The first phase of EMDR treatment involves taking a history of your present problems and life experiences to develop a good understanding of what is currently problematic and what you have experienced throughout life, which will inform your treatment plan.

We complete some self-report questionnaires to look at any present symptoms you may be experiencing and also discuss the specific problems that brought you into therapy and how you would want it to be different. This does not mean that you need to share in depth details about any past adverse experiences or traumatic experiences that resulted in disturbance, trauma, or wounding, and it is enough to report limited details or what we sometimes refer to as the headline and not the entire story.

EMDR is not a talking therapy so it is possible to offer just a label for what the experience was, as long as you know what that refers to, it can be processed with your therapist only knowing a limited amount. 

What is most important is identifying what in the past is negatively impacting your ability to lead a healthy and contented life in the present.

The treatment plan will identify and create condensed references to the events from the past that influence the present problem; the present situations that are triggering distress; present difficulties; and the future skills, behaviours, and situations you would like to develop.

Helping you to identify existing strengths and resources whilst adding further resources and coping skills whilst also establishing a therapeutic relationship.

In this phase, your therapist will provide you with an EMDR Intensives information pack and explain the theory of EMDR, how it is done and what to expect during and after treatment.

Your therapist will share specific techniques to deal with overwhelming emotions that may arise during or after a session, and work in identifying the techniques that specifically work for you.

These include things like the “special / relaxing / calm / safe / neutral place” exercises, which can enable you to feel more emotionally regulated and grounded by creating imagery or accessing memories of a calm environment.

Another technique is to imagine a resource team with nurturing, protective, and wise figures based on your own personal preferences.

We may also create a container resource which will be a place to separate and store the things we work on in therapy and container them in a helpful way so they do not overwhelm your nervous system outside of therapy.

Other techniques may include focusing on coping skills such as working with the body, nervous system, movement, and breath, that can be practiced and used during and after the retreat.

In this phase, (which is usually very brief in the session) your therapist will help you access a memory in your history, create an image that represents the worst part of the memory, and rate the present disturbance associated to accessing the memory (rated with the Subject Units of Disturbance scale, or SUD, from 0 to 10, 10 being the highest level of disturbance).

The goal of trauma processing is to reduce the disturbance (SUD) associated to your memories so it becomes neutral (as close to 0 as possible).

We will identify the negative self-referencing belief associated with the memory / event. Essentially, what we still hold as the negative self-referencing beliefs are representations of the meaning we attributed to the past event that has stayed with us influencing what we believe in the here and now; essentially we want to re-evaluate, reprocess, and release the negative self-referencing beliefs.

As part of the assessment we will establish a positive self-belief that you would rather believe, i.e. "I am worthy of love". For the survivor of an accident or attack, a negative cognition may be "I am in danger", and the related positive cognition can be "I am safe now".

If you imagine the negative and positive beliefs have been stored seperately in different neural files, we are bringing them together to merged and update. The perception of I'm in danger can become locked in the nervous system, even although logically you may realise the danger has past, your body may not have processed it as in the past.

The positive cognition reflects what is true in the present time. You will be asked to rate your positive belief on a Validity of Cognition (VOC) scale from 1 (completely false) to 7 (completely true) and your therapist will continue to guide you on this. In the beginning you may not believe the positive cognition and our goal is to increase the belief (VOC) of the positive cognition as close to 7 as possible.

The assessment will then explore the emotions that are coming up with the memory and where that is felt in the body.

This phase focuses on reducing the intensity of the disturbing emotions related to your negative past experiences.

During desensitisation, your therapist will lead you through sets of side-to-side eye movements, sounds or tapping (called Bilateral Stimulation or BLS).

Sets last approximately 30-60 seconds, after which you will be asked to briefly name what came up before going into the next set.

The goal of desensitisation is to follow whatever you notice, and not discard anything, and allow the SUD of the negative memories to reduce until neutral and the adaptive information networks have started to activate and associate to the memory.

Often this can happen in only a few sessions.

The advantage of the intensive therapy sessions is that there is much more processing time available in one session / day, as compared to weekly single 60-90min sessions that may require multiple sessions to complete one memory or incident. Intensives are longer sessions so lead to more progress in a short period of time.    

At this phase you have already worked to reduce the disturbance / distress / emotions and accessed the alternative adaptive information and positive cognitions. The goal of this installation phase is to increase the strength of the positive belief that you have identified.

The positive belief is "installed" using a similar side-to-side eye movement, sound or tapping technique as desensitisation.

The goal is to increase the VOC scale as close to 7 as possible (completely true). It is important to note that 7 is not always reasonable and there may be steps we identify that you need to do outside of therapy to reach a solid 7 or that a reasonable 6 is more reasonable. We will likely explore what stops it from being a 7 to evaluate whether there is another belief that is blocking or whether this is rational and reasonable to move forward.    

Once the positive cognition has been strengthened and installed, you will be guided to bring the original memory of the event to mind to see if there is any residual stress or emotion held in your body. Any physical sensations will then be targeted for reprocessing using a similar desensitisation technique. This step is absolutely crucial, as it has been well established that the body stores information about distressing events.

The body also retains memories containing information about specific posturing, holding patterns, freeze responses, supressed emotional energy, that are connected to the past experience. EMDR emphasises the important of processing body experiences to bring full resolution to past distress.

The positive beliefs will be integrated in both a psychological and physiological level.

If the processing of the memory / event is not completed before the end of the session, you will be guided to your resource techniques learned in Phase 2; this is there to re-establish a grounding sense of full presence in the here and now, and emotional balance before your session ends.

You will also receive a briefing on what to expect in between sessions, as some processing may continue afterwards and new material may come to your awareness. It is important that you feel confident in your ability to access resources and self-regulate between sessions. In the beginning of processing it is possible for distress to temporarily increase and it is important to understand this, as well as be confident that you do have resources to support you through this.

At the start of each session, your therapist will support you to re-evaluate your memories and any distress left related to each memory you have worked on, to ensure that progress is being maintained.

As processing continues past negative experiences will continue to register a lower level of distress (SUD).

As we process the earliest distressing experiences we can at times experience a generalisation effect. Much of the distress associated to present experiences has to do with our earliest wounding and the negative beliefs attributed and associated with them so as we process these, later related memories can also process in a general way.      

An example of treatment would be using EMDR therapy for symptoms of excessive anxiety showing up in the present time with excessive worry about getting things wrong or being seen as incompetent by others, which traces back to memories of being punished as a child for making mistakes.

The presentation in adulthood may be high levels of anxiety and even panic at work whenever there is an appraisal, learning something new, or possibility of a mistake. EMDR can help to process the painful memories of being punished, update with adult adaptive information that you were only a child and learning, doing your best and mistakes are how we learn as human beings - children are expected to make mistakes!

Once the memory is desensitised and the adaptive information is accessed we then can release the negative self-belief of failure / incompetence / unlovable / not good enough / useless etc. and install and strengthen a new belief that you are a human-being, doing your best and competent and capable in many ways, loveable, and good enough etc.

Once this is installed we can then check in with the body to release any stored stress or body sensations related to accessing the memory.

If the memory has a SUD of 0, the postive belief is 6/7, and the body is clear of distress, the memory has fully processed. The old memories of punishment will always be there but there will be no present distress or body sensations present when you retrieve that past memory and you will be able to approach appraisals, work challenges, feedback etc. from a present rational and adaptive perspective.

The clinicians at the EMDR retreat are all trained in an advanced EMDR technique called Attachment Informed or Attachment Focused EMDR which has the same foundation of the standard EMDR protocol but with some adaptations designed for work specifically with developmental and attachment trauma.

The order of the protocol has been changed and the rating scales are not usually taken until much closer to resolution of processing.

AI-EMDR will usually begin from a present distress or trigger and use a bridging back technique to allow your neural networks to connect back to formative experiences of where you might have first learned to respond or be a particular way.

Your Imaginal Resource Team will be much more active in this type of adaptation due to the complexity of experiences disrupted early development and unhelpful attachment relationships. Your therapist is there to guide you and please ask any questions at any time if there is anything you would like to understand further.  

Parts work is a type of therapy where you are supported to explore your inner landscape and get to know the different parts of yourself - if you've ever experiences an internal critical voice which most people have, this is an example of a part with different and usually very harsh and unkind thoughts, ideas, and feelings etc. 

There are a few different models of Parts Work/Ego State Therapy which include Internal Family Systems (IFS), the Structural Dissociation Model, Resource Therapy, Transactional Analysis, and Developmental Needs Meeting Strategy (DNMS).

Parts work integrates very well with EMDR Therapy and can support with understanding our sometimes conflicting inner world or blocking beliefs that come up in EMDR processing - we all have different parts of us that will show up at different times and sometimes these different parts can hold very different ideas and responses, which will show up in therapy.

If you think about the part of you that goes to a party with your friends, and compare it with the part of you that shows up to a job interview, there is likely to be differences in thoughts, emotions, beliefs, and behaviour. There might even be another part of you that observes these parts and critically analyses and negatively judges them.

When we begin to bring awareness to our internal landscape we can become more familiar with the different parts of ourselves that can often feel much younger and relate to child-like states - these parts of us may be the part that carries wounds or hurt from the past and needs our adult self to relieve some of the hurt. When some parts are supressed or exiled by other parts it can look like us over working or trying to be perfect to be accepted, or drinking or take drugs to supress and numb emotions - often the parts of us that try to protect or make things better can contribute further to the problems of living life in the present.

Most recently the IFS Model of parts work has increased in popularity and this model welcomes all parts of us, with no exceptions, even the more destructive parts of us that may have very unhelpful ideas about harmful behaviours and destructive strategy to avoid painful emotion - we bring compassion and curiosity and befriend these parts to allow them to soften back.

As we begin to better understand these parts with compassion and  that they are all working hard in an attempt to protect us from pain, we can help these parts to relax and engage in different more helpful ways to approach problems and release past burdens.

Parts work doesn't resonate with everyone and that's absolutely okay as it is an integration to EMDR it is most definitely not a necessary element to your EMDR Therapy. 

Intensive EMDR can eliminate weeks or months of living with distress, and with the toll this takes on work, relationships, marriages, parenting and general wellbeing. You will completely unplug and detox from everyday life, and any life stress, and for those days you only engage in activities that lead to life changing healing. When we service our car we don’t do it one wheel or nut and bolt at a time, we take it to the garage, leave it there to be fully serviced! An intensive is like a full service for the mind and body.

When the therapy is highly focused and not interrupted by everyday life, it is very cost effective. The work is much more efficient and requires less session time as therapy start and stop times are less frequent we concentrate our time on the processing and healing. 

Rather than scheduling your life around a weekly therapy appointment, you take a week out to focus on healing and then afterwards start living the healthy life you desire.  Please note that intensives can be a good fit for many clients however it is not everyone; some clients may respond better with an ongoing connection within a therapeutic relationship. Clients with long-term childhood abuse or neglect, who have had years of traumatic events, are typically advised to have a trusted therapist or support service to provide ongoing weekly therapy. Clients with this type of history can make good progress on particular parts of their resourcing, trauma history, specific events, and present triggers and symptoms, but often are not finished with treatment and need to continue with their regular therapy following the intensive. We are all individual’s and there is no one size that fits all so please be aware that the assessment will determine appropriate recommendations.

You will completely focus on healing with no distractions. At the therapy retreat you will fully immerse in a healing environment and experience which prepares your body, mind, and soul for healing.

The Cyprus Therapy retreat is located in Paphos, Cyprus.  Clients can travel from anywhere to spend a few days in an Intensive and then return home to their daily lives.  

Intensive therapy is an investment in you, your future, and the future of your relationships with loved ones. Rather than paying weekly for traditional therapy, you will be investing a larger amount of money up front; in the long run this will likely be less overall cost than ongoing weekly sessions. You may have to plan ahead and save for an Intensive but you will have a fixed cost to work. With weekly therapy it can be unknown as it is ongoing weekly sessions.

For many clients following an Intensive they will return to their lives ready to move forward in living the healthy life they desire. For some clients they may benefit from follow up sessions with a therapist who can help them deal with things that they were not able to work on during the Intensive; this may be due to time and complexity. Following the intensive a follow up sessions will assess and re-evaluate the work you have done and may recommend further sessions or intensives to support with more complex issues that have not been fully processed.

An initial telephone consultation will be the first step to assess whether intensives are an appropriate recommendation. Based on this assessment, your therapist can help you decide on the best next step. If an intensive is agreed as suitable to meet your needs you will be provided with an intensives pack which includes information, questionnaires, and resource techniques to begin to practice as preparation. You will receive a follow up assessment call to gather further history and support with practicing resources and encouraging the consolidation of these calming and regulating techniques in preperation for your Intensive. This also gives you the opportunity to ask questions you may have, and to help you through the process of planning your trip. To request information please get in touch.