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Racial Trauma in EMDR Practice: Building Knowledge of Harm, Power, and Clinical Impact – EMDR East Anglia Networking Day with Carlyn Boyce

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Saturday 18 April 2026, 09:00-16:30 BST (UK time)

Ticket sales open now!

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Online on Zoom

£40 EMDR Association Members

£50 Non-Members

Six EMDR Association CPD Points approved

The workshop will be recorded

We warmly invite EMDR colleagues in East Anglia, further afield and worldwide to our networking day on Saturday the 18th of April 2026. We are pleased to announce that Carlyn Boyce will be leading a workshop on EMDR and Racial Trauma.

Abstract of the Workshop


Carlyn’s workshop introduces EMDR therapists to the clinical foundations of racial trauma, with a focus on how harm, power, racialisation, and embodied experience shape psychological distress. The session explores how racial trauma is created, held, and re‑experienced, and offers a structured framework for integrating this knowledge into EMDR case formulation and therapeutic practice.

The workshop does not aim to catalogue every possible form of racism. Instead, it centres the evidence‑based understanding that racial trauma is rooted in structural power, historical context, and the disproportionate impact on Black and Brown people. It also explores key concepts that commonly shape lived experiences of racial harm, including colourism, code‑switching, and microaggressions, and how these experiences may manifest within EMDR therapy.

Drawing on both psychological theory and Carlyn’s lived experience as a Black woman, the workshop offers a grounded and reflective approach to understanding how racial trauma presents in clinical settings. Through clinical models, facilitated discussion, and supported exploration, participants will build confidence in recognising racial trauma responses, supporting identity‑related distress, and working safely and compassionately within their scope of practice.

Carlyn Boyce is an EMDR therapist and a qualified CBT therapist with over 17 years of clinical experience across both the NHS and the private sector. Her background spans primary care, secondary care, inpatient services, and complex mental health, and she currently works as the Clinical Lead in an Assessment and Therapy Service for health and social care staff.

During her NHS career, she has contributed to work on racial trauma and psychologically informed anti‑racist practice, and in 2025 she received a Highly Commended HSJ Patient Safety Award in recognition of this contribution.

Separately from her NHS role, she runs a small private practice where she offers therapy and delivers specialist training, including this workshop on racial trauma in EMDR practice. Her private practice work is independent and distinct from her NHS responsibilities.

Alongside this, she also teaches on a Clinical Psychology Doctorate programme, supporting future psychologists to develop reflective, anti‑racist, and CBT‑informed therapeutic practice.

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