EMDR With Complex Trauma

by Thomas Zimmerman

EMDR therapy is a remarkable evidence-based approach to psychotherapy. However, it is not easy to do with many clients with complex trauma. Clients with complex trauma often struggle to develop the essential resources, have difficulty tolerating distress, and may initially lack much of the adaptive information that is needed for EMDR therapy to be effective. This book explores each of the phases of EMDR therapy and explains why many clients with complex trauma struggle. It offers sensible accommodations. Clients with complex trauma often survive by using coping strategies that directly conflict with the core tasks of EMDR therapy. We need to make the tasks of EMDR therapy safer and more tolerable to the client’s nervous system. That takes time and attention. Clients with complex trauma may be harmed if they are shoved through a mindfulness or EMDR machine. This book invites therapists to explore the unique and complex nervous system of each client and adjust interventions to match each client.

Topics covered in this book Doing a sensible and safer client history, options for when clients struggle with mindfulness activities, developing helpful attachment resources, ways to navigate blocking beliefs, assessing preparedness for reprocessing, selecting initial targets, understanding where EMDR therapy tends to break and how to intervene, and strategies to help memory content come into awareness in more tolerable ways.

210 pages, Paperback

Published October 29, 2024

Reviews

[Ann-Marie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fantastic book. It’s not perfect, with some typos and repetition along the way. But I think that’s what makes it all the better. The urgency with which this information needs to be communicated to ALL EMDR therapists far outweighs the time wasted on another draft or edit.

Thomas Zimmerman is an absolute gift to our profession.

[Caleb Baker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Immensely helpful. Cannot recommend this book enough to EMDR therapists.

[Jess Marks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book for clinicians new to EMDR.

[Louie]

“When I was a young child, I looked around my world and realized that the adults were not okay. They clearly didn't know what they were doing. They were saturated with their lives, their misadventures in love, and their moods. They were not functional enough to have the capacity to be of much real assistance to me. Work for them was exhausting and numbing.
This was the mid-1970s, and it felt as though everyone had just survived something horrible. There was a backstory that a six-year-old couldn't quite understand but could feel its full sad weight pressing against him.
Children were not the irreplaceable things that they have become. We were things that happened to you. Then, more of us were born as though springing straight out of their disillusionment and resentment in each
other.
I realized young that I had to figure things out largely by myself. So I figured out how to survive. I learned quickly that the only thing worse than being ignored was being noticed. When I could very little measure of safety at home, in the community, or at school, I figured out how to disappear. I learned how to smile and to pretend that I was okay. When I could not connect, I learned how to feign connection. I learned to ride a bike in a city faster than anyone could catch me. Eventually, I learned that I could be smart. I could disconnect from my body and pain. Later, I came to Catholic mysticism and discovered that I could make a spirituality of self-erasure. I found community support and spiritual endorsement for my earliest survival strategies. I made a practice of disappearing nearly everything that made me human. I learned to master my teenage body and will. I told myself when I was hungry and when I would sleep. I chose to sleep on hard surfaces for the lesson of it. I did worse to rid myself of self.
I did not need the church to remind me that bodies were bad. But it was nice to have a formal blessing and an altar thousands of years old for those central ideals. In some ways, everything worked remarkably well. Until it didn't. When I was 21 my mystical spirituality collapsed, and I fell unexpectedly into a fully male body with decidedly human emotions. I felt huge things moving and pressing around inside of me, not one of which i…

could name or tolerate. It took a long time for things to settle. It took decades longer for the actual work of healing to start.
Healing from complex trauma will be my life's work. It is the onion I will endlessly peel, and I will probably never find the little green sprig in its center. I have had the fortune to do great healing work. Much of what I learned from my recovery informs what you will read about here. Now that I'm in my 50s and have done a sizable piece of my own healing, I'm amazed at the ingenuity of my younger self. I tried many of the best cultural strategies that were available to me: I practiced staying ahead of it, disconnected from the worst parts of it, learned how to self-erase, grew the parts of me where I could find peace and competence, and connected with people and systems who could help me nearly perfect my earliest survival strategies. None of these carly strategies helped me heal. They allowed me to survive long enough to start healing
Carrying trauma necessitates survival strategies. The same cultures that wound us construct obstacles to healing. They dictate our options for survival and recovery. They instruct us on how we should best carry the wounds they give us. They shape which healing strategies "make sense" and which are "woo-woo." Many of us have survived by using culturally available survival and healing strategies. These include, but are not limited to, the following:
• Trying to Make Sense of the Trauma/Ruminating
• Forgiveness of Abusers
• Trying to Be Understood by Abusers
• Emotionally/Somatically Numbing Strategies
• Intellectualizing
• Dissociating from the Reality of It
• Trying to Be Loved Whole
• Trying to Love Someone Else Whole/Caretaking
• Giving It to God
• Repetition Compulsion
• Controlling Self, Others, or Things
• Mindfulness/Emotion Regulation Strategies
• Staying Ahead of It/Distracting Ourselves from It
• Making Ourselves Relevant to Others”

[Stephani Jahn, PhD · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mostly for clinicians, but a curious client might be interested, too.

Tom's book is so incredibly thought-out and organized, so this book is great to read through but also to reference as-needed (he has a section on troubleshooting where EMDR tends to "break" and for each phase, etc.). I can't imagine a more compassionate, thorough, yet also concise book on EMDR that accounts for complex trauma being... often quite complex.

You can get this book for free or purchase at EMDRwithcomplextrauma.com

[Becca S · Rating 5 out of 5]

I got half way through and already was looking forward to reading it again. So many great tools and analogies that my brain soaked up like a sponge. I have been able to pass many along to clients to help them better understand the process and why we do things the way we do in EMDR. If you do EMDR you need to read this book.

[Juliana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great resource!
The book has a lot of examples to troubleshoot.
This is a good read for new EMDR therapists as well. as CITs.
It has a few typos that make some ideas confusing, but those can be clarified by context.

[恬 张 · Rating 5 out of 5]

是一本偏临床的关于EMDR的书。有很不错的比喻，和一些临床上碰到的问题和概念引进。