Did you finish your EMDR training and think, right I’m good to go, let’s get putting this knowledge into practice?

Or maybe you completed your training and still felt confused about certain parts of the model?

There’s a lot to learn in a short amount of time!

Maybe your training actually made EMDR feel quite simple yet something stopped you continuing with the model. Maybe it’s the complex clients that we find ourselves working with!

It takes time to really embed the standard training. Attending an EMDR refresher training can be helpful in so many ways. Read on to find out why.

1. Learning something new takes time to connect.

It can seem that once you have completed your standard training that you are done. You’ve got your certificates now, you can call yourself an EMDR Therapist, you are good to go. Maybe for some people this is enough.

Those people that come off the training and start using their skills straight away are more likely to continue on their EMDR journey. Even so it does take time to embed the knowledge and develop a deep understanding of the standard protocol.

Whilst there are only 8 phases to the standard treatment protocol, there is a lot to learn around these phases. We want the structure of the framework but then also the depth of the knowledge within that. I’m sure we’ve all been there with our clients when we are shuffling our notes, trying to recall where we are on the protocol and what we should be saying next. There is a lot that easily slips out of our mind, especially when we are in a session with clients. Or is that just me? 

2. It’s normal to forget after a training session.

A high amount of learning is simply lost in the days after attending training. Not just EMDR training but any type of training, Use it or you lose it. The concept of the forgetting curve was originated by Ebbinghaus (way back in the 1880s!). Suggesting that people will tend to halve their memory of newly learned knowledge unless they actively review the learned material. It was also quite comforting to know about this. I just thought it was me, that I was a slow learner 😂. Even now when I do any new learning I read and reread over the notes and try and make more sense of it all. I practice what I am learning. There is way more to learning then we actually think!!

But you know this isn’t a bad thing that we forget, our brain needs to filter out some things so it has the capacity to function well. Maybe sometimes it makes mistakes and loses the information that we actually want it to keep!! Last week I was watching Top of The Pops from 1990, (a UK TV music show counting down the top selling singles of the week). There were so many songs that I could recall the lyrics too, I wonder why my brain held on to that but not how I should start an EMDR session when a memory was left incomplete!! 

3. Revisiting can help to build on the Foundations 

When most of us complete our standard EMDR training we may not have had much client experience. What I have learnt time and time again is the more I practice and use something the better I get at it. I  also find myself having more questions the more depth and skill we develop in a model. Revisiting the standard protocol and the nuances around this can help you to develop a more meaningful understanding of EMDR. This can help to keep motivation and momentum going and will lead to you continuing with your EMDR journey. 

So if you are interested in refreshing your EMDR skills then do take a look at my ‘Recharge your EMDR practice’ webinar series. Click here to find out more.

What is the Recharge your EMDR Practice webinar series?

It’s a series of 6 webinars run online over a 6 week period.

You will cover a recap of the 8 phases.

You will develop a deeper knowledge of case conceptualisation, cognitive interweaves working with current anxieties and phobias and focus on working with complex cases.

You will get the opportunity to meet with a group of clinicians who are also on a similar journey to yourself. We always allocate time for a q&a in sessions.

It’s a chance to keep your skills refreshed

It helps you to avoid skill fade

It improves your confidence so that instead of avoiding it you utilise EMDR more in your clinical practice.

Don’t lose those EMDR skills, invest in yourself and grow and develop your EMDR skills.

Click here to find out more now.

Thanks for reading my blog, I’m Dr Hannah Bryan and I am a Chartered Clinical Psychologist and a Europe Approved EMDR Consultant and Facilitator. EMDR has been part of my Clinical practice since 2006. In 2014 I became an EMDR Consultant and an EMDR Facilitator since 2019. I want to share with you some of the steps and the key learnings that helped me learn to become a better EMDR therapist and achieve some amazing results for my clients. 

I am extremely passionate about helping clinicians improve their knowledge and skills in EMDR so that they improve their confidence and practice it more with their clients and more clients recover and heal from the traumas they have experienced.


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