Show Notes

In today’s episode, Brittany Meredith, Registered Psychologist and EMDR consultant will share how to integrate EMDR into your clinical practice.

Hi, Brittany, welcome to the show. I’m so glad to have you here today.

Hi, Kayla. I’m glad to be here.

Brittany, before we dive into today’s episode, please introduce yourself, where you’re from, and tell us a little bit about your own practice journey.

So like Kayla said, my name is Brittany Meredith and I am a registered psychologist in Alberta. So as an EMDR consultant and training coach.

I first became trained in EMDR in 2016 and then retrained in 2018 and started doing consultation and coaching at that time.

Amazing. So let’s dive right in. What are the most common concerns that clinicians have when first integrating EMDR into their practice?

 In getting started, many clinicians fear doing something wrong. So they fear that they’re going to dysregulate their clients or not be able to get them out of, say, like a dissociated state or that they’re going to cause some harm to their clients. Many also fear doing what we call unrestricted processing and not being able to contain enough for their client to be stable in between sessions.

Many clinicians also fear that being EMDR trained will replace their existing identity as a therapist and that they believe they can only do EMDR and not integrate their existing clinical styles. So in reality there is so much opportunity to integrate other modalities and this can increase the effectiveness of EMDR therapy and increase the effectiveness of clinicians in general for confidence.

I often tell trainees that they don’t have to abandon their approaches, but to discover how to integrate what they are already doing with EMDR.

How can clinicians ethically and confidently integrate EMDR while still feeling grounded in say, their existing clinical skills?

I believe that attunement with our clients is the most important factor in any type of therapy. It’s important that clinicians see EMDR as a tool that they can choose to integrate into their work.

Clinicians can stay grounded by anchoring in their clinical skills that they already have and bringing EMDR into that existing framework. So ethically, integrating EMDR requires awareness of the client’s capacity to move through processing. It may mean spending more time in certain phases, like the preparation phase becomes important as opposed to moving too quickly into processing.

Roy Kiessling’s processing continuum, I believe, allows us to more effectively integrate EMDR at a pace that is right for us and for our clients.

What does it look like to integrate EMDR in a way that feels sustainable? Rather than say overwhelming.

Yeah. So again, sustainable integration means letting EMDR become a part of your toolkit as opposed to being like the be all, end all.

So EMDR does not need to be a part of every session or of the entire session. Every time we see someone. Sometimes we can integrate pieces or principles of EMDR. Without getting into formal processing, we can be intentional about our choice to use EMDR by being attuned to our client and using our clinical judgment.

I believe EMDR has the potential to reduce clinical burnout by providing more agency and mastery in moving through our clients’ struggles with them.

I love that. And something that I’m really thinking about, because as you’re talking about how we can integrate our existing therapeutic modalities into EMDR. Is that when we think of really therapy overall, it’s finding the modality that one fits the client’s needs at any given time. And like you said, integrating those, it’s not just, oh, I’m going to use, CBT today, or I’m going to use EMDR today. How can we incorporate all of our knowledge and all of the skills together when appropriate, of course to support our client with whatever comes up in therapy that given day.

 There’s so much overlap between different approaches. And sometimes if we stick to one thing, we miss the nuances or opportunities for some really effective work in integrating those things.

Absolutely. I couldn’t agree more. How do you consultation and supervision support successful EMDR integration?

So in the training that we do through Roy Kiessling’s Group, we have 10 consultation sessions built in when you purchase the training. And I think it is very important to access that type of support. It makes sense for EMDR to be a bit of a learning curve and it can be a lot all at once, especially in the five day training that we do. It’s a lot of information.

So I think consultation is really important in helping you understand the protocol, particular client presentations, and help clinicians feel more confident in integrating EMDR into their work.

Supervision, of course, helps clinicians discern when and how to proceed with EMDR in specific cases. I think both consultation and supervision support the clinician’s nervous system, which allows them to work more safely and effectively with clients.

 And this also makes me think about, sometimes we take this like a training, whether it’s a two day, five day training, and we think, oh, like I’m an expert now. But really where I think the meat of any of our skill building is the integration into the practice. But having an experienced person who has been there help guide you. So again, whether it’s through consultation or supervision, that’s I think how we really, truly build our skills.

Yeah, I totally agree. And you can also decide when to best use consultation. A lot of people think that you have to already be working with clients or doing EMDR to access consultation, but it can be helpful in building your confidence before you even actually get into doing some of that stuff. So anywhere in the process of we are working with EMDR, I think consultation can be really helpful and effective.

Oh, I love that you said that because yes, again, that’s a common myth. It’s that I need to have some reason to be seeking consultation or supervision, but it’s about building the skills even before you integrate it as well. If that is appropriate.

Yeah, and I think there’s also a lot of value in hearing from other people because when you get into consultation, there might be some folks who are just starting. There might be some folks who are like halfway through their consultation or near the end of their consultation.

And so having that variety of experience can be really helpful in building each other’s confidence as well.

Sometimes you get to hear about things that you would’ve never even thought of, and because someone else has either gone through it or considered it. You’ve already building kind of those skills to deal with it beforehand.

Absolutely. And there are so many different protocols in EMDR as well that accessing consultation allows you to not just get the foundation of the eight phases, but also expand and explore what other possibilities there are within EMDR, because there really are so many possibilities and hundreds of protocols.

Absolutely. So are there specific mistakes that you see quite often that clinicians may make early on, and do you have any advice on how they can course correct those mistakes if it’s showing up for them?

For sure. When we do training, I’m a bit of a stickler sometimes when it comes to narrowing down the negative belief I think I’m known for that. So I find narrowing down the negative and positive belief networks can be a bit of a learning curve early on, but I think it’s really important to narrow that down in a way that makes it most effective for yourself and your clients.

So sometimes the beliefs don’t match entirely. I’m like have a belief of I’m not safe. And if you go with a positive belief of I am good enough, regardless, those don’t quite match up as well as I’m not safe and I am safe. Or I can recognize safety. Sometimes we don’t narrow them down enough to make processing the most effective. So there’s like hierarchies of beliefs, let’s say.

Or clients might say something that feels true or could potentially be true. And so I wanna get down to the most irrational core root of that belief. If a client says, someone doesn’t like me, or some people don’t like me, we can’t all be liked by everyone, right? So that can be true or rational sometimes.

And I wanna get down to the irrational route of if people don’t like me, what does that say about me as a person? Or what does it feel like it says about me as a person, which might be more something like, I’m not good enough, which I believe everybody is good enough, right? So that is truly an irrational belief. We can course correct by revisiting and narrowing down the beliefs to their most irrational route and working from there.

Similarly, like I said, beliefs can overlap and sometimes it’s easiest to start with a more difficult or emotional belief when that brings up more emotions from the client.

And sometimes it’s better to start with an easier one or one that is less impactful, but still impacting them in some ways. EMDR can be quite forgiving in being able to switch gears and move forward more effectively.

I love that. What advice would you give to clinicians who are trained in EMDR, but hesitant to fully use it with their clients?

I think just to go for it to get familiar with the processing continuum from Roy Kiessling can be really helpful as well, because it allows us more flexibility and confidence in working through whatever we need to work through with our clients or getting through the target sequence plan. Clinicians sometimes feel like they need to abandon all of their clinical skills that they have in order to integrate EMDR. I encourage clinicians to be themselves and to bring EMDR in as a tool to support the great work that they’re already doing.

Amazing. Brittany, I know you offer EMDR consulting. Can you share with listeners how they can reach out with you if they’re looking for EMDR consulting?

For sure. There are several places that you can find me on the Power of Psychology website, emdrpower.com

You can find me through Roy Kiessling’s EMDR consulting group, emdrconsulting.com, or through the EMDRIA website under their find a Therapist function, which is emdria.org.

So to access EMDR Consulting with Brittany, head to emdrpower.com

Brittany, I also know that you do advanced training in EMDR. Can you tell us a little bit about that and again, how listeners can sign up and reach you if they’re interested in doing that advanced training?

Yeah, so I’ve done advanced training in integrating clinical hypnosis with EMDR. So if people are particularly interested in that I’m hoping to offer more opportunities for that this year.

But right now there is, an online option through the ASCH portal, the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis Portal, where they have my recording of the advanced integrating EMDR training on there. And so if you go to asch.net you can access that there or look for opportunities for me to provide that training in the future through emdrpower.com.

Brittany, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today to discuss how to integrate EMDR into your clinical practice.

Thank you. It’s been a pleasure.

And thank you everyone for tuning into today’s episode, and I hope you join me again soon on The Designer Practice Podcast.

Until next time, bye for now.

Credits & Disclaimers

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