Well not quite yet, so breathe a sigh of relief.  Your job is safe for a while! What about five years from now?  Not so sure, as it’s quite likely, based on current developments, that there will be AI generated EMDR therapists at work in five years’ time. As I, (Richard Worthing-Davies), wrote in the EMDR Therapy quarterly (Winter 2021), the rapid development of AI (Artificial Intelligence) is likely to be highly disruptive in health care diagnosis and delivery over the coming years.  I pointed out, though, that most so called AI machines are designed to perform singular tasks ..read more

Introduction Dissociation, is the process of emotional distancing often experienced by people undergoing a traumatic experience.  It is also commonly experienced by clients during an abreaction to the trauma.  This is distinct from Dissociative disorders, a much more serious condition characterised by splitting of the personality into parts - Structural Dissociation.  What follows is an account of the theory of Structural Dissociation described in “The Haunted Self”, the classic text on this subject (1).  For those who have the time, we recommend reading the full text – som ..read more

Changing the brain is better than prescription drugs for treating back pain.  A new clinical trial provides more evidence that a change of mindset, not prescription drugs, is key to eliminating nagging (chronic) back pain.  A paper in The Journal of the American Medical Association, as reported in the London Times, showed long-standing back pain as a ‘modifiable problem of the nervous system rather than a disc, bone or muscle problem’. The researchers offered people with lower back pain a 12 week ‘sensorimotor retraining programme’ designed to change how people think about pain, how ..read more

TITLE: Healing Pain with EMDR - what you need to know about pain, the brain and treatment. VENUE: Llyswen Village Hall, Llyswen near Brecon, LD3 OLJ WHEN: Friday, September 23rd, 10.00am-1.00pm LEARNING OUTCOMES: Radically new perspectives on: how and where pain is created and its meaning/purpose the brain as a ‘predictive machine’ that modulates pain output according to sensory inputs, imaginal reframing and changes in context the importance of the therapeutic relationship…. ……and how these new perspectives help explain how EMDR and sensori-motor interventions lead to healing of acute a ..read more

Marilyn and Richard discuss the apparent confusion in the EMDR world about these four protocols. People appear seem to know about how the protocols relate to one another but unclear about the exact differences in how the protocols are applied in practice.  We are going to use this blog to highlight some of the confusion and see if we can tease out some practical ways of working that will be followed by videos on emdrgateway that demonstrate the protocols in action. Video 038 on EMD is the start. The thing there is agreement on is that the reason for these four protocols is to do with cli ..read more

Richard and Marilyn discuss the use of EMDR to change generational characteristics that affect their clients today. Before Darwin, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, a French natural history scholar, proposed that characteristics acquired by experience during an organism’s lifetime could become heritable. Was Charles Darwin wrong? This is contrary to ’natural selection’ the currently accepted explanation first formulated by Darwin and supported by modern genetics. Natural selection holds that heritable characteristics arise by chance and are retained if competition shows them to be useful. The convention ..read more

This is an important question for EMDR therapists because so many people who have experienced trauma develop chronic pain symptoms. Then, many therapists, EMDR or others, don’t feel confident in dealing with pain. Interestingly, research tells us that when clients believe that their therapist is confident, pain relief is more marked than when they think the therapist is hesitant or unsure.   Given this information, how can we become more confident?  We are hoping that this article will help you gain greater confidence by explaining latest thinking on pain, how it works and why EMDR i ..read more

We enter 2022 having 40 videos for subscribers to access, showing how to use EMDR to address a wide range of important therapeutic needs and making learning easy and fast.  The EMDR Gateway team We have close to 1000 users and we’re financially solvent.  This has enabled us to make a significant donation to our partner Trauma Aid UK,  A big investment in new EMDR training videos and educational material in 2022. The first new Video releases in 2022 shows how to use EMDR to overcome performance anxiety and stage fright (Video 022); Video 077 demonstrates how to create and instal ..read more

By early December all three of the videos on Complex Grief will be online, showing how to address the trauma, present triggers and consequential losses associated with the loss of a loved one, and future fears and concerns. Because the entire process is split into three short videos, you don’t have to master the entire ‘jigsaw’ of complex grief before beginning work with your clients – start with Video 019 which focuses on the trauma, move onto 020 when you are ready to work with present triggers and losses, and then onto 021 when looking to the future. Complex grief training videos ..read more

Dr Marilyn Tew, one of EMDR Gateway’s founder members, explains the difference between these two diagnoses and clears away much of the confusion around it. And does it make a difference in terms of treatment, and should we be worried if we come across CPTSD in our clients? “It's not the person refusing to let go of the past, but the past refusing to let go of the person.”               Working with trauma has brought some very complex cases to my therapy room. I have often grappled with the complexity of the stories told, th ..read more