Kim Howard  00:00

Welcome to the Let’s Talk EMDR podcast brought to you by the EMDR International Association, or EMDRIA, I am your host, Kim Howard. In this episode, we are talking with EMDR, certified therapist, consultant and trainer, Dr. Jamie Marich, about religious and spiritual trauma. Let’s get started. Today we are speaking with EMDR certified therapist, trainer and consultant, Dr. Jamie Marich, to discuss the role of EMDR therapy in the treatment of religious and spiritual trauma. Thank you, Jamie, for being here today. We are so happy that you said yes.

 

Jamie Marich  00:35

Glad to be back. Thank you, Kim.

 

Kim Howard  00:37

Jamie, can you tell us about your path to becoming an EMDR therapist?

 

Jamie Marich  00:41

So I became an EMDR therapist because I was an EMDR client, I’ve been very open about that part of my story. I think, had I been introduced to this in graduate school or just in therapy world, I might have had a real skeptical view of I don’t know how this is going to benefit my practice, but because I was introduced as a client during the summer of 2004 I know this sounds like the cheesy, trite commercial. It changed my life, but it’s very true. It changed my life so much, and it really helped, more than anything else, at that point, connect the head knowledge with the heart knowledge, and it was such a powerful intervention for me, I knew I had to get trained in it, and so I have been licensed as a therapist since 2005 that’s when I began my training and study. So I’ve had the good fortune of being an EMDR therapist my entire career. And as a lot of us who love EMDR often, do we become consultants and trainers and writers on the topic. So that’s the short story.

 

Kim Howard  01:37

Well, we like those short stories. And I mean, obviously we’re kind of biased here, because we are EMDIAR but, you know, we mean for us, you know, we would like EMDR therapy to change people’s lives. But if any kind of therapy has changed someone’s life and made it better, then we are all for that. I mean, you know, so we, we love to hear those, those stories. And you’re not the first person to come to EMDR therapy like that. So we are glad that you did though. We’re happy to have you here.

 

Jamie Marich  02:04

Glad to be here.

 

Kim Howard  02:05

So Jamie, your new book, “You Lied to Me about God: A Memoir,” discusses many areas, but the overall theme is how people are impacted when harm starts at home disguised as God’s will. Can you talk about how EMDR therapy helped you to heal?

 

Jamie Marich  02:19

My very first three EMDR targets that I ever did as a client were around religiously charged pieces of abuse that I experienced due to my parents and their religious connections and issues, and one other that dealt with some of the dynamics at the Catholic school that I went to. And I share the story. I’ve shared it in my YouTubes and in a recent article I had come out in psychotherapy network, or how my very first EMDR target, my therapist, Janet Thornton, I’ve named her before, had to use a cognitive interweave on me because I was so blocked to even going there with EMDR because of my spiritual upbringing, that I was still carrying a lot around, but, you know, God’s going to handle it. I just have to pray more about it, things we call spiritual bypass, or it’s it just feels too much. I don’t want to dishonor my parents by going there. And so even as she set up that first target, and I had a lot of baggage that was religiously charged about even going there. She used the most brilliant cognitive interweave on me, which was Jamie, you know you’re allowed to go there, that’s why you’re here. You know you’re you’re allowed to go there, that’s why you’re here. And then when she said that, even in that first EMDR session, it was just a very open permission that I needed for the dam to unclog, so to speak. And 20 years later, I haven’t turned back from this healing path. So you know, it’s not to down other forms of therapy, because prior to EMDR, I had a lot of 12 step recovery exposure, which was helpful on so many levels. I do think it did create some of those spiritual bypasses too. I had, I think cognitive type work was all I was able to handle as a new therapy client coming out of this, this world. But in order, as I mentioned, to really connect the head and the heart and then eventually the soul altogether, there was just something about the EMDR approach that really did it for me.

 

Kim Howard  04:17

It’s good to hear. And we’ve talked about this before, because you’ve been on the podcast before, and I’ve openly said this, I am Catholic, and I was raised Catholic, and I still practice and so and I know that this happens, but I guess my family just didn’t have that kind of tight religious spiritual constraint on me as a child. Maybe it was because I was the last of five and my parents just gave up at that point. I really don’t know. But I think I’m trying to think, I’m trying to think back, and I’m like, God, do we have those things when I was going up? And I’m like, well?

 

Jamie Marich  04:49

Well, thank you for saying that. Because something I really highlight in my work around spirituality is there are all different kinds of Catholics, right? I mean, I I’m gonna say this. I’ve gotten into more trouble saying other things in EMDR circle. So I’m just going to say it; like you could be a Joe Biden Catholic or a Clarence Thomas Catholic, if you get the national connection.

 

Kim Howard  04:49

Yes.

 

Jamie Marich  04:52

And I am somebody that, even though I’m very ecumenical right now, I do follow the work of a lot of different spiritual paths, and think they all meet in the middle. I share this in the memoir, how I still keep a strong footing in my Catholic identity and a lot of that. And I’ve heard this term that I’ve liked lately. I’m culturally Catholic because I am Croatian background. I’m a Croatian citizen. That’s my family’s thread, and Catholicism is so important to our national identity. So I have a brother who’s a priest. There’s there’s a lot about the Catholic church that I still feel connected to, even though I have a lot of problems and struggles with it. And I also mentioned in the book how like even receiving sacraments or going through a bar but a mitzvah, for instance, it could be a lovely rite of passage that isn’t that dramatic, or it can be something that children feel shamed into doing, because that’s what their parents want. So even after everything I’ve been through, because for people who don’t know my story, the summary of it is my parents were married Roman Catholic, and then my father converted to a pretty extreme evangelical group, and I was about five, and my mom became even more rooted in her Catholic identity at that point, really feeling she had to defend her faith. And so I grew up as the oldest child in the middle of the holy war. Yeah, and I hung out in both churches as a young adult. I left both churches as a young adult trying to figure out where I belonged spiritually. And even after everything I’ve been through. I’m not anti religion. I’m not even an I’m definitely not anti spirituality. I’m a very spiritual person, but I get very concerned with the things that people do in God’s name, or the things that people do in the name of the institutions.

 

Kim Howard  06:54

Yes, wars have been started with the tagline, God’s on our side. Yes, God’s on our side. And this goes back, not recently, hundreds, thousands of years, this has been going on. This is not new, correct? So in our in the world history, so yeah, absolutely, I understand that. Thank you for elaborating on that, Jamie. What are the specific complexities or challenges when working with clients with religious or spiritual harm?

 

Jamie Marich  07:21

So something we have to be aware of as EMDR therapists is some of our tried and true EMDR interventions, like the light stream activity, for instance, maybe even the calm, safe place, could potentially be triggering if they are reminiscent of meditations or prayers that were used in clients abusive context. This is often the case when people are coming out of cults, and sometimes there’s some subtle distinctions between I often tease that culture, the things that are likely to get a Netflix documentary. But like in my experience, I was a part of two very mainstream churches, and was still exposed to a lot of cultic dynamics. So there could be, especially if you’re dealing with somebody who is more of a traditional cult survivor, you do want to do a lot of things, like asking for consent, like holding the tappers, for instance, can feel like the Scientology audit machines. I don’t know if any of us have really thought of that. Doing eye movements back and forth can feel, even though EMDR is not hypnosis, can feel like a hypnotic trance that were used in some cultic circles. So I think it’s like a lot of issues around EMDR to ask for consent about doing certain exercises and being open to options, being open to modifications. Because some people may just say, well, I’ll do this EMDR thing, but I don’t want to move my eyes back and forth. And so we have other options. That’s why I’ve always been a believer in I don’t really okay. I’m definitely going to get a mark on my back for this. I don’t really much care what the research says about which modality of dual attention stimulus is most effective if it’s not going to be effective for that client sitting in front of me. Am very much about getting preferences, so we have to watch those kind of things. The other big caution is what I already mentioned, that you might need to use more robustly, interweave or cognitive interweave, because clients who come from spiritual upbringings have likely had messages about the evilness of therapy and planted in them. I tell the story in my memoir how Dr James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, who’s a psychologist and a lot of us know him as being problematically conservative, but even my father and my father’s church taught there’s no such thing as a Christian psychologist. I remember hearing that when I brought up Dobson, so that could be something that is a block to a lot of folks. You. Even if they don’t want anything to do with this churches or their abusive systems anymore, there can often be that still small voice in the heart that says, this is of the devil. What what you’re going into and they’re asking you to move your eyes back and forth or work with machines. So sometimes, even outside the protocol and using interviews, you just may have to stop with the person and talk out what’s coming up for them is this sounding like anything you heard from your religious parent before, or your abusive cult leader before, your abusive pastor or minister or whatnot. And I think being able to talk and listen to a person is very critical in those moments. But then even as you’re doing that, there could be targets in there that that can be worked with using the EMDR protocol. So for instance, a lot of people carry messages like, I’m tainted, I’m defective, I’m an abomination, especially if people are queer and grew up religious. So those can potentially be good areas for target. But I also hearken back to that story of my first EMDR therapist who used that very powerful interweave with me. You’re allowed to go there because she saw how blocked I was from even letting myself go there.

 

Kim Howard  11:13

And we’ve talked about this on the podcast before, so if anybody’s new, I’ll reiterate, I feel like finding the right therapy and the right therapist is…you have to do your homework first of all. And you have to, as a client, you have to do your homework to find out somebody who you think will fit with you. And then the other thing, the flip side of that, is therapy and doctors and medicine. It’s very much there is science behind everything that is done, but there’s also an art form to it. You know? You have to find, as a therapist, what’s going to work for your client? It’s really, every time somebody comes in the door a new client, that’s a custom opportunity for you. And so we, we, I’m not a therapist, you EMDR, the therapist? Yeah, you know, yeah. You guys have to look at that. You have to say, okay, A, B and C worked for this last client, but x, y, z is going to have to work for this one, because this is a different person. And different person, and it really does become a custom situation. Every time somebody new walks in. You to work?

 

Jamie Marich  12:07

Yes, and I am definitive, in my opinion, and my teaching perspective that therapy is more of an art than a science. I know a lot of people will use that language of it’s an art and a science, and that’s great, and I don’t totally disparage what we have learned scientifically about the brain or about therapy, but I go back to the example of forms of stimulation with the EMDR that I think an artistic therapist is open to client preference and doesn’t say but, but this is what the book says, or this is what the research says. And I talk about this, and you lied to me about God, I go there about what it was like coming into the EMDR world as somebody who is a recovering evangelical and a recovering Catholic in a lot of ways too, that a lot of this fundamentalism that I and it’s not just an EMDR. It happens in every therapy modality around but this is exactly the way the founder says to do it. And I’ve even met people in the EMDR community who I think are more rigid than Dr Shapiro was, if you read her actual text. That kind of thinking concerns me, and I do value what a lot of the scientists around EMDR have done in terms of helping us be more palatable to the larger scientific community and therapy professions, yet in that office, we are working with the artistry of one human being connecting with another. And to me, that becomes even more imperative when you’re working with somebody who’s been spiritually injured, correct?

 

Kim Howard  13:38

I was thinking about when we talked earlier a little bit about my experience with my parents. My dad was a convert. He converted to Catholicism. We actually made our first communions together.  And I think, the reason that it didn’t injure me as a child or as a young adult was because my parents, I don’t think my parents bought into the dogma, yeah, as much as some people do, you you know, I mean, you know, my mom and my dad were very pragmatic people. They were like, yes, you should pray, and this is important, and you should go to church, etcetera. You should do good works. But also, you know, God put all these other people out here to help you in the world. You know, all the lawyers, all the doctors, all the nurses, all these people who might be able to help you in your life somewhere. They’re here because they have a special skill, and if you have to utilize them in your life, then that’s what you do. And so they never, I don’t know. Maybe it’s because my dad was a recovering alcoholic. We never looked at that therapy, AA programs, 12 step any of that -we never looked at it in a negative light. We never looked at that said, Oh, we just have to pray more so he’ll stop drinking. It was, yeah, we were praying for him, but, but we’re also being proactive and going to these meetings and learning more about why he is the way he is. And you know, he’s learning more about himself, about the childhood trauma he experienced, which is why he self soothed with alcohol. And so I guess we looked at it from a pragmatic standpoint. You know, you’ve got these tools. Tools in your community, you utilize them, and that’s how you kind of balance your life out.

 

Jamie Marich  13:48

Oh, wow.  It’s a beautiful reflection, though, that shows what happens when dogma doesn’t have to ruin things.

 

Kim Howard  15:11

Right? And I wish, I wish more people were like that. I really, truly do. And I, you know, I think some people might get a little freaked out when I say I’m Catholic, but, you know, I, I grew up in a household where everyone was welcome my mother, you know, we I lived in a really small town in the south, and my mother openly welcomed her gay friends into our home. And I cannot imagine the gay friends that I have now, like turning away from them, or denouncing them, or not them not being a part of my life simply because of who they are. And so I would not do that to anyone else who was ill or sick or neurodivergent or anything like that. So why would I do that to my gay friends? You know? I mean, so not everybody comes from it, from that standpoint, and I and I understand, but I kind of don’t understand, to be honest.

 

Jamie Marich  15:12

So I think a question I have gotten used to asking, and I think this is a good question for clinicians to have. It’s a good question for us to have, just as members of a society where Christian nationalism seems to be a bigger factor. When people say they’re Catholic, when people say they’re Christian, I will ask them, How are you defining that? What is your experience of being Catholic? What is your experience of being Christian? Because I just had a completely reparative experience in these last few weeks, watching the events around President Carter’s funeral and reading his book now on faith. And he was somebody who identified as a Baptist, as a born again Christian, yet he very much saw his progressive values as a lot of people do who are Baptist and in other in Catholics. I mean, there is a whole very progressive movement of people who identify as Catholics. I also want to shout out a ministry I’m involved in called Abby of the arts. If you’re somebody or you have a client who is looking for a place where they can connect with Catholic spiritual teaching in a very affirming, progressive way. Check us out. We have a lot of online programming and connections. We have a trans minister who’s on our wisdom council. We’re out there. And I think it can be hard to see some of these more affirmative, spiritual, religious spaces, or maybe you don’t want to see them, and that’s fine, too, when your experience has been nothing but wounding.

 

Kim Howard  17:29

Honestly, I think there are more of us out there. We’re just a little more secret about it, and not in a bad way. I just think it just doesn’t maybe come up in our regular religious life. You know, sometimes I look at myself and I think, Oh, I’m not that Catholic, you know, like, emphasis on “that.” And so that’s just who I am. And I think there are more of us out there than we think there are, and so I think there’s nothing wrong with welcoming people and loving them as humans. I think that’s our job as a human population, is to love other people. So but you talked about also the EMDR, therapist in the in the room, in the therapy room, with our client, and how they have to figure out what works for them in terms of bilateral stimulation. And when I interviewed Shelly spirit chief, it was a couple years ago when we first launched the podcast, you talked about how in Native American community, indigenous people community, a lot of times red and blue lights are synonymous with the police. They can also be synonymous with, you know, emergency care, but and so a lot of times that they’re doing any kind of light bars, they do not use those colors because they can be negative and negative connotation. So those are the kinds of things that you guys have to think about and learn about when you’re working with your clients, and it’s a lot to take in and learn. And so we appreciate all the work that you guys do to heal all of us. So thank you.

 

Jamie Marich  18:50

You’re welcome. It’s our pleasure, my pleasure speaking for ourselves.

 

Kim Howard  18:54

What successes have you seen using EMDR therapy for this population, Jamie?

 

Jamie Marich  18:58

Wow, too many to list. In a simple way, I’ve seen people be able to unpack harmful theology that clearly has some linkage to activation, because that’s really the heart of the adaptive information processing model that when things get maladaptively or problematically linked, they can be ingrained. I have had the pleasure in my EMDR career to have worked with a lot of pastors, a lot of pastors who themselves struggle with what the church has asked them to do because of their own values and their own faith journey. And I have found EMDR to be such a powerful modality. There a term that we use kind of in this larger work, is deconstructing and reconstructing one’s faith. And as a philosophical construct, deconstructing is like taking it all apart so that you can put together something again that is new and useful and adaptive, and that’s very much in line with the adaptive information. Processing model. So I’ve seen people, and I have a great passion for working with other queer people really be able to unpack not just negative cognitions, but what Levis and San Diego have called oppressive cognitions, things like, I am an abomination. I am I am damaged. I am Satan’s child. Was a negative cognition that I actually carried, and I’ve had some others carry similar cognitions like that. And yeah, EMDR works in my experience, just as it would with any other form of trauma, because spiritual trauma is valid trauma, and that has been a big bell I have rung throughout my work as a trauma educator.

 

Kim Howard  20:44

Absolutely. We appreciate that. Are there any myths that you would like to bust about working with EMDR therapy and those who have suffered religious or spiritual trauma?

 

Jamie Marich  20:53

Wow. Great question, and I want to take a two fold approach to this, because on one hand, in some of the cultic studies literature and I have friends who work specifically as cultic study survivors specialists, ritual abuse survivor specialists, and EMDR can have a bit of a bad reputation there as a weird therapy. And we have, and I spoke to this a little earlier in the interview, we have to be careful about doing therapies with people that sound too weird or too triggering, because so many of these weird, crazy ideas were pushed in the cults or in methods like Scientology or whatnot. And like a lot of things, it’s don’t think an absolute is how I tend to feel about it, because I think we can acknowledge that EMDR may have some trappings to it, but again, it’s like, how do you modify it? How do you modify it? How do you, you know, let a person know, hey, yeah, this is the steps that I’m supposed to follow. And I can give you as much of an orientation as feels safe enough for you to be able to do this, but we can make some modifications along the way. And if any part of this is feeling too much, stop sign, and then we can just stop and talk and have that reevaluation. I mean, something I will always say when I’m first pitching EMDR to clients I do lead with. I know this can sound weird. I know this can sound bizarre, and that’s where I do Lean into some of the science for people who need it, especially if they have been shamed about science and made to believe all these crazy spiritual things, right? That’s just one myth I want to bust, and the answer really does come down to modification, I think, on, on the other hand, maybe another myth is that, and I already kind of spoke to this, that spiritual abuse isn’t real. PTSD, it isn’t real. Of course, it is. Yeah, of course, people really think that. I mean, I, you know, honestly, I’m seeing that less than I did before, because I remember when I first looked up spiritual abuse as a term 20 years ago, when I was in graduate school, there was very little written about it. And even now, in the last 510, years, hearing people talk about it more. Yeah, I think the other big myth I want to bust, and I really want to say this to new EMDR therapists out there, because you’ve let me go a couple cool places. Kim already in this interview, coming into a community like EMDR, the various EMDR accreditation bodies, your trainer may have been somebody who was pretty dogmatic. There can be a lot of imparted messaging like this is the way you have to do it. And I write in my memoir how I was almost scared away from the EMDR community in my early days as an EMDR therapist because my evangelical cult bell went off. There’s too much founder syndrome here. There’s too much of this rigidity. And if that’s how some people need to be to engage with EMDR and learn it, well, more power to you. That’s just not my way of doing things. And I think you will hang around EMDR world. My hope is that you find a teacher, you find a consultant who is willing to work with you and your learning style, especially if you are having some edges pulled around, some of the dogmatism that you may be encountered. Because I’m a Basic Trainer. Of course, I teach the importance of sticking to the protocol, especially when you’re first learning. I know how to put on that hat, yet the me that shows up in therapy is very much the me who’s been speaking in this interview, and that’s hopefully how I consult and mentor. And if you’re worried about the rigidity of EMDR right now, hang around. There are a lot of us who will help you modify that. Same lesson could be said for faith and spirituality too.

 

Kim Howard  24:58

Yeah, that’s true. I mean we do have, I mean, for those of you who don’t know, or maybe new to the EMDR world, Francine Shapiro. Dr. Francine Shapiro was the founder of EMDR therapy, and she passed away in 2019.

 

Jamie Marich  25:11

Yes.

 

Kim Howard  25:11

So we, as an organization, and even then, people who are outside our organization, but still are EMDR therapists. Some people were trained directly from the founder. And some people still talk about how they were trained directly from the founder. And some people are newer to the community, never met her, didn’t they know about her, you know, honestly, but they have no personal connection to her. And so yes, in terms of the organization itself, EMDRIA, we are at that kind of weird spot where, yeah, you know, people who were maybe personally connected with Francine Shapiro are at the sort of at the end of their career. They’re, you know, probably five, maybe ten years away from officially retiring. And then we have people coming in. And so there’s this dichotomy happening with the organization and with the profession itself.

 

Jamie Marich  25:59

And, so I like to say there are three generations of EMDR therapists, and I’m in the second. You know, the first generations were people who either knew her directly, were trained by her, were trained immediately by the EMDR Institute. I met her in passing several times, and she was actually very encouraging when I wrote my doctoral dissertation and suggested the journal I try to get it published, but I also challenged her in a letter to the editor in the EMDR journal. And I think a lot of us who are second generation are kind of a bridge between between those worlds, and then, yeah, newer folks who are coming around half the benefit of EMDR is pretty established now, in a way that it wasn’t when I first got trained in ’05, I was still having to defend it a lot more. So I think like with with any institution, there’s evolution, there’s growth, and there’s just there’s different ways of doing things. I think if there’s one lasting message I’ve learned in writing my memoir, that I’ve learned as both a therapist and as a spiritual trauma survivor, it’s that we we get into harm, the potential for harming ourselves and harming others when we do get too rigid and too dogmatic.

 

Kim Howard  27:08

That’s very true. Thank you, Jamie. What would you like people outside of the EMDR community to know about EMDR therapy with this population? You may have touched on this already, but if there’s anything else you want to add….

 

Jamie Marich  27:19

Just that it has such wonderful potential to connect aspects of experience that have been dissociated from each other, especially the head and the heart, the heart and the body, the body and the soul. Because I know growing up in any kind of conservative religion, you likely get a lot of messaging around not being able to fully trust your body, at least, I could say that, mostly from the lane of Christianity, but on, you know, different sides of it. And I think EMDR, when done well and guided well, has has real potential to help people make those connections.

 

Kim Howard  27:56

Yeah, yeah, that’s good. Jamie, how do you practice cultural humility as an EMDR therapist?

 

Jamie Marich  28:02

A lot of it is what I’ve hit on in this interview, not being a rigid person, taking that attitude of, what do I need to most know about working with you? And that’s not about tell me everything about your culture, because we never want to put that burden on the client. But when you don’t practice from a dogmatic this is the way it’s supposed to be done. Lens, I think you’re automatically facilitating more cultural humility in how you work, specific to spiritual abuse and religious trauma. I think it’s important to realize what we’ve already talked about. There are different flavors of Christianity. Or my experience in Christianity may not be the same as yours in Judaism, or yours in Islam or in Hinduism. Just realizing that there’s a bigger world out there than yours, you

 

Kim Howard  28:47

have the nail on the head. Do you have a favorite free EMDR related resource you would suggest, either for the public or other EMDR therapists?

 

Jamie Marich  28:56

I want to shout out my friends, my very good friend, Rotem Brayer, who runs the EMDR learning community, EMDR-learning.com. He’s cultivated that as a resource that is off of social media, but it has a lot of the same social media flavors to it, with discussion groups. He’s always running free things I’m happy to participate in those when I can. So that is the biggest free EMDR resource that I would like to shout out, and Rotem is also a good friend of this work that I do with spiritual abuse, religious trauma and association.

 

Kim Howard  29:29

He won. Can’t remember which award it was. We gave him an EMDRIA award at the conference in September [2024], and I’m drawing a blank. I think it was an Ambassador Award maybe….

 

Jamie Marich  29:39

Yeah

 

Kim Howard  29:39

Because of all of the outreach that he does for EMDR.

 

Jamie Marich  29:43

He’s just good people. And I will say if you are resonating with the way I think about things like modifying and rejecting rigidity, you’ll really dig what Rotem’s created in that community.

 

Kim Howard  29:54

Thank you. Jamie, if you weren’t an EMDR therapist, what would you be? I want to see if it’s going to be the same question answer that you gave me last time.

 

Jamie Marich  30:03

Well, that’s a great question, because I think I said filmmaker last time.

 

Kim Howard  30:07

You did.

 

Jamie Marich  30:08

Which, yea, I….that’s still high on my list, and I still am involved in some consulting work with film. My gut level answer this time as well, I would be a writer. And then my other parts like, but you are a writer, you’ve written.

 

Kim Howard  30:18

That’s correct, you’re an author.

 

Jamie Marich  30:19

Yet one of the intentions I’ve created for myself going forward is to really cultivate competency and writing fiction and working into some other kinds of writing. And I jokingly will say I’m a clinician who happens to write, but yeah, I’ve been looking towards a future where maybe I could spend a full year taking a sabbatical from this clinical world and just focus on writing and filmmaking and creating.

 

Kim Howard  30:46

Oh, that would be awesome. I mean, we would miss you. But who knows what would come out at the other at the end of 12 months.

 

Jamie Marich  30:52

That’s true.

Kim Howard  30:55

Yeah, absolutely.  Jamie, is there anything else you want to add?

 

Jamie Marich  30:58

I just want to say gratitude to EMDRIA for even having me on to have this conversation and this podcast I was telling Kim privately before the conversation, it is a much different EMDRIA, than when I first came around in 2007/2006 I couldn’t even imagined being invited in to have a conversation like this during those years. So I just thank you and thank the organization for your willingness to have me discuss these things, and if you get any hate letters for my interview or things I said, my views do not represent those of EMDRIA, I just am grateful for having the platform to share them.

 

Kim Howard  31:34

Well, I hope I don’t jinx it, but so far, we haven’t gotten any hate mail about the podcast, so yay. That’s a good thing. I mean, not that I wouldn’t address it if it came through, but yeah, I feel like I’ve worked in association space for quite a long time, about 30 years, and this is the first organization that I’ve worked for where the members are literally healing people’s lives. I mean, I haven’t worked for doctors or nurses or anybody in the medical community. It’s usually been business owners or lawyers and that kind of thing….CEOs. And so this is the first place I’ve worked for….the mission really literally changes humanity and heals it. And so I am so grateful as a human being who has a family and raised two children and put them out into the world and that people like you or exist to help other people. So thank all of you for all of the work that you do, because it’s tremendous and it matters and you’re making an impact. We really appreciate and recognize that.

 

Jamie Marich  32:30

Thank you so much, and thank you for holding the support structures that allow us to do that.

 

Kim Howard  32:35

We do our humble best. Thanks, Jamie.

 

Jamie Marich  32:38

Thank you.

 

Kim Howard  32:39

This has been the Let’s Talk EMDR podcast with our guest, Dr. Jamie Marich. Visit www.emdria.org for more information about EMDR therapy, or to use our Find an EMDR Therapist Directory with more than 17,000 therapists available. If you like what you hear, please subscribe to this free podcast wherever you listen. Thanks for being here today.