Identity Affirming EMDR Training

Want to implement an anti-oppressive and liberation focused lens into your EMDR practice? Well then you are in the right place! Scroll down to learn more and begin your liberation practices within EMDR

What exactly is Identity Affirming EMDR?

Identity Affirming EMDR is a way to approach your EMDR practice through anti-oppressive principles and cultural humility, in addition to imbedding the minority stress model and healing centred engagement into EMDR praxis.

For lots of people, EMDR can be a life altering therapeutic modality and can significantly reduce distress, trauma symptoms, hurt, loss, grief, pain and so much more. We also believe that EMDR can be a vehicle for liberation, self determination and reclamation of selfhood when it allows for people’s identities to be affirmed through all 8 phases.

We are passionate about supporting therapists to deepen their EMDR practice in ways that are genuinely affirming for the people they work with and to support their conceptualisation of healing from one that is individual based to one that is collective healing focused.

What will I learn over the 2 days?

Over the 2 days, we look at how identity is embedded in memory networks and the AIP model, how to adapt protocol for folks whose histories include systemic and relational harm, and how intersectional case conceptualisation changes clinical decision-making. This includes working with a range of cohorts including queer and gender-diverse participants, disabled humans, neurodivergent folks, and people of the global majority.

When people are experiencing oppressions such as systemic harm, racialised trauma, societal discrimination, betrayal pain, identity wounding and intergenerational hurt, we need to be able meet them in their experience with cultural humility, and a commitment to liberation practices.

EMDR, whilst based on indigenous ways of being, doing, knowing and healing, was developed within a western medical model which does not consider the impacts of system oppression, intergenerational trauma and collective healing within the 8 phases. To meet the needs of those impacted by oppression-based trauma, EMDR needs to evolve and without an anti-oppression framework, EMDR therapy risks reinforcing the very systems that perpetuate harm.

Illustration of a woman holding a large pink brain with green leaves in the background.

The two training days are held a week apart intentionally, to support people's learning, body and practice needs. We want to create space for information to percolate and settle, and allow folks to step into this work deeply and with intention rather than rushing through it.

This training is for you if you have completed EMDR Basic Training and want a liberation focused and anti-oppressive grounded framework for identity-affirming EMDE practice.