Latest / The Trauma Therapist / Episode 795: The Art And Science of EMDR with Rotem Brayer

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Episode 795: The Art And Science of EMDR with Rotem Brayer · The Trauma Therapist

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Or welcome back to the Trauma Therapist Podcast. My name is Gamiferson. My
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mission is to help trauma therapist be their incredible cells, to be human,
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to be real, not just a clinician. I'm a big believer in who
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we are is more important than what we know, and this requires cultivating authenticity,
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genuineness, and vulnerability, and that requires intention. Can learn more about
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my courses and workshops by going to the Trauma Therapist project dot com. That's
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the Trauma Therapist Project dot com. Let's get started. So five or three,
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two and one, our folks, welcome back to the podcast. Very
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excited to have as my guest today. Rotime Prayer road Time Welcome, Thank
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you, thanks for having me guy, You're welcome. So Roa tem says
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that I Movement, Desensitization and reprocess therapy helped him change so many lives that
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ended up changing his own life. By treating his clients with this transformative therapy,
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he's realized the limitless power of healing therapists have. When he started providing
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consultation to newly trained EMDR therapists, he discovered that many therapists needed help and
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support on their own journey. Many therapists find it hard to navigate the endless
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flow of information from books, articles, studies, and of course the Internet.
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To help them learn and grow, rot Tim created that the EMDR Learning
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community where clinicians read and learn together. And we'll talk all about that as
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we get going. Here ro time, Welcome to the podcast. Thanks so
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much for having me guy. So before we get going, share with our
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listeners where you're from originally and where you are currently. Yeah. So I'm
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originally from Israel, moved to the States when I was almost thirty for a
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graduate school, and currently I am in Denver, Colorado. Okay, how
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do you like Denver? Denver? Except or we're having a very difficult winter
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we're used to, you know, very cold and then it gets warm.
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But I lived in Boston before and kind of reminds of Boston, like the
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snow just gets to be ice and it gets stucky. I've been there,
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all right, So let's jump in here. How the heck did you get
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into this field? How did it start for you? So? How did
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I get to the field of psychotherapy? Yeah, so I I did my
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bachelors in Israel in communication and management, and I got a job and I
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was bored to death. I kind of always wanted to be a therapist.
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I read Freud and Young since my teens, which I know some people will
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think that it says something about my own mental health, but uh, I
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was always drawn to that. And then kind of life got me into communication
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and management. Didn't love it, didn't love my job. Always wanted to
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be a therapist. And then the age of twenty nine, again almost thirty,
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I decided to move to the United States and do my masters in counseling.
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But you said you always wanted to be a therapist. What about therapy
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It excited you or drew you? What was it? Yeah? I always
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liked talking to people and listening to people. I'm reminded of I had a
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girlfriend when I was thirteen and fourteen, and we would hang out and I
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would put these radio shows that you know, people just called the radio.
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I don't know if people still do that. I don't listen to the radio
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anymore. Yeah, I call them medium and just talk about their issues in
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the middle of the night. And and I would listen to it, and
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she was like, what is wrong with you? Why are you listening?
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It's not interesting? I'm like, it's actually fascinating. So I always enjoyed
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communicating with people, different people, learning about them. I have really good
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memory for what people are telling me, so I can recall some things that
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client sold me five years ago and ten years ago. Wow. And I
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have a horrible memory when it comes to, for example, driving, like
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if I can drive like one hundred times to the same place and I want
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to remember. So I think my brain is wired to be a therapist.
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Fascinating. Yeah, So, okay, you come to the States, that's
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when you start pursuing normally, start pursuing becoming a therapist. Have things unfold
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for you? How do you get introduced to EMDR. It took almost a
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decade, so things are okay. I loved I loved my job, but
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I was not as passionate as I am now after since I've been training in
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em DR. So IMDA really changed everything for me, from from from the
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way I conceptualize my clients issues to the treatment to you know, lengths of
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treatment. You know, people in EMDR, there's beginning, beginning, middle
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and people come and they work on their you know, whatever brought them to
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therapy, and then some people want to continue and that's fine, but we
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also and therapy uh successfully, which is it's just it keeps amazing me,
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you know, em DR and the outcomes that I see. So there was
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about a decade free em d R and then EMDR really changed everything. How
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were you introduced to it? And what about it? When you were introduced
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to it? Kind of excited you about it? Yeah, so you know
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I heard, you know, the old jokes of like turn your wind child
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wipers on the way to therapy and all that before I was trained, but
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I didn't know much about it. So I went to the training. I
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thought I was going to be another training. I've done many many trainings,
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and I remember day one of the basic training, I had this realization that
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this is why I became a therapist. This is the real thing. Everything
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I've done so far was kind of warm up for that, and it really
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changed everything for me. But say more about that, because EMDR is it's
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a very kind of and correct me if I'm wrong here. I mean,
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it's a very distinct process. You're doing something right, and it's it's a
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little different than what talk therapy or even somat therapy. So what about that
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drew you in? Well, it's very different, actually, it's very different.
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And then it's not so. The way it's being taught. The way
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MDR is being taught is very different than any anything I've done before, because
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in most therapies, when clients come, you do what you do in phase
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two of em DR, which is help them develop tools to cope. But
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that's just the beginning of the m DR and then what happens in the MDR
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is that and that's where it becomes technical. You're processing that, you know,
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these traumatic memories, these you're going into instead of getting away from the
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trauma or disturbance, You're going into it. You're you're activating it intentionally.
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That's what produces the outcomes, the results. And you know, because this
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therapy is so technical, I think a lot of people are lost when they
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get trained and they get overwhelmed and they think that they're messing things up or
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they're not doing the right thing. And this is why I wrote my book
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The Art and End Signs of MDR to help clinicians understand the concept instead of
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getting overwhelmed, because the training is overwhelming for a lot of people. And
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I know a lot of people who got trained and then never use it.
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And I think it's such a waste not to use such a powerful healing tool.
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I'm calling a healing tool. It's it's more than therapy, and I
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really am passionate about helping other clinicians use it effectively. So you mentioned your
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book, and we'll talk more about that, But you also created a learning
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community, So how did how did that come about? And specifically, yeah,
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why did you create it? You know? So it started as a
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platform to communicate with consultees. So I am an MDR consultant and I provide
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consultations to MDR therapists, and you know, I didn't want them to wait
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until the next time we meet to ask me a question. So I created
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this platform and then at some point it just expanded and we're having so many
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good things going on there in this community. We have speakers, we have
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giveaways, we have you know, weekly challenges. I realized that there are
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a lot of people like me, well maybe not crazy like me that,
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but a lot of people really like to talk about EMDR and think about em
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DR and participate in a discussion. And it's so much fun to see this
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community growing. And it's only for trained em DR therapists, Okay, and
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and and people are really really passionate about having these discussions. So in the
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bio, I read that when we went it says here, when you started
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providing consultation to really trained even to your therapist, you discover that many therapists
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needed help and support on their own journey. MANI, therapists find it hard
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to navigate the endless flow of information from books and articles. What do you
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mean by that? There's a lot of information out there, And I think
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you know that, guy, Uh, sure, we're getting bombarded with information.
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And when it comes to e M d R, it's a lot of
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the information is written in a very academic kind of way, and it's people
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get confused and they really don't know what to do. There's so much information,
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there's so many protocols, and I think that if people have a resource
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where they can go and ask some questions and have you know, we have
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a variety of em DR therapists, but it's not just therapists. You know,
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some of them were trained, you know, very recently. We have
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consultants in training, and we have consultants and we have trainers, and we
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have you know, doctor Jamie Marriage is in our community and doctor Andrew DOBO
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is in our community, and so we have trainers, we have all levels,
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and we all participate in discussions and we all learn from each other.
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M H. All right, let's just pause here for a second to thank
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our sponsors. All Right, we are back. So I love I mean,
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you're obviously very passionate about this, and I love talking to people like
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yourself who are so passionate about what they do. There are people listening.
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I mean, like you said in the beginning, if not everyone is studied,
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MDR, what do you think some of our listeners need to know,
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maybe who haven't studied, Amdr, who maybe are a little hesitant I can't
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do that for whatever. What do they need to know that maybe would allure
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them or maybe help determine whether they should or shouldn't pursue Mdr. Well,
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I think there are two ways to answer this question. First of all,
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I know that for me and for many of my colleagues, it really made
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a huge difference in the way we practice, in the way we can help
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our clients. We can really it's really a transformative form of therapy, or
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you can call it healing. Because clients come with an issue, they come
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with a set of symptoms. They come with trum memories, and they come
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with you know, overwhelming anxiety and trauma, and they leave without it.
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And I know that if I heard myself, if I heard myself before MDR
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training, I would not really believe it. But once you see it happening
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over and over and over again, you become so passionate about it because you're
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you're really changing people's lives. You're really transforming people's lives. So that's that's
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the first way to answer your question. The other, the other way to
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answer your question, guy, is that when people get trained, because the
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modality is so technical, the way it's being taught, people feel like they're
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losing their authenticity. And I know that's something that you are very passionate about
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that. You know, we as therapists, we need to be authentic.
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We need to continue being who we are as a person as a therapist.
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And this is one of my big messages of my book is that you don't
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have to give it up. Yes, there is a protocol and there are
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eight phases, and the model is very linear, but in real life,
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therapy is not linear. Healing is not linear, and you can stay who
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you are as a person as a therapist, and you actually should stay who
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you are and authentic to who you are as a person as a therapist,
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because that would produce better outcomes for your clients. You've said a few times
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you know the way it's being taught, right, which leads me to believe
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that there's a way it's being taught that maybe you think isn't the best way
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it's being taught. Say more. Uh, that's an interesting question because there
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are different different trainers teach em DR very differently, but most of them and
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not all of them, are teaching it as this is the right way to
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do m DR. And if you're doing anything different left or right, you're
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wrong and you're gonna hurt your client. And the reality is not so black
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and white, right. Usually it's somewhere in the middle. Uh. So
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again, to write this book and to do my research, I've been in
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three kinds of m d R or basically m g R training. Is one
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as a as a trainee when I was trained, Then I was a consultant
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in training and I did that with one institute, and then when I became
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became a consultant, I join joined doctor Andrew Doobo, which is by far
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my favorite MDR trainer UH, and I flew all the way to Florida to
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teach with him or to be consultant on his training, and and and they
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all teach it differently, But a lot of trainers make people feel that this
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is the only way to do MDR and if you're doing anything else, you're
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going to hurt your client. And in most cases it's not true. Can
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you give us an example maybe to highlight some of the differentiating factors of em
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DR. Client comes to you, what would what might it look like if
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you're going to treat them with m DR versus And I know it's very difficult
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to make these kind of black and white scenarios. But with somatic therapy,
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yeah, still, first of all, there is a lot of integration,
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right, there's a lot of integration. I took a six day training of
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called natural processing that integrates EMD are with somatic UH therapy because there's a lot
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of integration. We work a lot with the body in e m d R,
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but with em DR we are very focused. So we have target memories
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that are you know, the trauma and again it can be what used to
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be called big TA and little T so trauma can be you know, major
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events like you know, major car accidents or earthquakes or assaults, or it
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can be little tea what used to be called little tea and now we call
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it disturbing life events. That can be when you were in fourth grade your
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teacher hated you and for a whole year you were bullied by your teacher.
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That is events, right, right, but but that's registered in your nervous
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system and that's still impacting you till this day. So we're in the EMDR.
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We're focused, we're finding these targets, we're finding these memories, and
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we're being trained to start listening from day one, from intake what are these
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memories. It doesn't mean that we have to get them all and you know,
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day one, but we're starting to conceptualize it as these events happened and
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we need to process them. And then we have phase two. We are
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teaching our clients affect regulation skills or calming techniques or this is called the preparation
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phase in em DR, and then we're moving toward reprocessing. So again,
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and there are eight phases in EMDR. I don't know if you want me
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to get into all of them, but the idea is that we are focusing
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on these memories and we're going into the memory. We're at activating these neural
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networks where these memories are stored. And I'm using my fingers for those who
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are listening only on audio, because memories are not really stored, but it's
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a good analogy for us to conceptualize what is going on memories. When certain
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memories are being activated, there's certain neurons or groups of neurons that we call
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neural networks they are being activated. So we are going into these memories.
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We're focusing in most cases on the worst part of the memory, but we're
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maintaining dual awareness and then that helps the client to process. And I think
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that one of the most amazing experiences for a lot of EMDR therapists is to
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check the SUD level. So we have the SUD level, which is subjective
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unit of the disturbance. It's a scale of zero to ten that we ask
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our clients to rate the level of disturbance, and a lot of times we'll
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start a session and the sub level will be somewhere high eight, nine,
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ten, and after thirty or forty minutes it's at zero, one or two
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and I know it's hard to believe for people who haven't experienced them, but
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if you experienced MDR, either as a therapist or as a client, it's
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real, it's happening. It's an amazing experience. Do you how do you
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view these different modalities? Do you feel it's a therapist's obligation to, you
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know, learn all these modalities to the best of their ability, because obviously,
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you know each client is different to a certain degree, and what might
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be best for one client isn't best for another client. So you've got to
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have those arrows in the quiver. What's your perspective perspective on this? So
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for me, everything integrates into EMBR Whatever I learn now I'm learning. And
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again, we have a lot of discussions in our community about attachment. So
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actually tomorrow and Saturday, I'm taking a training about attachment and EMDR. A
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lot of parts work, call it I FIS, call it ego state therapy,
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call it whatever you want. We are working with younger parts, a
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lot of times, with younger vulnerable, hurt parts in the context of em
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d R. So there's a lot of integration. And again, what I
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love about our community is that we have a lot of people who like to
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continue learning and they're passionate. They're like, we're we're EMDR nerds, and
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we're proud of it. I'm speaking with Rotenbrayer. The book is called The
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Art and Science of MDR. What is the best way for people to get
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in contact with you? With them? They can just google the Art and
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Science of MDR. I created kind of like a little complicated URL or web
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address for this, so if you google the Art and Science of EMDR,
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you will find the website and there's way to contact me there. Okay.
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Now, in terms of getting into MDR, beginning to learn about it,
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how should people go about doing that? How could they do that? Yeah,
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I'm glad you asked this question. Because EMDR, as opposed to other
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modalities, you're not supposed to practice if you're not formally trained in it.
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It's not something that you can read a book and experiment with. So the
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book that I wrote is for trained clinicians or for people who go through the
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training, But it's not something that people can, you know, just read
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a book and then start practicing. Uh. That that can lead to some
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negative outcomes in terms of you know, clients mental state, deteriorating because we're
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getting into the trauma. Uh, it can be traumatizing if people, you
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know, if therapists don't know what they're doing. But they can look at
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the E M d R International Association, which is MDREA and uh there's a
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there's a list of trainings there and now there are a lot of virtual trainings
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or there's uh there's a lot of in person so people can find their trainings
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uh in their geographical area. And there's also m d R kind of like
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MDREA is the it's called the international, but it's the the United States.
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The E M d R. You know, body in the United States,
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but there's nd R Canada, there's n DA or Europe, there's there are
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these organizations all over so people, I know, you have a guy listeners
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from all the world. So if people are listening to it from overseas,
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they can look in their country, what's the organization that does all these trainings.
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Awesome, I appreciate it. Ll Tim love to have you back.
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Like I said, you just you're so passionate and that's what this podcast is
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about. I really appreciate you taking the time to be here. Yeah,
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thanks for having me, all right, sir, take care, Thank you,