Kim Howard 00:05

Welcome to the Let’s Talk EMDR podcast brought to you by the EMDR International Association or EMDRIA. I’m your host Kim Howard. In this episode we are talking with EMDR, certified therapist, trainer and consultant, morning Davis about EMDR therapy and eating disorders. Let’s get started. Today we are speaking with EMDR certified therapist and consultant Marnie Davis to discuss EMDR therapy for eating disorders. Thank you morning for being here. We are so happy that you said yes.

 

Marnie Davis  00:30

Yes, thank you. I’m very honored to be here today.

 

Kim Howard  00:34

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

 

Marnie Davis  00:37

Yes, I completed my basic training here in Orlando, right. As soon after becoming a registered intern becoming a therapist was a second career for me. And I say all along that I am so thankful that I was trained right away, because I could not imagine doing this work without being trained in EMDR, especially the complexity of the work involved with treating individuals with eating disorders. I had two amazing trainers here in Orlando, and grew up as an EMDR therapist in a really strong, fabulous and supportive EMDR community here in Orlando. It’s a magnificent group of really brilliant colleagues. And they helped foster my development as an eating disorder professional. And as an EMDR therapist. And over that same time, I also completed the certification to be an eating disorder specialist, and an eating disorder consultant. After I was basic trained, I then went on like many of us to become certified to become a consultant and then a facilitator. And then along that same time branched out to do some specialized trainings on eating disorders, and eating disorders and EMDR. I have learned from so many of the great ones, both in the EMDR community, and then the eating disorder community, and from my clients and my work with them on a daily basis. And I am so so grateful, I would not be the EMDR and eating disorder therapist that I am today without so many that have laid the groundwork and taught me along the way. So very, very grateful.

 

Kim Howard  02:05

That’s a great testimonial and a great story. And I I like how you talked about the people who helped sort of raise you up, you know. I feel like as a professional, who does what you do, or professionally does, what I do, really your professional community are the people that you learn from, and you call upon when you have questions or issues or concerns about something. And when they are strong, they really make you better at who you are and what you do. And that’s sort of the Bailiwick of what associations do in general, like EMDRIA is that we bring all those like people together and say, Hey, this is your community, utilize them. And so thank you for saying that, because I really think that matters.

 

Marnie Davis  02:45

And you know, I had trainers, my basic trainers that really instilled in me to stay true to the model stay true to the protocols, but also giving room for creativity and flexibility and that intuitive sense of where to go and following the clients lead. And when you treat something as complex as eating disorders, you have to be able to move outside of moral, the rigid approach to EMDR that we tend to take on in basic training, I think two real key components to my growth to stepping into this concept of the dance of treating eating disorders with the dance where I was invited by many of the elites in my community like the big dogs, the mama bears and the Papa bears to step into a study group focusing on the progressive approach EMDR and dissociation, the progressive approach and stepped into that study group and felt very out of my league. But boy, was that a moment to really foster my confidence, talk about concepts, learn about different aspects of the AIP model and using EMDR with dissociation. And if you’re treating eating disorders, you need to be able to treat dissociation because eating disorders are really all about dissociation and defending from that traumatic material. And then another key component was meeting Hope Payson and Kate Becker and their training on treating impulse disorders. It was like a light bulb went off, I was just like, Thank you, you helped me recognize that I can move in and out. I don’t have to set course of my target sequence plan and stay right following that, when what’s happening with the client and the different types of behaviors that are occurring. It gave me permission to kind of flow in and out while still staying true to the model. And from there, I just continued to absorb every training, I could read every book I could and really expand my expertise and skill set.

 

Kim Howard  04:34

Thank you. What’s your favorite part of working with EMDR therapy?

 

Marnie Davis  04:37

I think one of the basics is that I love the case conceptualization that comes from the AIP model, and anyone that I train or present to even if they’re a non EMDR therapist, I say read about the AIP model. It gives you a strong clear lens for case conceptualization and treatment planning and understanding the underpinnings and the underlying issues related to the development of disorders that even far outside of the eating disorder diagnosis, I really appreciate my trust in the eight phases, the protocols and the structure that come with EMDR. And as I mentioned, also enjoying the freedom for my creativity, engaging in parts work and interweaving other therapeutic modalities that are part of the treatment of eating disorders. And something really cool that I love is that with eating disorders, there tends to be an aspect of disconnection and rigidity, and that lack of curiosity and EMDR invites us to introduce our clients to that simply with the term is it okay, if we notice that, be curious about that. And as we do that, I think that those lay the seeds for the develop of curiosity and the development of compassion, and kindness towards self towards body into their overall experience. And just kind of Lastly, I also enjoy that using bilateral stimulation, and a variety of different protocols really allows us to treat all aspects of the eating disorder. It allows me to install resources all throughout the process, individuals that deal with eating disorders, or those that have disordered eating and don’t meet criteria for eating disorders in the DSM. It allows us to expand their resources. It allows us to foster connection and collaboration with that internal system of parts. It allows us to, of course, reprocess that negative material that’s maladaptive ly stored, it allows us to assist with what I call dancing with defense’s, respecting them, while inviting our clients to be curious and starting to chip away at them. It’s often a very delicate process, and Natalia ca hope refers to it as an artichoke, peeling back layers. And when we peel back one layer, another defense can come in place of that because of the complexity of what often lies the underlies the eating disorder. And so I’m just so thankful that EMDR allows me to do all of this dance in and out when we’re reprocessing material. And Herge behaviors may increase in an attempt to possibly defend where we might be going in that system, whether reprocessing and knowing the serious medical conditions that can happen, that can occur with purging behaviors, and allows me to pause and tend to those purging behaviors, build some resources, targeted trigger, target an urge, and then move back when I call back to the main highway and continue on with our reprocessing. And all of that comes with EMDR.

 

Kim Howard  07:36

That’s a great explanation. Thank you. So this is going to be I think, a long question, but I think it’s important. Can you please define eating disorders for us?

 

Marnie Davis  07:46

Yeah, when I read that question, I was like, huh, I have an hour and a half? So I will do my best to keep it as succinct as possible, but also help people understand the complexity of eating disorders. Eating disorders are a set of psychological conditions that involve a pattern of behaviors related to food. These include restricting, avoiding loss of control, eating, binge eating, purging, other compensatory behaviors, and the eating disorder behaviors oftentimes can accompany a harsh negative mindset, a sense of body distress and body disturbance, body image disturbance. Sometimes it includes an internalized fat phobia that has been soaked in from the world around us. It can include food, rituals, rigidity, and rules related to food, exercise and body it can involve compulsive body checking, a relentless pursuit for weight loss. And it also involves what I learned is catastrophic shame layers and layers of shame that can be accumulated. And then the eating disorder behaviors attempt to try to shield and defend from that shame. Eating Disorders also have medical aspects and medical consequences, physical conditions that develop from it, one individual each hour dies from an eating disorder. So as we’re working with eating disorders, we not only are looking at the psychological, the mental, emotional, but we also have to be tending to what’s happening physically for our clients, and making sure that they’re getting the care that they need and that we are helping stabilizing all throughout the process. Eating disorders are common. They affect everyone in anyone they can be seen in individuals across age, gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, shapes, size faced religious affiliations, socioeconomic status, they’re seen in individuals that are neurodivergent, and neurotypical. And they’re seen in individuals with able bodied and disabled bodies. We often thought and most of the research was on individuals who had many intersections of privilege, those that are female cisgender have higher socio economic status, those that are white, and what more research is actually showing is that there’s higher prevalence of eating disorder behaviors within those in minority vulnerable and marginalized populations. However, lots of times we have our own biases in place. And we’re not necessarily asking the questions, seeking out more understanding, offering education, and individuals sometimes in those different communities, for many reasons may not come forward and share or talk about what is going on. Eating Disorders develop in a response to a combination of bio psychosocial factors. This includes genetics, personality, and temperament, and includes intergenerational trauma and epigenetics to they include attachment injuries, adverse childhood experiences, and other negative life experiences that occur over a lifetime. So there often is a plethora that is underlying the development of an eating disorder. And this also includes systemic oppression and discrimination that is ongoing, and it also includes the oppression and discrimination of individuals who live in larger size bodies. And this can be ongoing repetitive harm that is often not seen in micro and macro ways that that this harm is being caused. And we have so again, we have to understand the whole complexity of what is going into the development of an eating disorder. Eating disorders often accompany a lot of other co occurring disorders from an AIP lens eating disorders are conceptualized as a trauma driven coping strategy, and can be an attempt to manage that distress related to some of those co occurring difficulties and the negative stored material that’s underneath them. The behaviors are often conceptualized as a defense, Jim Knight talks a lot about defenses to keep that that pain and suffering in a hurting system away. Act as a firefighter, that’s an ifs term, they’re a soothing action, even when that soothing action is causing harm, they defend against what’s uncomfortable and intolerable. And when they do that, they create this positive aspect. If I’ve been body shamed, for going to speak of that piece, and I engage in a behavior that may access that sense of good enoughness. Like maybe I am restricting, and someone’s praising me for that, right? We don’t eat breakfast, Oh, you’re so strong, you’re powerful, how can you do that, or maybe our weight shifts a little bit. And suddenly, there’s a sense of good enoughness there. And so that behavior is gonna get set in, that’s those maladaptive positive feeling states have that positive effect. And so then that behavior becomes rooted in and becomes an automatic defense to try to soothe what feels too painful or too intolerable.

 

Kim Howard  12:47

That’s a great explanation for a very complicated medical condition and mental health issue. So I think it’s astounding, one person dies per hour from an eating disorder, an eating disorder. Yeah, that that’s an astounding statistic is absolutely astounding. I suspect, that also I’m sure there are studies out there who’ve watched this reported on it that eating disorders have become even worse with the onset of social media, and all of the filters and all of the photo editing and this is my best angle and yadda yadda yadda. And I’m, I don’t look like her I don’t look like him kind of thing. I’m sure it’s gotten even even worse.

 

Marnie Davis  13:25

Oh yes, there wasn’t. The other was an old statistic that we absorbed up to 10,000 messages a day, often, once again, that are on under the radar, we’re not even aware that we’re absorbing them. And then as social media has blossomed during the COVID pandemic, and we were all using social media as our lifeline, it is it’s this aspect that developed in our western world of this sense of the beauty, ideals and body ideals and a sense of perfection, and the idea of controlling and fixing our bodies. Instead of letting our bodies be the body’s that they are these bodies that move us through life and offer us beautiful moments of connection, and can bring in beautiful moments of joy and also the vehicles to process pain and suffering. And we are surrounded non stop by messages that are fat shaming and body shaming and oppressing on all different aspects of humaneness of color of faith and affiliations to religion. So again, we are just blasted if there were no other traumas that happen like sexual abuse or neglect or food scarcity, we would still have a massive amount of individual suffering and in pain, because of the way that we treat individuals in in anything but a thin ideal. We really do not acknowledge diversity in bodies. And this sort of played into one of the questions you asked about what are the challenges is that this just like racism and oppression and other ways, this doesn’t stop when clients leave my home. First, they go back out and are just compounded with messages that make them feel unsafe, defective, responsible all across those three domains. And on the fourth domain that I learned from Barry let have not enough, it’s not even good enough. I’m not enough. And this happens. Sometimes in cultures, I’ve researched and listened with individuals say in the Hispanic community, sometimes in families, body teasing is just part of the dynamic and that familial culture, and back can cause harm. Yes. And, and so again, when we think about cultural considerations, how do we have respect for some of these ways that we interact with body and food, while still looking at the harm that it’s causing? Yeah,

 

Kim Howard  15:50

yeah, absolutely. And as a parent who has raised two children to adulthood, like children are in their early 20s, especially in those I felt like the tween years, maybe Oh, is is, you know, or if, by the time they’re teenagers, that the die may be cast, so to speak, but you have to be really careful about how you talk to your children about how they look, unfortunately, I think a lot of people don’t, that doesn’t even cross their mind. You know, if they think that their child is overweight, they’ll say something or if they think their child is stupid, then they’ll say something. And, as a parent, you got to be really, really careful with that, because you, you don’t want them to develop some kind of eating disorder. And even if they don’t develop an eating disorder, you don’t want them to feel like they’re less than because they’re not, you know, whatever the perfect ideal that you think they should be, you know, and so I’m not saying that I was a perfect parent, because I’m sure I made a lot of mistakes along the way. But it’s so important to make sure that, that we’re encouraging our kids to be active and to eat healthy foods and to be with their friends and not focus so much on what side they’re rowing, or, you know, where they have broad shoulders, because they worked out at the gym, or whatever. So yeah, and so like, again, we’re seeing that we are all conditioned, even parents and generationally, we all absorb this, even pre verbally about and again, this idea of healthy food, we all use that language, when healthy food can begin to be like, Oh, well, then pizzas bad, I’ve got to have. So really, I use the language nutrient dense and little less nutrient dense. And all the the all the times foods and the sometimes foods, one of my dear colleagues here, introduced that language to me. So again, we can all be doing our work to be clearing these different maladaptive thoughts that we have ingrained in our brain and in our body. And if we do make an error, it’s about repair. Because so much of the time again, not only are we seeing in the world around us, but when kids grow up with it in their family, with these attachment figures that are supposed to be helping them instill a sense of safety and respect for themselves and understanding of who they are in all their magnificent diverse ways. And families don’t do it on purpose, because they’ve been conditioned to these ideals that again, we had no say in making, we were just putting in these constructs are there. And so again, as parents recognizing that we all can be clearing our lenses, and we all can be learning, and not only bettering our experience with our bodies and foods, but helping those young ones. As you mentioned in those tween years, that sense of belonging, right is huge. And one comment from somebody to a kid about their body can launch into well, that’s the answer, right? And then they lose a little bit of weight and they get praised. Right, they get we do that just commonly Oh, you look great. You must have you lost some weight, you look fabulous. That wasn’t meant in as oppressive action. But it is and it can be one layer, or it could be the thing that catapults what’s already been developing. Absolutely. Well, that’s a good segue into my next question, which is are there any specific complexities or challenges with treating eating disorders?

 

Marnie Davis  19:15

Yeah, and I think I mentioned it that we are surrounded like we live in a world that we cannot escape negative experiences. And on top of that, we are surrounded by a system that does not seem to be changing. And it has spread not only from the Western world over into some of the Eastern countries, and eating disorders are always about being criticized for body or body shamed or even lack of availability of food. When I was doing some research on different Asian countries and how eating disorders have spread throughout different countries in the East. They were describing that it wasn’t necessarily from westernization like the Fiji studies that they did. Were Western and TV was introduced. And after a period of time they stopped. And then three years later, they looked at these Fiji ethnic adolescents. And they had an increase in body disturbance, diet mentality body shame. What they’re also finding is that eating disorders develop from societal change from industrialization and urbanization, and the increase in stress. And what is the buzzword about eating disorders control. And although I don’t like that all the time, because control has a really large meaning of all the different things we can control, it often isn’t, again, necessarily about food or weight itself, it’s that when I engage in this behavior, I feel a sense of power. I feel a sense of this is mine, an individual once told me a woman of color that was living or working in a very white male dominated environment. She said, I don’t feel seen on a daily basis, because of my color of my skin. She said, when I feel like when I lose five or 10 pounds, I’m seeing, that’s one of those positive feeling states. And so again, the complexity of, we can’t just go in and be looking for memories on our sequence timeline that deal just with injuries due to body body size, body shape, and food, we really have to be looking at the complexity of negative life experiences. And some of those are systemic, they’re going to be ongoing, which challenges this idea of fully recovered, and that everyone can be fully recovered and never have another thought. I always believed that for the longest time, and as I’ve done my work and grown, and thanks to my social justice training at Rollins College, it really opened my eyes to this is an ongoing so many of this is ongoing stress and struggle and pain and suffering and the dopamine release you get from thinking about food, eating food, engaging in food behaviors, the dissociation that’s created, unplugging. From what feels uncomfortable, that can be a coping skill that people continue to use. And again, we’re always promoting it all around us these different kinds of behaviors and aspects of of the waiting or using food or changing our body to the answer.

 

Kim Howard  22:18

Thank you Marnie. Marnie, what successes have you seen using EMDR therapy for this population?

 

Marnie Davis  22:23

I’ve been doing this work for 13 years. And I would not be still doing this work if I did not have so many beautiful healing moments and experiences of watching clients move through all their stages of recovery and stepping out and living a life of, of freedom and healing and embracing their talents, abilities and passions. An example is I had a young adolescent client, pretty secure attachment came in with some avoidant and restrictive behaviors was really afraid of swallowing, which was causing her to decrease her intake, we were able to identify two different particular memories. One was choking, and one was a family member that had a trach tube that was in their household during that time. And once we cleared those two, those two memories and got to 07. Clear, did a little bit other work. She discharged came back later for a little bit of stuff that came up being a teenager with her body. And without EMDR. I don’t know if we could have been able to clear that and allow her to go on living her life the way she wanted to live. I’ve had I’ve had several clients, one of my very early on clients with that taught me so much her and I say when we reconnect every now and again, I don’t know if she helped me more, or I helped her more. It was a client with pretty severe DID. And the eating disorder showed up in many different ways with many different parts served many different purposes. That’s also a challenge is lots of times there’s many purposes involved with even just one eating disorder behavior and over time, and with gentleness and with kindness. And with using resource development, fostering collaboration with parts, allowing the parts to guide us to what their trauma was what they were holding, wrapping clients with resources, outside resources, also building those internal resources, and doing psych education. That individual is now off and living a life of, again, living her passions, talents and dreams. And although a little bit of stuff comes up for her here, then she’s able to put it in place and continue moving forward and reach out when she needs a little bit of help. I can see successes, even with clients that then have steps backwards, you know, I use this term the dance, because I see it in a lot of different aspects of the therapy world that people use the word dance that I talked to my clients about the Cha Cha, and they come in and they say You know, we did all this, we built some resources. And you know what I ended up kind of lapsing. And I use a handful of behaviors this weekend. And when they come in to me, it’s like, Huh, I wonder what was going on? And a lot. And I’m not saying I’m the only one that do this. I think we have lots of magnificent therapists out there that it doesn’t have to be shaming or Oh, that’s awful. You failed. It’s, I’m curious what was coming up that caused those defenses to need to reoccur.

 

Jason Linder  25:28

Good answer. Thank you. You touched on this a little bit earlier. But let’s elaborate in case you have any other examples. Are there any myths that you would like to bust about working with EMDR therapy and eating disorders?

 

Marnie Davis  25:39

Yes. May I step backwards for one minute? Yes. Because I started had a little brain flip, when that’s the idea of the Cha Cha is that when they come in, and some behavior says have come up, and they feel like they’ve failed. That’s the Cha Cha step backward. That the Cha Cha, if anyone knows the Cha Cha, you got to take a couple steps backwards, and then you move forward and doing that you can travel across the stage. And that’s, that’s again, I kind of the idea of when they come in, we look at what was going on, we then clean out a little bit of what was underneath that. And then they can continue Cha-Cha-ing. I apologize for that little change.

 

Kim Howard  26:16

No, that’s a good analogy. I think that that gives people a good visual if they don’t know what the Cha Cha is, I can always go to YouTube and see people doing the dance.

 

Marnie Davis  26:25

Yeah.

 

Kim Howard  26:25

So yeah. Did you want to talk about the myths?

 

Marnie Davis  26:31

Well, I think that one myth that is very present in our field is that EMDR is not utilized or had not been utilized much in a higher level of care. And this is, from my perspective, when clients would go into a higher level of care, it was really about stabilizing, obviously, nourishing the brain so that it could tolerate EMDR, getting them stabilized, getting more consistency with intake, teaching them some, you know, DBT skills, some other types of adaptive resources, and then them transitioning back to outpatient care. And now we step into doing some of the trauma work. Well, my thought has always been once they’re nourished and stabilized, why not be using some EMDR, you may not be targeting what we may call the Big T traumas. But you can be doing some work with EMDR, especially with resourcing and enhanced set stabilization. And if treatment centers don’t have EMDR therapists on staff, or some of ours locally, have been learning to refer out to our amazing EMDR community, and allowing that to be an adjunct piece of work. And I wholeheartedly believe that if we can expand this concept of utilizing EMDR and higher levels of care, we can help individuals transition out of a higher level of care farther along in their healing process far more stabilized, and it might decrease the need to go back into a higher level of care. Now, sometimes that’s because insurance may kick them out before they’re ready to go. And there can be some other blocks that happen that would stop us from doing the level of work that we’d like to do with clearing out the underlying traumatic material, or building those resources or fostering the collaboration with parts. And I’m seeing more and more treatment centers utilizing EMDR therapist, I’ve consulted with a couple where they had at least five EMDR therapists on staff and that was just like me geeking out so excited.

 

Kim Howard  28:31

It’s good. Yeah, we’ve talked about this, not about eating disorders. But we’ve talked in the past on this podcast about addictions and EMDR therapy. And there’s sort of two camps in the therapy field. One says, You have to be sober in order for us, I don’t mean literally drunk in the session or high. But you have to have some time under your belt, not not using basically or not drinking before we can do EMDR therapy. But when I interviewed Julie Miller, and she said, you know, people are like, Oh, it’s best to be sober 60 to 90 days, and she said that you’re still not dealing with the trauma, and the trauma is what causes the addiction. And so it’s certainly don’t necessarily want somebody to come into your session. You know, like I said earlier, drunk or high, but you don’t have to put a timeframe on it. You can start the EMDR therapy with them, because they have to process that trauma in order to heal.

 

Marnie Davis  29:24

Yeah. So that same is as long as their brain is nourished enough their brain and body should be able to engage in the work. Let’s be using it. Right in all different ways. And I think now that we’re that we’re expanding our use of group EMDR. I think that that can continue to foster the use of EMDR. In higher level of care settings.

 

Kim Howard  29:48

Marnie, what would you like people outside of the EMDR community to know about EMDR therapy with people who have eating disorders?

 

Marnie Davis  29:55

Well, I think some of this is a little bit of repeat of what I said that EMDR therapy allows you to attend to many of the pieces of work that present themselves while working with clients with eating disorders. They allow you to reprocess the stuff that’s underneath, but they also assist with stabilization. That’s that dance, we do some of the deeper work, the system destabilizes a bit trying to protect itself, right one of my clients when the purging would increase when we were working on some of those earlier core memories, what she learned was, that actually helps her dissociate, kick the adult self out and back, and then the parts can go back to protecting it the way that they’ve known how to do since they were young, again, really seeing the benefit of being able to handle all different aspects, and helping keeping the client medically safe. Because if I can target some of the urges, and decrease the use of those behaviors, then medically, they most likely are going to stabilize, and we’re going to be able to continue to do our work. I think that as I mentioned, EMDR allows us to foster resource development. Oftentimes again, because of what we grow up consumed in even outside of other negative experiences, our clients are often under resourced, and outside of EMDR. It’s also in including those external resources, those support groups, creating a community, anything we can do to wrap them in a mindset of recovery and healing and body respect or body kindness and food neutrality. Right I use very lit taught me that the cognitions I am, instead of I am good enough, just I am. And I took that to my body is and food is. And I think that EMDR allows us to clear the material so that individuals can begin to to experience those positive cognitions Well, again, while also working on expanding some of those external resources, which then sometimes come in and are a beautiful, cognitive interweaves in our work. And again, using all the different advanced protocols that I’ve just mentioned. And one additional is to remember that the comprehensive care model is imperative. In all of my trainings, I do offer a free consultation group, you know, once a month for individuals across the country for EMDR and eating disorders, it’s because we can be a magnificent EMDR therapist and we can be a gifted therapist and a wise individual. But we need to have some extra training on understanding the complexities of eating disorders, understanding the medical components and the medical difficulties and respecting the comprehensive care model, which can again come up when we have financial difficulties, individuals have lower social economic status, those without insurance, eating disorder. Dieticians are often covered by insurance. But we want our clients to be seeing eating disorder, dietitians, being able to be followed by a physician regularly psychiatric care, group therapy, adjunct trauma informed yoga therapy, movement therapy, that all gets expensive. But that’s a comprehensive care model. And so I invite all EMDR therapists that are doing this work if you aren’t already seeking out other kinds of education and learning to please do that. So that again, you can be giving all that you can and as needed to help individuals navigate the road of recovery from an eating disorder.

 

Kim Howard  33:23

Thank you, Marnie. How do you practice cultural humility as an EMDR therapist?

 

Marnie Davis  33:28

Again, a beautiful and important question. First off, again, remembering that there’s a higher prevalence of eating disorders in individuals who belong to minority and marginalized communities of various ethnicities, individuals in the LGBTQ plus community and recognizing that, asking questions, listening, being curious, clearing our own biases, I was a white girl from a small town in upstate New York, very naive in a lot of ways. When I did my grad school program, again, very social justice oriented, my eyes opened and I did my work and I continued to do my work, whether it’s related to bodies of color, or religion, or gender, or size of bodies. An example is if an individual say a female of color comes in and sits across from you, and this individual might be in a higher weight body. Some individuals of color might feel powerful and comfortable in their bodies, others may not. So again, it’s doing our own work, clearing our own biases, being curious when an individual comes in in a higher weight body and talks about aspects of binging or am I assuming they’re binging? Because I see them in a higher weight body when they actually are demonstrating atypical anorexia which is not in the DSM but it needs to be in the next one. It needed to be in the previous one, which is all the aspects of anorexia but not meeting the low weight aid criteria. So again, being curious respecting what goes on in families and in those sub communities within a culture, again, not assuming but asking and being curious and listening and recognizing when someone may not feel as safe as they can with me, because I am a woman who is white and has lived in a thin body that comes very genetically in my family, and not be offended by that and recognizing, let’s help you find somebody that you can feel more comfortable on safe with. And I think that is ongoing, ongoing work.

 

Kim Howard  35:33

Yeah, and we’ve talked about this on the podcast before, but it’s been a while since I mentioned it, I feel like finding anybody that you work with on a regular basis, whether it’s your therapist, or your doctor, is very akin to dating, you know, yeah, you have to sort of go on a couple of dates with different kinds of people to figure out who’s working for you and who’s not. And if you’re the client, and you’re in, in with a therapist, and you don’t feel comfortable there, you’re not obliged to stay there. You know, you can go and find somebody else who get to quote unquote, or you feel more comfortable with. So as long as you’re getting the help that you need, and the way that you need it, that’s really what matters. I would not worry about offending somebody, as long as you’re sort of polite about it. And this isn’t working for me, I need to find somebody else and your thigh move along. You know, that’s, that’s certainly your right to do that. So thanks for reminding everybody about that.

 

Marnie Davis  36:26

Yeah. And I tell everyone, I said, this is really about making sure that I’m a good fit for you, and let me earn your trust. Right. And, you know, but again, it is your decision to make sure that it’s the right fit the same as it’s important that your physician is the right fit Correct. You know, if physicians are focusing on aspects that make that individual not feel safe, well, then we want to find you a different physician to be working with that can respect all aspects of your identity, all intersections of who you are. Yeah, absolutely.

 

Kim Howard  36:56

Do you have a favorite free EMDR related resource that you would suggest either for the public or other EMDR therapists?

 

Marnie Davis  37:03

Well, one that I like to mention that isn’t just isn’t necessarily focused on EMDR. But it’s an aspect of wrapping our clients and care while we are doing this work and supporting the family. It’s the National Alliance for Eating Disorders. They have free support groups that are now virtual almost every day of the week. And they have different support groups for individuals of color for individuals that live in higher weight bodies, and they have groups for families and loved ones. So although that isn’t necessarily directly EMDR related, I think it’s a very important one to include, as we are working with clients with eating disorders, the Focal Point [blog], or last year, during the Eating Disorder Awareness Week, I was interviewed for that and answered a lot of different questions that go with that magazine that came out just recently, the whole issue was on eating disorders, one script that you usually can find online somewhere, or most EMDR therapists do already have some of these resources is the positive treatment goal by A.J. Popky. And the reason why I say that is that so many individuals who’ve been living with experiences of body shaming, disliking their body diet mentality, and it’s just their full lands, to introduce the idea of imagining what it might be like to be able to live free of your eating disorder to live in recovery. And it’s something that you may not go all the way through the protocol, the script, it may be in pieces, I added some extra language to it, calling it the recovering self corrupt, and anyone is welcome to send me an email and I’ll send it to you and I offer it, you know, free and most of my trainings because sometimes I find that clients with eating disorders and who’ve carried so much oppression, they need a little bit of words to guide them along, to be able to connect with what that image is.

 

Kim Howard  38:57

Those are great resources. I will put links in the podcast description so that people listening can go back to that and click on them to find them. Is there something else you wanted to add?

 

Marnie Davis  39:08

Does it have to be free? Could there be one? Could I share a book?

 

Kim Howard  39:11

Or would you Oh, it doesn’t have to be No, it doesn’t have to be free. I can put it on there.

 

Marnie Davis  39:15

Another beautiful a will a great one is the Association for Size Diversity and Health. Again, not necessarily focused just on EMDR, but can be great health at every size principles that again can be used as cognitive interweaves and resourcing. And then the amazing book trauma informed approaches to eating disorders by Andrew Suber and Pam Verdi, both EMDR therapist, and it has several sections on EMDR. I got to co author a chapter in that book on relapses, but it also talks about all the other modalities which can be utilized within the EMDR framework. And I think that and that’s just released on its second edition. Right?

 

Kim Howard  39:54

I will Yeah, I will put those in there. I feel like free is always nice, but I also feel like we’re here. to share information, right, and if there are organizations who can help, we will link to them if there are books that might help professionals or even the layperson that, you know, are recommended, we will link to them so people can go at least check them out and decide whether they want to purchase them or not. So yeah, absolutely.

 

Marnie Davis  40:17

Then that’s why that one book, “The Trauma-Informed Approaches to Eating Disorders” really unique to its kind, there really hasn’t been a book like this, that has so many amazing authors that are clinicians doing beautiful work, all looking at treating eating disorders from a trauma informed approach. And that’s why I was like, even though it’s not free, I feel it’s imperative to mention that book, because it’s just a profound resource for all of us to use with several chapters focused on EMDR.

 

Kim Howard  40:45

Great Marnie. If you weren’t an EMDR therapist, what would you be?

 

Marnie Davis  40:49

Well, I have lots of ideas for that. But I honestly think at this time in my life, I would have a dog rescue. I would have the dog rescue. And I don’t know if anyone has seen that social media video of the guy driving the dog bus that picks up dogs…..

 

Kim Howard  41:04

Yes! In Alaska. Yes, I have seen that.

 

Marnie Davis  41:06

Yes. I like that is it and it also connects to back when I was dreaming a little bit. And it’s not an it’s not a dream I’ve let go of I often thought how beautiful it could be to have my practice connected to a dog and animal rescue along with having aspects of gardening and working with nature. And I thought how beautiful that could be to have that as a combination where clients who come and are in my office before after other days could come back and connect with the animals and the dogs, the dogs are healing clients are healing. So that’s sort of where that comes from that I think I would definitely be running with the pack of dogs with a dog rescue.

 

Kim Howard  41:47

I like that. You’re the first…In fact, I know you’re the first guest on the podcast to say that they would run a dog rescue. So I think that’s a cool thing. I have two dogs, we have two dogs myself. So and I grew up with dogs. So I’m a dog lover. And I like the idea of you know, we’ve we’ve run articles in the magazine about animal assisted therapy, and oh, yeah, well, that works. And so that concept is not that far fetched. You know, in terms of, you know, you supplement your therapy with things like yoga, and meditation and wellness, and all of those things and gardening and those things help people quite frankly, release or stress, focus on something else other than themselves while they’re, you know, healing or just throughout life. And hey, if you grow vegetables, or you grow beautiful flowers, you make the world a little bit nicer, and you feed yourself or you feed your neighbors and you share. And so that’s a beautiful thing. So thanks.

 

Marnie Davis  42:43

I have a sweet Yorkie that anyone knows me in the community knows about Charlie. And when I got him that was the goal to have him be a therapy dog. He is the therapy dog. But he can’t be really called that he’ll never pass the test. He’s a little boy that that came with some anxiety of his own. The beautiful thing is in my office that everyone has normalized it I’m like Charlie is in his own healing process. He has some anxiety and everyone’s like, Oh, Charlie, I get it. So do I know he’s normalized it not only does he greet clients in the waiting room, but in my office, he intuitively knows when clients are dissociating. He knows when they need comforting. And one of the interventions I use with him as we’re moving towards Jim Knipe’s Loving Eyes Protocol is as they’re just trying to connect with some sort of kindness with themself is if you look through Charlie’s eyes as Charlie’s sitting there looking at him. What do you think Charlie sees when he’s connecting with you? And that’s a really powerful intervention that comes from my little furry four-legged friend.

 

Kim Howard  43:41

Awesome. Yeah, we have two Airedale Terriers. So I’m familiar with the the terrier family. But I have seen it circulated on social media something about ‘Don’t be the person you think you are be the person your dog thinks you are.’ Yes, you know, and it’s that same concept you talked about. They have no, they are a no judgment zone. You know, and they come to you and they look at you and they think you are the bee’s knees. You know, they think you’re just all so awesome. And so we should treat ourselves the same way.

 

Marnie Davis  44:14

Yeah.

 

Kim Howard  44:14

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

 

Marnie Davis  44:16

I would just say that recovery is possible recovery is happening. It’s sometimes a slower process. It’s sometimes a process that goes on over a period of time in their life, but recovery is happening and recovery is possible. And I do believe that our kindness and our gentleness and guiding our clients towards curiosity, and that curiosity then carries them forward to compassion towards themselves and their stories. And it’s happening.

 

Kim Howard  44:46

That’s a great way to end the podcast. Thank you, Marnie.

 

Marnie Davis  44:49

You’re welcome. Thank you so much for having me. This has been a true honor. I’ve enjoyed chatting with you.

 

Kim Howard  44:54

This has been the Let’s Talk EMDR Podcast with our guest Marnie Davis. Visit www.emdria.org for more information about EMDR therapy, or to use our Find an EMDR Therapist Directory with more than 16,000 therapists available. Like what you hear? Make sure you subscribe to this great podcast wherever you listen. Thanks for being here today.