shapiro always felt that EMDR was more than a model for reducing and eliminating symptoms. Symptom reduction was only a part of EMDR’s power. Transformational EMDR™ activates the road to self-actualization, which Shapiro talks about below. Jung would call it individuation. In the vernacular, it is getting on with your authentic purpose. Yes, EMDR does this for clients.
In her 2003 keynote address Shapiro continues,
“Someone who comes in with a driving phobia, if I just concentrate on the driving phobia and send her back to a life of quiet desperation, I wouldn’t personally consider that good work unless that’s all she’s willing to do. As a clinician if I’m taking a history and seeing the larger clinical picture at least let me make the person aware of the possibilities and the potential to see if there’s other things because a symptom like a phobia or PTSD can simply be masking. It’s like taking the quilt off the mattress. You know there can be a lot of lumps and bumps that you need to deal with so if I take a good clinical history, I’m able to identify what might need to be processed to help get this person to an actualized state.
You know it’s like not just actualization for some, actualization for everyone into the positive. It’s not a disease model. We just don’t want them to be limping along we want them to be dancing okay.”
Stay tuned for more about transformational EMDR™ and what Shapiro says about the self-actualizing power of EMDR, which I have been doing since 2003 after absorbing and assimilating her keynote address into my work and life. To learn more about Transformational EMDR™, read my book, The Hero’s Journey: Integrating Jungian Psychology with EMDR Therapy. A note about the book: there is no integration; integration is a word almost required nowadays when discussing EMDR. Jungian material appears, but we do not insert it or change the Eight Phase Model. We are just noticing and understanding more of the material in a deeper and profound way during the session. Then, this material is identified and utilized.
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