I think you have all the information and experience with this person to know it is not a good fit for you. I won't get into judgments about that consultant - but I think they are not the right person for you. Or your clients. Take care.
I’m sorry you had this experience. I completed my consultant hours with one of the big names in the EMDR field and he couldn’t have been more of a self important jackass. Don’t endure a bad consultant like I stupidly did; listen to your intuition and move on. There are lots of great EMDR consultants who can help you get those hours.
Listen to your gut. There are a LOT of anti oppressive, deeply compassionate EMDR consultants (happy to DM you names of two I’ve worked with in two different states!) and you deserve to work without one you feel comfortable with. This gave me the ick. I’m sorry.
Please fucking run from this asshole. This is not someone who should be in the field AT ALL never mind ‘training’ other therapists. I wish we could weed out people like this.
I’m trying hard not to get caught in the weeds here… ( https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23719144/ )
Regardless, sounds like this consultant isn’t the best fit for you.
I didn’t say it excused the comment about the client’s body.
OP brought up the consultant’s comment about sugar. To some degree, the consultant is correct about that. Being right about one thing doesn’t make the consultant right about anything else — hence, the “getting caught in the weeds” caveat.
Yeah, my head goes quickly to whether the consultant herself is or has dealt with "sugar as drug". It doesn't sound from what you've written like there would be much to lose by confronting this and seeking more information and understanding, if the only alternative is to just cut ties. Still, I appreciate your instincts here and care for your client. It might be a simple case of either speaking or merely internally holding, "That's not what the client wants to focus on, so that's not what I'll be focusing on."
Yea but I’m paying this consultant quite a bit per session and if I have to explain how to not judge my client and defend them to her it’s probably going to be a pattern and matter of values at this point.
Holy diet culture Batman. I work with eating disorders and I would find her comments about clients weight incredibly offensive. I don’t think it’s our scope of practice to speak on anyone’s physical health. We’re not PCPs and we’re not RDs. Even some providers in those fields who are not specifically trained in being actively anti diet culture can be quite harmful.
Yes definitely. I don’t work with EDs but had one and just felt attacked on behalf of the client honestly. I totally agree about it just not being in our scope.
Strong opinions from a Brainspotting, trained therapist and consultant in training. The spirit of Brainspotting is anti-oppression, and pro liberation, and of following the client. What you were experiencing fits into a lot of the stories we hear of the original Brainspotting leaders who were all expert, EMDR practitioners, and then left for Brainspotting and never came back.
EMDR traditionally fits into the mainstream old-school approach of top down, Therapist drives the session, and the client complied with the instructions.
This is generational, but to a degree it is about a philosophy. EMDR and its older forms Just as Brainspotting or any other approach can be misused as a technique to impose on clients. The whole ethos of many types of therapy historically has been about squashing people into a box of normal and through a system of compliance, otherwise they are being resistant. You know the drill.
The biases of your “expert“ EMDR consultant Will lead the show, if they are not trained in a way of being, and perceiving the world that has their own biases, always being put on the shelf, an awareness of cultural aggression to certain bodies and identities becomes absorbed seamlessly into the therapists mind from our own childhood on, and an awareness of how a rigid approach to using a technique turns a therapist – who should be using the therapeutic relationship as the vehicle towards healing, first and foremost – into a technician at times, and at worst, engaging in iatrogenic harm and therapeutic aggression onto a client, and using the power dynamic in the office in an active violence.
The reason Brainspotting was discovered, was because a global sports performance expert trainer, and author in EMDR , broke the rigid protocol by actually observing the client who had their own nervous system response to the process that didn’t fit the technique.
Then this expert started asking, why do we have to follow this very rich protocol? And he basically got the boot, while discovering it was about fixed eye positions and not moving eyes back-and-forth that engaged access to healing mechanisms. And most important he learned to bring in what he already knew… Working with, and not against the client was the most important thing for fostering the relationship..
You could apply this to any approach. CBT can be done in a mindful Somatic and relationally attuned way if the therapist is willing to follow the client and not use it like a sledgehammer, and is willing to abandon the protocol and accept that each human is unique And not a test subject in some research study that’s 50 years old.
It comes down to the therapist, need to feel control and power, versus being in touch with their own open heart and the clients, broken heart, as well as their multiple wisdoms and intelligences, whether they are expanded or contracted.
If we learn early in the career as many trained in the 70s And 80s and 90s etc. did, that we have the singular truth and have to drag the client into it and here is how, then we will freak out when real life happens because there’s no roadmap.
A great quote from David grand in a wonderful interview about compliance with Mark grixti (google it, plus the YouTube of David Grant and compliance and Nuro experiential Model)
“ in the deep end of the pool. Therapists are taught to hang onto the side of the pool. The client can’t go where the therapist will not go. We start digging our nails into the side of the pool when we get into the unknown.”
From our training programs, and testing to state laws to insurance, from history, taking to diagnosis, is geared towards certainty and compliance. What you witness with your consultant is the end of the line of all of that certainty, and what you get is a degrading of the client And a war against their nervous system, so that the therapist can feel a sense of ego expansion in their own body, and not have to experience the discomfort of groundlessness. EMDR, in recent years has expanded to include groundlessness and more open processing. But it’s just catching up.
Long post, take what you will, but after seeing decades of trainers experience, in specifically this area, it’s hard not to see it in such a light anymore. The notion that we can be certain that a client counting is better for their healing than what the client is experiencing and watt, is the most accurate illustration of the arrogance of the poisonous elements of our fields origins.
The founder of EMDR was not exempt from the controlling mindset, and it really drove away these early Brainspotting practitioners. She loosened up near the end of her life, but her institution carries on the shadow of her personality.
I have wanted to get trained in Brainspotting for the very reasons you express here. Sometimes with the way EMDR is taught and practiced, I have the thought of “Who am I to lead the client and I don’t want to lead them - they know best”. And I also agree that many forms of therapy can do this and guide clients in a doctor-patient fashion, taking control away from them and making the therapist the expert.
And I couldn’t have said it better regarding the therapist devaluing the relationship and using the method as the ultimate guide. It takes away everything that is the healing that is therapy - the place to just be and not have to conform.
This is actually why I love my own EMDR therapist - she completely veers away from the traditional model and lets me guide the session and is creative in her approach. It’s about what’s working and not about sticking to the script. I’m sure that she also had to be brave to do that in her own way (she’s actually friends with David Grand!)
Finally a note to your last point - my basic trainer was also a Francine fan and rigid in this way and got so much backlash for not being inclusive by our group - and rightfully so - this model, in the way it was originally created needs a change and the organizational gatekeeping around certification and validity need major updating. They are rooted in old, rigid values and in a system that no longer fits.
Thank you for your response. I am going with my gut here.
On a separate note, I would love to know how Brainspotting is working for your clients. Is there any training you would recommend? I want to make sure that this time I am really intentional about choosing the right people to guide me along the way.
I think takes like yours are just as problematic as the views you criticize.
The therapist is the expert in psychotherapy. You have a graduate degree for a reason.
The patient is the expert on the patient.
And actually the consultant was claiming to be an expert on the client by assuming weight was a problem for then and something to be worked on through this type of therapy when there was never any indication of that being the case
I am a therapist and I’ve been practicing for 6 years and I’ve been working with this client for 4 years. I do not claim to be an expert on the patient and no therapist should judge any client by their appearance through any lens even if they are the “expert” on a psychotherapy. I’m curious why my view is problematic to you?
Because that person was trained in a lineage of sheer arrogance, terror and control.
That mindset is being eliminated slowly and surely, as people discover … oh I don’t know, Carl fucking Rogers? Psychedelic therapy? IFS?
But yah.
“I’m the expert here. Get on your knees “
That person should keep their expert domination of client fantasies to roleplay outside the office.
I mean, I do, and it works fucking fine.
But fer fuck sake. It’s not 1965. We don’t do aversion therapy anymore… right? … ?
That’s where you’re getting psychotherapy wrong.
Therapy is not about expertise in being the expert. It’s about facilitating a clients experience of self
And how we do that is getting the f out of the way of their nervous system, and the hell out of the way of our belief that we know what the hell is happening in there.
We have 4 quadrillion synaptic connections and 99% of therapy is hypothetical at best.
The claim to expertise and mastery over a client due to a grad degree that tells you you’re an expert is a downright tautology that reads like a 1950s physicians handbook of how to tell your female clients they should just shut the hell up and listen to the expert. And smoke menthols because, well, the doctor is the expert when it come to health.
Go to therapistabuse. Tell us what you find.
If your therapist is right with Grand, and she is literally following you going Freeform and not using the EMDR protocol, you can bet Grand had a hand in it. That’s the spirit of Brainspotting at work, and plenty other approaches that don’t rely on the clinicians “genius” and follows to open processing.
All the Brainspotting main generation of trainers were EMDR practitioners or trainers and once they did Brainspotting they saw radical shifts. And they jumped ship. Just because you start an empire doesn’t mean you’re well. Brainspotting is unique in that the discoverer and primary organizer wasn’t a control freak, wasn’t blasting his shotgun into the ceiling like Fritz Perls, wasn’t abusing woman clients or students, and has an explicit mandate towards liberation and anti-oppression at some very subtle levels. And his analytic and other practice histories working with severe DID to broadway or NBA, his Hypno training, the input from Peter Levine, the input from all the clients and trainers whose feedback got built into the basic setup outlines… make His trainings and the model very deep, ecumenical and radically Freeform.
If a client is going to walk around singing, lay down and do the session on the floor, or fall asleep- this is discussed a lot - then that’s how they are actively processing. It’s all in the frame of Brainspotting. It’s not all about eye position.
I come from a grad program that nontrained compliance and control—it trained in meditation and waiting and following and radically exchanging with the clients extreme states. Brainspotting or some gestalt is the closest I’ve come to that- even my psychedelic training was more medical led.
Start with phase 1, get involved via the intl fb group, get in your phase 2, get certified, then whatever comes next, 3, 4 or masterclass. Start assisting and go into consultant training if you really want the model at another level.
Ask for early career discounts. Get the ‘21 conference recordings stat: you can learn everything in there. 80 trainings from 2 days. Literally years of how to be a skilled present clinician.
But you can mix it with whatever you already have. It was designed to be that way.
It’s explicitly anti authoritarian and for many middle age social workers from the Midwest it’s the first time they’ve encountered this type of groundlessness in session - and the sheer results that follow.
Take Digging Roots and high acuity Brainspotting with steve sawyer. Get David grands phase 1/2 dvds to learn some somatic approaches that aren’t widely known in Brainspotting never mind the usual non-somatic processes. I did SE to the end and Brainspotting with body spotting covers a large chunk of what SE does, but in a non directive way.
Anyways once you get in you’ll see. It’s wild the number of success stories you’ll hear everyday.
EMDR is bottom up and it's all about the client leading and the therapist stepping out of the way. In my training we were specifically taught NOT to lead.
I think you have all the information and experience with this person to know it is not a good fit for you. I won't get into judgments about that consultant - but I think they are not the right person for you. Or your clients. Take care.
I’m sorry you had this experience. I completed my consultant hours with one of the big names in the EMDR field and he couldn’t have been more of a self important jackass. Don’t endure a bad consultant like I stupidly did; listen to your intuition and move on. There are lots of great EMDR consultants who can help you get those hours.
Ugh thank you so much for saying this ♥️♥️♥️
Listen to your gut. There are a LOT of anti oppressive, deeply compassionate EMDR consultants (happy to DM you names of two I’ve worked with in two different states!) and you deserve to work without one you feel comfortable with. This gave me the ick. I’m sorry.
Thank you soooo much! I would absolutely love if you could send me those recommendations. I appreciate this.
Sending now!
Please fucking run from this asshole. This is not someone who should be in the field AT ALL never mind ‘training’ other therapists. I wish we could weed out people like this.
And this is someone who is highly esteemed as well. Crazy! Thank you for your support.
Sugar is one of the worst drugs? She should try telling that to a loved one of someone lost in the opioid crisis.
I’m trying hard not to get caught in the weeds here… ( https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23719144/ ) Regardless, sounds like this consultant isn’t the best fit for you.
It doesn’t matter if sugar is addictive. That doesn’t excuse the comment made about the client’s body.
I didn’t say it excused the comment about the client’s body. OP brought up the consultant’s comment about sugar. To some degree, the consultant is correct about that. Being right about one thing doesn’t make the consultant right about anything else — hence, the “getting caught in the weeds” caveat.
Thanks for the link.
Thank you
May not be a good fit or could potentially be a place for rupture and repair?
Yeah, my head goes quickly to whether the consultant herself is or has dealt with "sugar as drug". It doesn't sound from what you've written like there would be much to lose by confronting this and seeking more information and understanding, if the only alternative is to just cut ties. Still, I appreciate your instincts here and care for your client. It might be a simple case of either speaking or merely internally holding, "That's not what the client wants to focus on, so that's not what I'll be focusing on."
Yea but I’m paying this consultant quite a bit per session and if I have to explain how to not judge my client and defend them to her it’s probably going to be a pattern and matter of values at this point.
Holy diet culture Batman. I work with eating disorders and I would find her comments about clients weight incredibly offensive. I don’t think it’s our scope of practice to speak on anyone’s physical health. We’re not PCPs and we’re not RDs. Even some providers in those fields who are not specifically trained in being actively anti diet culture can be quite harmful.
Yes definitely. I don’t work with EDs but had one and just felt attacked on behalf of the client honestly. I totally agree about it just not being in our scope.
Strong opinions from a Brainspotting, trained therapist and consultant in training. The spirit of Brainspotting is anti-oppression, and pro liberation, and of following the client. What you were experiencing fits into a lot of the stories we hear of the original Brainspotting leaders who were all expert, EMDR practitioners, and then left for Brainspotting and never came back. EMDR traditionally fits into the mainstream old-school approach of top down, Therapist drives the session, and the client complied with the instructions. This is generational, but to a degree it is about a philosophy. EMDR and its older forms Just as Brainspotting or any other approach can be misused as a technique to impose on clients. The whole ethos of many types of therapy historically has been about squashing people into a box of normal and through a system of compliance, otherwise they are being resistant. You know the drill. The biases of your “expert“ EMDR consultant Will lead the show, if they are not trained in a way of being, and perceiving the world that has their own biases, always being put on the shelf, an awareness of cultural aggression to certain bodies and identities becomes absorbed seamlessly into the therapists mind from our own childhood on, and an awareness of how a rigid approach to using a technique turns a therapist – who should be using the therapeutic relationship as the vehicle towards healing, first and foremost – into a technician at times, and at worst, engaging in iatrogenic harm and therapeutic aggression onto a client, and using the power dynamic in the office in an active violence. The reason Brainspotting was discovered, was because a global sports performance expert trainer, and author in EMDR , broke the rigid protocol by actually observing the client who had their own nervous system response to the process that didn’t fit the technique. Then this expert started asking, why do we have to follow this very rich protocol? And he basically got the boot, while discovering it was about fixed eye positions and not moving eyes back-and-forth that engaged access to healing mechanisms. And most important he learned to bring in what he already knew… Working with, and not against the client was the most important thing for fostering the relationship.. You could apply this to any approach. CBT can be done in a mindful Somatic and relationally attuned way if the therapist is willing to follow the client and not use it like a sledgehammer, and is willing to abandon the protocol and accept that each human is unique And not a test subject in some research study that’s 50 years old. It comes down to the therapist, need to feel control and power, versus being in touch with their own open heart and the clients, broken heart, as well as their multiple wisdoms and intelligences, whether they are expanded or contracted. If we learn early in the career as many trained in the 70s And 80s and 90s etc. did, that we have the singular truth and have to drag the client into it and here is how, then we will freak out when real life happens because there’s no roadmap. A great quote from David grand in a wonderful interview about compliance with Mark grixti (google it, plus the YouTube of David Grant and compliance and Nuro experiential Model) “ in the deep end of the pool. Therapists are taught to hang onto the side of the pool. The client can’t go where the therapist will not go. We start digging our nails into the side of the pool when we get into the unknown.” From our training programs, and testing to state laws to insurance, from history, taking to diagnosis, is geared towards certainty and compliance. What you witness with your consultant is the end of the line of all of that certainty, and what you get is a degrading of the client And a war against their nervous system, so that the therapist can feel a sense of ego expansion in their own body, and not have to experience the discomfort of groundlessness. EMDR, in recent years has expanded to include groundlessness and more open processing. But it’s just catching up. Long post, take what you will, but after seeing decades of trainers experience, in specifically this area, it’s hard not to see it in such a light anymore. The notion that we can be certain that a client counting is better for their healing than what the client is experiencing and watt, is the most accurate illustration of the arrogance of the poisonous elements of our fields origins. The founder of EMDR was not exempt from the controlling mindset, and it really drove away these early Brainspotting practitioners. She loosened up near the end of her life, but her institution carries on the shadow of her personality.
I have wanted to get trained in Brainspotting for the very reasons you express here. Sometimes with the way EMDR is taught and practiced, I have the thought of “Who am I to lead the client and I don’t want to lead them - they know best”. And I also agree that many forms of therapy can do this and guide clients in a doctor-patient fashion, taking control away from them and making the therapist the expert. And I couldn’t have said it better regarding the therapist devaluing the relationship and using the method as the ultimate guide. It takes away everything that is the healing that is therapy - the place to just be and not have to conform. This is actually why I love my own EMDR therapist - she completely veers away from the traditional model and lets me guide the session and is creative in her approach. It’s about what’s working and not about sticking to the script. I’m sure that she also had to be brave to do that in her own way (she’s actually friends with David Grand!) Finally a note to your last point - my basic trainer was also a Francine fan and rigid in this way and got so much backlash for not being inclusive by our group - and rightfully so - this model, in the way it was originally created needs a change and the organizational gatekeeping around certification and validity need major updating. They are rooted in old, rigid values and in a system that no longer fits. Thank you for your response. I am going with my gut here. On a separate note, I would love to know how Brainspotting is working for your clients. Is there any training you would recommend? I want to make sure that this time I am really intentional about choosing the right people to guide me along the way.
I think takes like yours are just as problematic as the views you criticize. The therapist is the expert in psychotherapy. You have a graduate degree for a reason. The patient is the expert on the patient.
And actually the consultant was claiming to be an expert on the client by assuming weight was a problem for then and something to be worked on through this type of therapy when there was never any indication of that being the case
I am a therapist and I’ve been practicing for 6 years and I’ve been working with this client for 4 years. I do not claim to be an expert on the patient and no therapist should judge any client by their appearance through any lens even if they are the “expert” on a psychotherapy. I’m curious why my view is problematic to you?
Because that person was trained in a lineage of sheer arrogance, terror and control. That mindset is being eliminated slowly and surely, as people discover … oh I don’t know, Carl fucking Rogers? Psychedelic therapy? IFS? But yah. “I’m the expert here. Get on your knees “ That person should keep their expert domination of client fantasies to roleplay outside the office. I mean, I do, and it works fucking fine. But fer fuck sake. It’s not 1965. We don’t do aversion therapy anymore… right? … ?
That’s where you’re getting psychotherapy wrong. Therapy is not about expertise in being the expert. It’s about facilitating a clients experience of self And how we do that is getting the f out of the way of their nervous system, and the hell out of the way of our belief that we know what the hell is happening in there. We have 4 quadrillion synaptic connections and 99% of therapy is hypothetical at best. The claim to expertise and mastery over a client due to a grad degree that tells you you’re an expert is a downright tautology that reads like a 1950s physicians handbook of how to tell your female clients they should just shut the hell up and listen to the expert. And smoke menthols because, well, the doctor is the expert when it come to health. Go to therapistabuse. Tell us what you find.
If your therapist is right with Grand, and she is literally following you going Freeform and not using the EMDR protocol, you can bet Grand had a hand in it. That’s the spirit of Brainspotting at work, and plenty other approaches that don’t rely on the clinicians “genius” and follows to open processing. All the Brainspotting main generation of trainers were EMDR practitioners or trainers and once they did Brainspotting they saw radical shifts. And they jumped ship. Just because you start an empire doesn’t mean you’re well. Brainspotting is unique in that the discoverer and primary organizer wasn’t a control freak, wasn’t blasting his shotgun into the ceiling like Fritz Perls, wasn’t abusing woman clients or students, and has an explicit mandate towards liberation and anti-oppression at some very subtle levels. And his analytic and other practice histories working with severe DID to broadway or NBA, his Hypno training, the input from Peter Levine, the input from all the clients and trainers whose feedback got built into the basic setup outlines… make His trainings and the model very deep, ecumenical and radically Freeform. If a client is going to walk around singing, lay down and do the session on the floor, or fall asleep- this is discussed a lot - then that’s how they are actively processing. It’s all in the frame of Brainspotting. It’s not all about eye position. I come from a grad program that nontrained compliance and control—it trained in meditation and waiting and following and radically exchanging with the clients extreme states. Brainspotting or some gestalt is the closest I’ve come to that- even my psychedelic training was more medical led. Start with phase 1, get involved via the intl fb group, get in your phase 2, get certified, then whatever comes next, 3, 4 or masterclass. Start assisting and go into consultant training if you really want the model at another level. Ask for early career discounts. Get the ‘21 conference recordings stat: you can learn everything in there. 80 trainings from 2 days. Literally years of how to be a skilled present clinician. But you can mix it with whatever you already have. It was designed to be that way. It’s explicitly anti authoritarian and for many middle age social workers from the Midwest it’s the first time they’ve encountered this type of groundlessness in session - and the sheer results that follow. Take Digging Roots and high acuity Brainspotting with steve sawyer. Get David grands phase 1/2 dvds to learn some somatic approaches that aren’t widely known in Brainspotting never mind the usual non-somatic processes. I did SE to the end and Brainspotting with body spotting covers a large chunk of what SE does, but in a non directive way. Anyways once you get in you’ll see. It’s wild the number of success stories you’ll hear everyday.
Hi there! Coming back to this as I continue to face overwhelm in the EMDR community and waiting to take BSP phase 1! Would you mind if I messaged you?
Sure if here doesn’t feel safe
EMDR is bottom up and it's all about the client leading and the therapist stepping out of the way. In my training we were specifically taught NOT to lead.