Re:Important question

You are right, this IS an important question. I observe from your post that you are talking about a dissociative condition. I can't comment on your specifics, but will make some general comments about EMDR for dissociative clients.

It is very important that EMDR be conducted on fractionated material, meaning, parts of material that have been preselected collaboratively between client and therapist. Only one bite-size piece of work gets attempted at a time, therefore the walls don't come down for a long time.

With not-particularly-dissociative clients the integration happens more quickly, because after all, the walls are just screen doors.

With highly dissociative clients, there is a lot of work to be done first, which is the topic of my two day workshop for therapists. When the containment, stabilization, internal negotiations are achieved to a degree that it is time to do trauma work, THEN a fractionated piece can be targeted. However much gets done in an EMDR session, at the end of the session the work needs to be contained and the parts tucked in. Spontaneously, in EMDR with a dissociative client, though the walls stay up, they become thinner, instead of Alamo thick barriers.

There's a lot more, so make sure your therapist knows how to do the work.

Replies:

Thank you and further questions, by Diane, 02/17/02 Re:Thank you and further questions, by Sandra Paulsen Inobe, PhD, 02/18/02

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