Not Just Preparation: Resourcing for Dissociation as a Focus of Treatment

Sandra Paulsen has written of the “ubiquity of dissociation” (2014) and also that “dissociation is the engine…not the caboose” of traumatic symptoms (emdrandbeyond.com/blog/2018/4/13/screening-for-did-and-more). If dissociation drives trauma symptoms, from simple to complex, and small-t to big-T, then EMDR practitioners should be prepared to treat dissociative processes in all clients. However, most training distinguishes between “standard” clients and “dissociative” clients. Dissociation treatment appears in the preparation phases of the EMDR protocol, which implies that dissociation need only be addressed if it interferes with reprocessing trauma, rather than considering dissociation as a focus of treatment. This presentation will discuss the benefits of using specific resourcing techniques from the dissociation and early childhood trauma literature with all clients. The techniques will be presented in the context of contemporary neurological theory, which provides a model for understanding how dissociative processes occur in standard clients. These processes are reversed through the associative nature of EMDR.