Kim Howard 00:05
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’re discussing EMDR therapy and dissociation. Today’s guest is going to be EMDR therapist and consultant, Dr. Jamie Marish. Jamie is based in Akron, Ohio, and has extensive experience working with clients who are dissociated. Let’s get started. Today we are speaking with EMDR, therapist MDR consultant and virtual trainer, Dr. Jamie Marish. About EMDR therapy and dissociation. Thank you, Jamie, for being here today. We are so happy that you said

Jamie Marich 00:40
yes. My pleasure. So glad for the invitation.

Kim Howard 00:44
So tell us a little bit about your journey to becoming an EMDR therapist.

00:49
Well, I became an EMDR therapist through becoming an EMDR client. And I know that’s not so unusual of a story anymore, yet connected to our topic at hand today: dissociation. I became an EMDR therapist through becoming an EMDR client specifically to address my struggles with dissociation. So my journey to becoming a therapist was rather through the back door. I actually began as an English teacher and a music teacher and I was doing humanitarian aid work in Bosnia Herzegovina, and Croatia, where my family was from after the war. I was there from 2000 to 2003. And I was mentored by some folks who helped me to connect a lot of the dots about my need for personal recovery as well from addiction primarily. And after a little bit of stability, they suggested I go back to graduate school for counseling. And initially I resisted because I felt but I’m a teacher, I don’t really like psychology, but they empowered me with this sense of you’ve learned so much about the fundamentals of good trauma work being here, now go back to school and get the credentials and get the formal education. So I did that. Yeah, what ended up happening was when I began my clinical internship period in 2004, I was being triggered significantly, I was working with children and adolescents. And it was not necessarily the way that it was not the kids that was that were triggering me it was the way I saw systemic forces treating the kids like doctors in the hospitals, juvenile justice, Child Protective Services that just just felt very familiar to me. And I was dissociating very significantly at this worksite. And I blessedly had a colleague there who was younger, newer counselor saying you are dissociating constantly, if you don’t get this addressed, you’re not going to last in this field, and you’re going to end up really harming yourself, probably because you just seem so overwhelmed with dissociation. So I spoke with a graduate professor who I trusted, basically saying, I know I need more therapy, but I don’t know what else is really going to help because I had had so much 12 Step work at that point, a lot of cognitive behavioral therapy, I knew what I should be thinking, but it wasn’t really clicking. And so she gave me a card for an EMDR therapist. And that’s where the journey really began for me and I always say when I do trainings at the risk of sounding like a cheesy commercial with with one summer of EMDR so much just really turned a corner for me yet. What what I think is important to highlight here is that EMDR therapist I was sent to Jana Thornton was so dissociation competent and had such an artistry and how she did EMDR. So she was the first one to finally diagnosed me as having a dissociative disorder. Everything that had plagued me since I was a small child suddenly made sense when she really explained it and was able to see that yes, this is a dissociative, it was a dissociative disorder NOS at the time, kind of very close to DID and she was not afraid of dissociation. As an EMDR therapist, she had a good grounding in the standard protocol, but knew how to be very artful with it. And so when people asked me kind of why I feel so strongly about teaching on good competence and dissociation in EMDR therapy, it’s because I hope everybody could have an EMDR experience like I had with Jana Thornton coming in not made to be feeling like I was freakish for having these dissociative tendencies and gifts. And she ended up giving me the treatment that I really needed to to get my life in a better place. So after a summer, and then some other extra time and that experience, I just knew I had to offer this as a clinician, it wasn’t even an option for me. So that’s where my training journey began. And here we are all these years later.

Kim Howard 04:23
That’s a wonderful story. And now you take in your personal experience, and you are helping other clinicians help their clients. So what a beautiful journey that that really is, you know, you’ve taken something that was horrible and traumatic for you and you’ve turned it into, hey, this is who I am. And this is how I found it. And now I’m going to share this with you so that you can in turn be better with your clients who have any kind of dissociation happening. So thank you for doing that. That’s beautiful.

Jamie Marich 04:53
You’re welcome. And to me, that’s the art of paying it forward.

Kim Howard 04:55
There you go. What is your favorite part of working with EMDR therapy?

Jamie Marich 05:01
Oh, wow. I don’t know, if I have just one favorite part, the therapeutic modality truly facilitates folks being able to make their own connections. That’s what I love about it. And so many of the other things, I love about it stem from that, that as a therapist, I really get out of the way. My ego is not involved in EMDR therapy. And yes, there could be some skill and competence involved in how you may steer the ship with it, especially with more complicated clients. Yet, it always amazes me how, by staying out of the way doing this thing with eye movements or other stimulation, just asking a few key questions, people really have their own aha moments at a very visceral embodied level in a way I’ve never experienced or seen with other therapeutic modalities. And I remember early on, one of my early EMDR clients was just sitting there kind of amazed after a really powerful session. And she looked at me and she said, Thank you. Thank you, thank you. And I said in all candidness, I just flipped the switch. Because I was using the stimulation machine, I asked a couple questions and flip the switch. That was all you. That’s what I love the best about it.

Kim Howard 06:09
That’s very powerful. What successes have you seen using EMDR? Therapy for dissociation?

Jamie Marich 06:13
So I think to fully answer that question, we have to establish that there’s dissociation and there’s clinically significant dissociative disorders, because dissociation is really a part of any manifestation of trauma, it can be present in any clinical diagnosis. And dissociation is really a very normal part of the human experience. So if we’re talking about dissociation in general, I’ve really seen a lot of the EMDR preparation repertoire, helping people be able to realize, okay, I’m not as here as I need to be right now, I need to check my grounding with dissociative disorders, which is something that I have had and I’ve experienced and continue to experience on some level trauma is really at the root of all of them. So when this question gets asked, Can you do EMDR with dissociative disorders? Why wouldn’t you? The big caveat there is I really do believe though it has to be in the hands of a clinician who is not afraid of dissociation. And so what I’ve seen the EMDR approach be able to do is help facilitate communication between different parts of experience different parts of an individual’s inner world in just incredibly powerful ways. Because so many folks who particularly who have dissociative systems really know that life would be better if they can get these different parts of themselves communicating with each other, we tend to steer away from the word integration, if we’re defining integration as just becoming one, quote, unquote, normal person. For many of us in our community, that idea is a very dirty idea. And we want to stay away from that it’s about promoting communication. And yes, I mean, the EMDR method really kind of allow us to work with several different parts of experience at once. It can allow the communication between the parts to happen and fundamentally help people live a more adaptive life, which is what Dr. Shapiro always highlighted the purpose of EMDR being so there are too many successes to really name even as I’m answering the question I’m thinking of so many folks I’ve worked with over the years, but the common denominator has really been it’s helped to create more communication within a system.

Kim Howard 08:26
Great answer. Thank you. Are there any myths that you would like to bust about EMDR therapy and dissociation? And I’m sure you have many.

Jamie Marich 08:33
Where do I begin

Kim Howard 08:34
Then your top three or top five?

Jamie Marich 08:36
Well, I think the first myth I already started to tackle already, which is that EMDR cannot be effective for DID specifically, or dissociation and I can’t tell you how many people I’ve trained who’ve come into my my group and have said things like ‘my therapist said, I could never do EMDR therapy, let alone be a therapist with DID who offers EMDR therapy.’ And even as I’m saying that I’m thinking of one person in particular who has really turned into a star EMDR therapist in their own right, as a person with DID. And their journey in this began with somebody telling them they couldn’t do it because of their DID. So I think that’s the first overall myth that I want to shatter, which is that people with DID or dissociative disorders just cannot do EMDR therapy because it’s, it’s too destabilizing, it can be too disruptive to the system. Now that being said, there’s always a caveat. There’s always a nuance here. I would not want someone with DID going into an EMDR therapy session with a therapist who knows little about dissociation and DID I wouldn’t want them going into an EMDR therapy session with a therapist who is scared of DID. Very recently, I started working with the client who had visited five previous EMDR therapists and she said they all had this I don’t know we really got to be careful. The because of your DID and as a as a trainer, there is a part of me that does want to applaud that care. But at what point is care becoming fear? Right? So, you know, that’s my feelings on it. And when I am asked, Can a person with DID or dissociative disorder do EMDR therapy? My answer is overall, yes, if the EMDR therapist who’s taking them through this is not afraid of dissociation has an understanding of DID, dissociative disorders and their own experiences with dissociation. And that’s a lot of how I trained that there’s no real technical model that’s going to make you competent. And working with dissociation, you have to understand as a therapist, that this is part of the human experience, and you do it too. And I think the more you can do that, the more effective you’ll be. The second big myth that I like to bust is because I know a lot of people get this in their EMDR training that if somebody has over a certain score, usually 30 is the number that’s floated out there on the DS, they’re ruled out for EMDR therapy, they can’t do EMDR therapy, and the DS is a fine screening tool if you can approach it as a screening tool. And I’m more or less use it as a conversation starter with my clients that if the score in certain areas is high, let’s let’s talk about it. Let’s figure out kind of when this began in your journey, if one part is holding that more than another, but the d s is not diagnostic, it really is meant to be screening. And yes, I think if you’re getting average DS scores above a 30 or 40, it is an indicator that you may be dealing with a clinically significant dissociative disorder. So you assess further, you look more to see if you are dealing with a person, a system with parts look more at different grounding techniques, different settling anchoring techniques that may need to be brought in for different parts, taking people through a better psychoeducation on what dissociation is. So yes, if you get high numbers, you still want to take some care, but it doesn’t mean that it’s a rule out. So those are those are the two big. And then the third, there’s a third. So you’ve said three, so I’ll go to a three. And this is another one I feel very strongly about. And this might be the most controversial of the three that I say I’ve had students in consultations come to me saying that they’ve heard from their trainers and their consultants do not let your client dissociate. Here’s a newsflash that I want to tell all the EMDR therapists on behalf of the DID, and OSDD community, we can process in a light degree of dissociation. In fact, it’s the only way some of us can is to really be able to leverage just a little bit of that low grade dissociation to be able to feel safe entertaining, what’s coming up. dissociation is often described as a continuum phenomenon. So yes, if the dissociation is really becoming maladaptive and overwhelming, you may have to take proactive measures to kind of call a person back to presence and maybe you kind of stopped the flow of what you’re doing with reprocessing. But just because you’re in Phase four, and you start to see some mild signs of dissociation, you do not want to go into the stop. Okay, we have to stop this. But it could just be a simple, you know, I’m wondering if you can take a breath and feel your feet on the ground as we go with this next one. Some of those gentle reminders do we need to check in? Is there anything you need before we keep going forward, and the more and more you get to work with a person, you’ll be able to see if how they even go into dissociative responses as adaptive or maladaptive. But just because you’re seeing the first signs of dissociation does not mean you have to sound the bells and alarms and whistles, because for a lot of us that low grade dissociation is is a friend to us. And it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s getting in the way of us doing good EMDR.

Kim Howard 13:36
Very good to know, I think you’ve already touched on this. But let me ask the question anyway, there’s sure else you want to ask or add, are there specific complexities or difficulties using EMDR therapy for dissociation?

Jamie Marich 13:47
Well, there’s always going to be and it’s a great question. I my answer is probably going to frustrate listeners yet. I think this answer gives insight into our larger community and folks with dissociative disorders, particularly when you’re dealing in the realm of dissociative disorders, no textbook is going to tell you how to do this work. Because all of us are so incredibly different. And when you’re dealing with the system, and the interplay of the different parts of that system, it can always complicate what you got at your latest, greatest training on dissociation that that you went to. So I think the biggest complexity here is to be able to have your EMDR tools in your tool bag for you to be able to stay grounded and anchored yourself and to know that using the baseball metaphor curveballs are going to be thrown at you all the time, a way that I often and I’ve learned this lesson as an EMDR therapist over the years helped myself navigate that is to be constantly getting feedback from my clients and their systems at the end of the session asking them how it was Was there anything we could have done differently in the beginning of the next session, knowing how that went last session? Is there anything we need to do differently shorter sets or longer sets? Do we need to involve one part more than and others. So those are just some examples. But I always say when I train on dissociation, sorry, not sorry, I’m not going to tell you exactly what to do. Because I really think giving you a recipe is impossible if you’re truly working with dissociation and an effective way.

Kim Howard 15:16
We’ve talked on this podcast before about how being a therapist is an art form, there’s science behind it, but it’s not necessarily a science, because each therapist has to customize what they’re doing for whatever that client, whoever that client is, and whatever issues they bring to the table. And so you, you, right, you can’t really cookie cutter, what you’re doing, even if it’s in a certain modality.

Jamie Marich 15:38
100%. And I would argue therapy is more an art than a science, I do think we need both yet. Something that I’ve continued to have concern about is the science medical model values. We’ve put on psychotherapy over the years to prove that we exist to prove that oh, this modality works or to prove that DID is a real thing. And it speaks to the fact that larger society is more quantitative in nature. And we want to see the proof. And I don’t to be clear think there’s anything wrong with that. I’m not anti-science, yet, what I get concerned about is one that takes supremacy over discussions with folks who actually have dissociative disorders, for example, about how we experienced therapy and weaving in that feedback and that lived experience, which is why I’m very honored to be even asked to do this podcast. Because sometimes in the EMDR community, I can feel like there’s such this no research research, we we venerate these folks who are doing the big research on EMDR. And I do respect them because they have made EMDR more mainstream yet I think as a community, we really have to be listening to each other more.

Kim Howard 16:46
So let’s switch gears just a little bit. How do you practice cultural competency as an EMDR? Therapist?

Jamie Marich 16:51
Good question. But I will kind of already go there by saying I prefer the idea of cultural humility instead of cultural competency. Because I think competency suggests okay, you know, I’ve checked the boxes, I have the skills I’ve made it, whereas cultural humility suggests, you’re always open to learning more. And that is how I do it, as I already mentioned, get feedback from my clients, I listened to them as experts on their own life and their lived experience. And I’m always learning from people who are parts of identities or who represent identities that I do not have at every EMDR conference, I make sure I listen to presenters who are people of color who are part of marginalized groups. Those are always the more interesting sessions to me that really helped me grow as an EMDR therapist. So those are some of the basics that I would say that I put into play feels like there’s one I’m really missing. It’s on the tip of my tongue if it comes off here, it is another potential controversial area I’m stepping into but this is something I’ve taught on before as an advanced topics another way we can practice good cultural humility, as EMDR therapist is fully and publicly recognizing that the roots of EMDR therapy really are indigenous in nature. And that when Dr. Shapiro took this walk in the park and stumbled on this thing that she was able to research and codify as EMDR therapy, she did a good thing, of course, especially then with her push for research for making this more accessible. But if you look at indigenous healing throughout the planet, since the dawn of time, the mechanisms of healing have been practices like drumming and dancing, which are both bilateral in nature, mindful practice, being silent with something just noticing things and not trying to explain it away. And according to the for healing SAVs of indigenous healing. This was the work of Angelica Ryan, silence, storytelling, dancing, drumming, music, all of these elements. And even whenever we create music, there’s a natural bilateral stimulation that’s happening in the brain. So back in 2020, my my colleague, Kelly Kirksey, and I put a course together called an African centered approach to BLS and healing and Kelly is a brilliant EMDR therapist and an African folklorists, too, just has so much training in this area. And we started just really putting it out there right now that to be good culturally attuned, culturally humble EMDR therapists, we have to start publicly discussing that even this therapy we love so much in the modern era. It’s not anything that’s radically new, compared to what our indigenous ancestors on the planet were doing. So to me, owning that, putting that out there realizing it can be a both and we can respect what Dr. Shapiro did yet. We also have to realize that this is something bigger than Dr. Shapiro and EMDR therapy that we’re doing.

Kim Howard 19:46
Wonderful answer. Thank you. I like how it’s inclusive of that and there’s a nod in there to people who have lived and practiced for thousands of years, you know, healing their sick and their own people. So that’s a great, great way to putit. Thank you. So do you happen to have a favorite free EMDR related resource that you would like to suggest either for the public or other EMDR therapists?

Jamie Marich 20:08
Well, if I may be so bold, my favorite free resources, my own YouTube channel, which I know a lot of you folks know about already, Jamie Marich, if you just search on YouTube, many of you know me for my demos that are up there that have been up there for many years, I can also point you to traumamadesimple.com, trauma made simple.com, which is a free resources site that I’ve curated over the years since I started doing training, basically everything free I’ve ever done that’s online. So I do have a lot of trauma informed trauma responsive meditation strategies, some that are EMDR specific, some that are more general. And if I’m giving a shout out to somebody who’s not me, I also want to plug Rotem Breyers, the EMDR learning community, you can just go ahead and search that on your favorite engine EMDR learning community and he’s done a really nice EMDR community online that is off of social media. If you are on social media, if you’re a Facebook EMDR therapist resources on Facebook, which was founded by my friend and colleague, Tom Zimmerman is another good one. If you’re looking for a community.

Kim Howard 21:09
Good, thank you. What would you like people outside of the EMDR community to know about dissociation.

Jamie Marich 21:14
My message is pretty ubiquitous is that dissociation exists, and we all do it. It’s part of the human experience. It’s nothing to be afraid of. I think the EMDR terminology of adaptive and maladaptive is very salient when we’re discussing dissociation. And even in my new book that’s coming out on dissociation I give that EMDR terminology to the general public that some dissociation is adaptive, some dissociation is maladaptive. Sometimes the same individual can experience both adaptive and maladaptive dissociation. It’s just contextual. Sometimes what was adaptive for us at one point of our life, like daydreaming excessively as children might become maladaptive at a later stage, if it gets in the way of us living the life that we want to live. So dissociation exist dissociation, quote, unquote, disorders, dissociative, quote, unquote disorders exist, because I think something we still struggle with at a public level is this idea that we’ll either people who have a dissociative disorder, they’re just faking it, it’s not a real thing, or it is a real thing. Yet it’s equated with violence, because of so much of the media portrayal around dissociative identity disorder, especially that it’s something that is naturally going to lead to violence. So my solution both working with EMDR therapists and therapists and the general public has really been let’s start normalizing demystifying dissociation a bit, let’s start claiming and owning how we do it when we do it, how it can get used for good things, how it can get used for not so great things. And maybe by having that conversation, we’ll be able to make some forward steps.

Kim Howard 22:50
That’s a wonderful answer. Thank you.

Jamie Marich 22:52
You’re welcome.

Kim Howard 22:53
If you were not an EMDR therapist, what would you be ?

Jamie Marich 22:55
A filmmaker?

Kim Howard 22:56
Oh, I like that. That’s yeah, tell me more.

Jamie Marich 23:00
Well, what is interesting is a man wow, Kim, and the speed with which I answered that question. There’s probably something there that I need to explore further. So I’ve loved movies, obviously, since a child they’ve they’ve been a refuge and a haven for me. When I was in my undergraduate program, I had thought about going to film school for graduate school, I really wanted to direct and put together movies. And what’s interesting is my current EMDR therapist who I’ve worked with for six years, when I started working with her, she identified that, that I really had this kind of hunger in me to continue to be creative, and I do a lot of creative things. I’m an expressive arts therapist as well. And I love weaving that into EMDR. And I have active practices yet, my therapist said, I really think you need to find a way to keep doing film, keep making movies in some way. And so that’s what a lot of my demo work is, when I might what my YouTube channel is about, I really enjoy putting those movies together when I put demonstrations out. And I had a short film in a film festival last year, which was pretty neat. And I’ve put together some other short teaching movies. And even as I’m talking right now, I realize how the overwhelm of even going to online training and the transition of the last couple years in some ways, it’s deepened me into my filmmaking and production love, but in other ways, I’m feeling like no, you’re too dissociated from it, I want you to dive back into it a little more fully. So thanks for the question. And for helping me to put that out there today.

Kim Howard 24:29
That’s an awesome answer. And one more question well, I have two more questions. One was not on the question list. So what is your favorite movie since you like movies, and you would be a filmmaker if you weren’t an EMDR therapist? What is your favorite movie and and why?

Jamie Marich 24:45
Wow. I don’t know if I have one favorite cinematically, I think one of the greatest movies ever made that always pings at least as my top favorites is “LA Confidential” from 1997 in terms of a good story combined with just good to filmmaking, you know, there’s movies that changed my life when they came out. When I saw “Schindler’s List” as a young person, it was just just revolutionary. I think right now, as a lover of documentary and what is happening with the war on reproductive justice, I am telling folks to watch a documentary on Netflix called “Reversing Roe,” which was made in 2018. That is really showing folks how we got to where we’re at now. Yeah, this is you can’t ask a dissociative person this question without getting many answers. And I probably have another like five or 10, you know, top films I can give you and it’s a good good question.

Kim Howard 25:35
“Schindler’s List” was an excellent movie that we, Mike and I, my husband saw in the theater, that was the only movie that we’ve ever been to that when the movie closed, the, the theater was completely quiet. I mean, it was powerful people, but no one said a word as they liked the theater. I mean, it was just so so difficult to watch and so uplifting that people, some people, some people will step in, when something tragic and horrific is happening, and, and will do what they think is right to help other people.

Jamie Marich 26:06
Yeah, that’s great. And to that point, I mean, I would say it was. So if we’re asking the question, as what movie had the most impact on my development as a human, it was definitely that movie was 14, when it came out. My mother, and her friend took me to see it. And I was I was weeping for probably like, weeping for a day after, after the film. And I’m not a Jewish person. Yet, I’ve been close to many Jewish people throughout my life. And it was just a movie that really was the charge to you got to do the right thing. Yeah. And I believe that movie was something that at that developmentally vulnerable place in my life, or so much was going on. And my identity development was really blossoming it it gave me that charge to me, you may you grow up to be a person who does the right thing in the face of injustice.

Kim Howard 27:00
Absolutely. But last question is: Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Jamie Marich 27:03
This is a great interview, I just want to thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak about all of these amazing points of content. You know, if I can add in January of 2023, my book, “Dissociation Made Simple,” as coming out with North Atlantic books. And it is a book that I hope EMDR therapists can benefit from yet it’s a book that I hope the larger therapeutic public and general public can benefit from, which really tries to bring in this message that dissociation is everywhere. So let’s start really embracing it in order to better understand it and work with it and figuring out how this all plays into the kind of world where we’re trying to make different so that’s what I got to end.

Kim Howard 27:46
Thank you. Thank you for being on our show.

Jamie Marich 27:49
Appreciate it. My pleasure.

Kim Howard 27:50
This has been a let’s talk EMDR podcast with our guest Dr. Jamie Marish. Visit www.emdria.org for more information on EMDR therapy, or to use our Find an EMDR Therapist Directory for the 13,000 therapists available. Our award winning blog, Focal Point, offers information on EMDR and is an open resource. Thank you for listening.