EMDREA Mini-Conference November 25 hears from Bosnia, about Parts work and more

By Carsten Dernedde

Up to sixty delegates were present in the Zoom conference room and more than 140 in total had signed up to the mini conference and regional networking day.

Claire van den Bosch, EMDR Practioner and IFS Level 3 trained therapist, started the day with her presentation and personal manifesto “EMDR for all our Parts”. She presented her passion with her colleague Bethany Parris, EMDR Europe accredited practitioner and certified IFS therapist

Before getting into the IFS framework she uses to guide her work with complex clients, Claire took the delegates through an IFS-informed unblending meditation.

Accompanied by her own beautifully sketched graphics, Claire talked us through different stages of identifying our in-the-moment available parts and unblending them from the core self.

Creating first a ‘glow’ around the physical body and then breathing into an enlarging space around the body, there was eventually enough space for the parts to remain connected to the core self but move out from the felt body, so that calm regard and focus on the task at hand were possible.

The meditation is useful in the preparation phase or as a clarifying moment in any session.

Claire then gave her introduction to Dick Schwartz’s Internal Family Systems.

February 20, 2023March 21, 2023

Attachment-Informed EMDR: A Detailed Introduction, with Mark Brayne.

Saturday January 14, 2023

A summary of the day by Ushma Patel

On Saturday 14^th January 2023 over 100 delegates came together online for our latest EMDR East Anglia regional networking day to learn about the basics of integrative, attachment–informed EMDR.

We jumped straight in with the recognition that AI-EMDR is not going off-piste, and that it is compliant with standard mainstream EMDR and officially endorsed by the EMDR authorities.

The morning began with Christine Ramsey-Wade, Senior Lecturer in Counselling Psychology at the University of the West of England in Bristol and EMDR therapist, highlighting the need for further research as EMDR, now more than 30 years old, evolves beyond the Standard Protocol especially now to embrace attachment.

With our presenter Mark Brayne’s first paper on AF-EMDR now published, using Laurel Parnell’s original term Attachment-Focused, (Kaptan and Brayne, 2022) Christine focused particularly on a current feasibility trial for EMDR and AI-EMDR funded by our own East Anglia EMDR Regional Group through the national EMDR Association UK.

The plan is to create a team of co-researchers – EMDR therapists and Consultants working with either the Standard or the Attachment-Informed Protocol – with at least 40 client participants presenting with what the project is terming attachment-informed complexity, rather than the full and formal diagnosis of Complex PTSD.

Those clients will then be randomised to receive either 10 sessions of Standard EMDR or 10 sessions of AI-EMDR – an exciting project that is now actively being recruited to.

Mark then walked us through the goals of EMDR and the survival response that underpins any effective use of this powerful therapy, building on the notion that every dysfunctional ego state, every part, every presentation began life with a survival response and is therefore welcome in the work.

February 9, 2022September 2, 2023

EMDR with Every Client – April 29, 2023

Online with Gus Murray, President EMDR All-Ireland

0930-1630 Saturday April 29 2023

£40 EMDR Association UK Members: £70 for Non-Members

Six EMDR Association UK CPD points.

BOOK NOW

We look forward to welcoming the redoutable and hugely experienced Gus Murray to our April 2024 regional networking day online to take us through using EMDR with every client.

President of the still relatively newly-formed All-Ireland EMDR Association, Gus is an EMDR Europe Accredited Trainer and Consultant, and Programme Director at the Cork Institute of Technology for the past 25 years.

As Gus explains it, the full potential of the clinical application of EMDR therapy is still compromised in its application to a full range of clinical conditions, with many clinicians struggling or reluctant to use it with more complex and disordered clients.