bilateral stimulation w/ talk therapy

Hi,

I have emdr supervision with someone I highly respect - she is a certified emdr trainer or whatever it is called when you can teach the courses (sorry...can never remember). During our last supervision the topic came up re. clients who just aren't able to do emdr for whatever reason - just don't seem to have enough ego strength, go into crisis too easily, very dissociative, destabilize a great deal even with talk therapy, etc...

She mentioned that sometimes you can use soothing bilateral stimulation (gave the example of using the headset and CD with bilateral "waves" sounds or other relaxing music) while the client is talking about an upsetting situation, as a calming/soothing thing.

I plan to ask her more about this at our next supervision but afterwards wondered a lot about this - why this would be safe if the emdr trauma protocol itself was not felt to be appropriate for the client. Wouldn't the same risk be present re. causing increased dissociation and destabilization?

Just a bit confused, I guess. The client I am thinking of was able to tolerate rdi pretty well - sometimes did extremely well with it, though once or twice had some negative sensations come up during it.

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