Kim Howard  00:06

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 about EMDR accredited practitioner Lee Simmons about EMDR therapy for vicarious trauma. Lee is located in London, England. Let’s get started. Today we are speaking with EMDR Europe accredited therapist and consultant, Lee Anna Simmons to talk about EMDR therapy and vicarious trauma. Thank you, Lee for being here today. We are so happy that you said yes.

 

Lee Simmons  00:38

Thank you for having me.

 

Kim Howard  00:40

Can you tell us about your path to becoming an EMDR therapist?

 

Lee Simmons  00:44

Well, my co-modality is art therapy. Actually on graduation, I received a scholarship from my university goldsmiths, University of London to implement art therapy where it doesn’t already exist. My proposal was to go to Lebanon. So I went to a refugee camp in an addiction center 2012-2013; running art therapy groups mainly. And then when I returned to the U.K., I went to work in the social services, helping to set up a community mental health team, which was a bit of a new thing at the time. It used to used to have them in the 80s. And then it sort of come back round. So as part of that work, you have a broad cross section of the community and having a witness then you have a trauma in Lebanon, because the war in Syria was taking place next door at the time. And then working with, you know, some some very distressed people, adults and children, people who hoard just started to recognize how much trauma was underneath a lot of the symptoms that I was working with in the social services. And EMDR was a way of being able to help more to really turbocharge art therapy. At the time, there weren’t many EMDR therapists who were also art therapists actually searched and I only found one who was in the United States. And one article, which was an MA dissertation, also from students in the United States. So it was quite exciting as well to be able to connect the two modalities and encourage more art therapists to train and EMDR. The two modalities do forge very well together.

 

Kim Howard  02:28

That was quite an experience going to a war torn country and working with people who are literally on the frontlines of traumatic events happening. And right now it’s going on, it’s going on in Israel and Palestine. And so there’s, you know, unfortunately, there’s things like that, that happen all over the world, and none of us really can control it, we can only respond to it. So I appreciate the work that you’ve done in the past, and that we’ll continue to do in the future. And all of the EMDR therapists and the other therapists out there who do support, that kind of work. And so I know that’s not easy. So thank you all for what you do.

 

Lee Simmons  03:05

So what I was really struck by on that placement was how receptive people were to art therapy, they were just so keen to have the intervention groups up and running straight away. And I had a fantastic facilitator and Lebanese lady, coming back to the U.K., it was good to be working with the structure and the support of the social services. But the speed at which we could get the work off the ground and Lebanon was was really quite something. And I think we’ve EMDR is the kind of environment where people would be very receptive to that, too.

 

Kim Howard  03:44

Yeah, we’ve done a podcast interview, and we’ve done articles in the magazine and on the [Focal Point] blog post about early EMDR early intervention, and how crucial that is and the protocols that go along with it, and how it can be utilized to help with things like that, whether it’s manmade tragedy or a natural tragedy. And so we’re just grateful that there are people out there who do that work. So yeah, absolutely. What’s your favorite part of working with EMDR therapy?

 

Lee Simmons  04:12

I love seeing the change unfold in front of me in such a profound and dramatic way, you get some really clear aha moments and really see people sort of making the connection and the change in the way their bodies holding on to trauma, the way they’re remembering themselves, the way they’re remembering other people and environments. And I really enjoy how the memories generally, obviously, depending on what you’re working with, but generally soften and become a lot more compassionate and positive. So this is something that I like a lot and that with a lot of clients, not with everyone with a lot of clients, this can happen very, very quickly. When I originally was sort of learning about therapy and coming from the psychodynamic base that’s so powerful and valuable, that there is quite a lot of focusing on the problems and the upset and what went wrong and who did what the impact of doing this went with the EMDR. I love how the change, the natural healing is stimulated. And it pretty much always encourages acceptance, forgiveness of others of the self and can be very beautiful to witness.

 

Kim Howard  05:34

That’s a great answer. Thank you. So today we’re gonna talk about EMDR therapy and vicarious trauma. So for the audience members out there who are not familiar with the term vicarious trauma, can you please define that for us.

 

Lee Simmons  05:46

Along with EMDR, this is quite a dynamic area. So there will probably be some new definitions floating around. Even by the time people are hearing this podcast, I consider it as when a working environment of work impacts the self practitioner, maybe a frontline worker, firefighter, police officer, therapist paramedic, when they’re impacted by the traumatic nature of their work, and their sort of worldview changes and they may start to feel symptoms of trauma themselves. I can go to the Headington Institute’s and give you their definition, I’ve got it to handle. vicarious trauma is the process of change that happens because you care about other people who have been hurt and feel committed or responsible to help them. Over time, this process can lead to changes in your psychological, physical and spiritual well being.

 

Kim Howard  06:47

That was a great definition. I think that there’s enough trauma in the world that happens to people, literally happens to people, but then there’s the trauma that we witness, other people going through, and how helpless that can make us feel as human beings, our internal office talk is is a lot about how us as a staff, how we help the helpers, we consider therapists helpers, you know, and that’s our job is to help help you guys. And so you guys witnessed so much of that, whether it’s coming through your door in an office setting or over a Aoom call or phone call, or whether you’re on the frontlines of a national disaster or a manmade disaster. And so I would imagine there’s a lot of people out there who don’t realize they might have vicarious trauma. So we’ll get into talking about some successes in that you’ve seen into myths. So what successes have you seen using EMDR therapy for vicarious trauma?

 

Lee Simmons  07:47

I just have one comment to add, before I answer your question that sprang to mind when you were talking, which is with EMDR. The way that we’re, we’re having to work with often the most difficult image and the most sort of traumatic aspect of a memory to then enable the healing, the sort of favorite bits of mine I told you about earlier, I think that really exposes EMDR therapists to vicarious trauma. Because as soon as somebody’s better, you don’t see them again, and the next person is with you. And again, you’ll have the absolute worst part of the memory. You don’t return to it, you move on, but we are exposed to that consistently. Pretty tough. But yeah, so now to question I just wanted to say that and not forgetting. So I feel it’s it’s very relevant to our listeners, successes using EMDR therapy for treating vicarious trauma. I’m sure you’re aware of GTEP [Group Traumatic Episode Protocol], you’ll be well aware of GTEP the group traumatic episode processing model where you can use EMDR with a group of people that’s proven very useful and supervision of therapists that I’ve worked with. And I’m aware my colleague Oliver Wright, he was running a recent training with he’s also used that we’re supervising groups of therapists. My client group that I was thinking of recently, where they were art therapist working with one accompany children with refugees, and they have quite a limited amount of sessions, they could work with them, because there’s so much need there. So though they were doing a great job, there was, you know, was the sense that you, you want to be able to do more. And I use the tutor model with them and found it really helped to sort of build their build themselves back up and prevent some fairly distressing experiences from the work environment from sort of getting stuck and potentially becoming PTSD, which, which was a risk that was quite clearly a risk at that point. Whereas Oliver was using the GTEP model of therapists who were supporting a community who had experienced a very, very traumatic fire tower block went up very quickly. And there was a very strong sense of injustice because of events that led up to that, and then the displacement. So this has been a sort of an ongoing issue for years. And yeah, he’s, he’s guaranteed to have very helpful there. I also think that EMDR can really allow practitioners to find out where their vulnerabilities are that we know that you don’t work with someone who has similar trauma to you, if possible, for example, if your house is burned down, you’re not going to then work with somebody who’s to fire because it’s going to be too close to home. But sometimes we’re not aware of what our our vulnerabilities are. So with EMDR, we have the feeder memories, don’t we, if someone comes to you for trauma they experienced when they were 30, sometimes the processing doesn’t happen, as you would expect. And it’s that feed of memory that’s underneath them something they didn’t think was relevant, that maybe happened when they were 10. So with EMDR, I think it can allow practitioners to sort of fill in the gaps and really make sure that you know, they are in the right place to work with the client groups they are and reduce the likelihood of becoming traumatized themselves.

 

Kim Howard  11:15

I’d like to go back to earlier when you talked about the impact of seeing trauma in their clients, how it impacts the EMDR therapist. So how how do you practice self care?

 

Lee Simmons  11:27

I use quite a variety of techniques. Being largely in private practice, now I’m doing quite a bit of supervision, I can really mix up the kind of work that I’m doing. So I really keep quite a varied caseload. And at one point, I did have a lot of child abuse cases, whether they were children being referred to me, or it was adult clients. And then we were sort of uncovering abuse that needed to be processed. And now I was completely available to those clients and committed to working with them. I did let people know who often send me referrals, name of cases of this kind for the time being, and suggested, you know, other areas that I’m interested in working with, for example, vicarious trauma, and I have found I’ve had quite quite different people come in through the door since since putting that limit, and also limiting the amount of EMDR I do, it’s such a growing field that you really can probably most experienced EMDR therapists find they can do as much as they can do, the referrals tend to be fairly unlimited. So building in other things like supervision, running some trainings, getting outdoors, keeping my own hobbies and interests going. At one point, it did feel quite tricky to do that. I noticed and I really enjoy climbing, I find that a really great way to de stress. And that just seemed to be falling off my life map. And I noticed it was helpful for some clients or children in a school, for example, to actually trained up as a climbing instructor to be able to keep that sort of on the table and take some of my clients climbing. And that really helped me to then keep it there for myself as a hobby and an interest. Say, I think scaling up in your your sort of knowledge base on vicarious trauma and looking at ways of guarding against it and sort of keeping that in mind. Probably the best way through running and the vicarious trauma trainings think it became fairly automatic for me to notice when certain things were slipping or changing and, and to address that. But without having that sort of knowledge base and all the feedback from the people that I’d worked with on how how they sort of manage their workloads and what symptoms they might recognize. It may not have been quite so much at the forefront of my mind. giving yourself permission to self care as well as is a really big one.

 

Kim Howard  14:01

That’s a good piece of advice. Thank you. Are there any myths that you would like to bust about EMDR therapy for vicarious trauma?

 

Lee Simmons  14:09

At the moment? No. Because I think EMDR is such a dynamic field it sort of growing and changing and developing different strands all the time. And vicarious trauma is also quite a new field of awareness that more people are starting to learn about and work in. So at the moment, I don’t think they’re a mix. I think there’s more of an exploration. In terms of the GTEP model. I’m aware that that is now sort of being evidence so the research is taking place and I think there is there is information available and some articles out there on how how helpful it can be. So I don’t think there’s myths as such, I think it’s more about learning what everybody else is doing and sort of compiling our our knowledge base.

 

Kim Howard  15:02

Thank you. Lee, are there any specific complexities or difficulties with using EMDR therapy for this population?

 

Lee Simmons  15:10

It can be quite hard to treat therapists and psychologists and it can also be fantastic. I’ve worked with 10s of clients in private practice, who were also psychologists or even EMDR therapists. And sometimes their awareness of the therapeutic process of what I’m doing of the framework can be really enabling, because they’re on the same page. But other times, it can be quite hard for them to leave their sort of professional self at the door. And they may question and analyze what I’m doing rather than just allowing themselves to be my patient and to be taken care of by somebody else. I’ve also found some times people might use being in therapy with me having the EMDR therapy as a little bit of a training exercise, so they get an insight and can learn from it. But I use things like the container exercise and different methods to try to have them put their sort of professional hands out of the way and experience therapy. And like I say, with some people, it’s great because they know what you’re doing. And they can really, you know, go with it. Sometimes it can, it can be more difficult and you feel a little bit scrutinized.

 

Kim Howard  16:21

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

 

Lee Simmons  16:30

On earlier that definition that I pulled up from the Headington Institute, that is a very good website. It has a number of videos about vicarious trauma for the frontline workers, as well as for managers and for organizations. And there’s a free reading course. So you can actually download the reading course, and do that it’s www dot Headington dash institute.org can explore that website. But if you just put vicarious trauma into the search bar, you’ll find it. I originally was recommended that website by Jennifer Hall who I was running some trainings with adopters of the world around 10 years ago, sort of recently, I ran a training with Oliver Ray, who I mentioned earlier, who was working at Grunfeld, we compiled quite a lot of resources and sort of favorites, links and videos and books into a little article, which is due to be published around now with the EMDR Association U.K. So that’s got quite a lot of links of our favorite resources to use.

 

Kim Howard  17:36

Thank you, what would you like people outside of the EMDR community to know about EMDR and vicarious trauma?

 

Lee Simmons  17:42

In terms of vicarious trauma, I think how broad it is, it really can affect anyone, and it can creep up on you. Often the people who are very empathetic and resilient, I think they can be more susceptible, though resilience is a way to guard against perhaps someone who’s used to being able to cope or plow on. So if somebody’s you know, really cares about their clients, and they’re really pushing themselves, you know, they’re going to be more susceptible to vicarious trauma. Realistically, that just half a day learning about it, that’s all you need to, you know, to get an awareness on how to protect yourself and recognize the symptoms, support your colleagues. And in terms of EMDR, though, it can feel really incredible and surprising and profound for people. It’s not magic, you know, for some people, a few sessions will have an amazing impact. But for somebody else to you know, it might take years of sort of EMDR psychotherapy that they need to get through the different layers, and somebody else might just not click with it. Every therapist is different, they’re going to come from their own different modality and skill base and with their own personality. So though it’s an area where I really enjoy seeing people testing new ideas and finding out what works best. I also do believe that when it comes to therapy and your mental health, you want to make sure that your therapist is properly trained, and they do have registration with a governing body. I know it’s different in the States, but in the U.K., to be a psychotherapist or a counselor. It’s not actually a protected title. Psychologist is a therapist says we need to be registered with the Health Professions Council, but otherwise not. Whereas when you’re trained in EMDR, to be a member of the association or to become accredited, you have to have a proper recognised training and to be keeping up with all of your CPD and having supervision and your supervisor is likely to be aware of vicarious trauma and, you know, making sure that therapists are taking care of themselves. So I think really For the wider community, this is an area where you want to make sure that your therapist is properly registered and trained.

 

Kim Howard  20:08

We have talked about this on the podcast before. So I’ll remind the audience listeners who are not therapists who might be seeking therapy to, please make sure that person that you are connecting with is certified trained. Some official body has said yes, this person is an expert in EMDR therapy or whatever other therapy you might be seeking. Because quite frankly, people can say that they’re experts or that they offer, the don’t say they’re experts. Usually they say, I offer this kind of therapy. But what credentials do they have to back it up? So you need to make sure that they are somehow credentialed somewhere because quite frankly, somebody can read a book and watch couple of videos and say they provide fill in the blank therapy. And that’s not what you want, you want to make sure somebody really understands what they’re doing. The other thing that you mentioned is, we’ve talked about this on the podcast before the finding a therapist is a lot like dating, you know, you have to find the person who number one, you know, specializes in your area of need, you know, if you’re if you’re seeking therapy for your child, and people that you go to don’t mention anything about working with children, then don’t go to them, because you need to find somebody who specializes in that population. And so yeah, do a little bit of homework. I know that can be kind of stressful when you’re worried and stressed out and traumatized and trying to find healing, but it’s important to find somebody that works in your area of need. And then also, when you get in connect with that person, if you’re not connected with them, for some reason, or things don’t seem right, or you don’t have to stay, you know, you can say you know, this isn’t working for me, I need to find somebody new, I’m sorry, and move on to somebody else. And so you have permission to do that. But it doesn’t work. And so you got to find the right fit for you.

 

Lee Simmons  21:53

But the EMDR because it is so good at addressing these blocks and PTSD and the trauma that stuck in a body EMDR therapists tend to be a little bit more flexible about working with people, you have another therapist that I was in long-term therapy or psychoanalysis, you can talk to your psychologist or psychotherapist. And if you want it to do EMDR, you might find that they’re willing to pause your work or take a supporting role. While you’re going work with an EMDR therapist on the particular thing for a set number of sessions. I’ve done that a number of times. And it can be a really helpful sort of way of co working. But when it’s tricky is if you go back to your counselor or psychotherapist, and then start recounting what happened in the EMDR session, because we start with the problem. And then the memories start to change and the healings taking place. And we don’t go back to the sort of real stuckness. So if you then go to your therapist and talk about all of the sessions, you kind of go backwards, and it can be it can be quite tricky. But you can go to an EMDR therapist, and if your therapist agrees, continue working with them, but you want them to be in touch and make sure that it’s not clashing they’re not

 

Kim Howard  23:09

Good advice. Lee, if you weren’t an EMDR therapist, what would you be?

 

Lee Simmons  23:13

I was an artist for about 10 years before becoming an art therapist. And you know, in a similar way to becoming an EMDR therapist or an art therapist, as an artist, I kind of wanted to do more with community groups I was working with as having to be really boundaried if people were talking about issues and refer them to other people. And I felt a little bit sad about that with some of the art projects I was doing. So probably still be an artist, my practice is still very active. But I don’t have as much time as if I hadn’t gone into the therapy world. But I do like how artists can really work across disciplines. You know, very creative, you often connect with scientists and therapists and people who work in horticulture. So I imagine I’d probably be just doing more art projects that sort of community focused and based around house instead, my art practice has gone a little bit more into the studio and has become more I suppose some me and more explorative rather than Danny sort of involved by public art and community art projects.

 

Kim Howard  24:25

What’s your preferred medium?

 

Lee Simmons  24:27

I really like painting. I mean, I find myself doing projects more of the time where I end up involving lots of people and then we do something in the public sphere. But I think what really gives my brain a buzzy pleasure is just sitting down and painting. Actually think it’s not. It’s not dissimilar to EMDR in a way where you have a map you kind of know you know what you’re doing what you’re aiming for, but you don’t really know the process that’s gonna get you there, or exactly what the outcomes gonna be. There can be a bit in the middle where it all Feels a bit messy. But then when you trust the process and you keep working on it, you usually get this lovely kind of like a heart kind of feeling when you know that your paintings finished. Yeah, so I enjoy that a lot.

 

Kim Howard  25:12

Lee, is there anything else you’d like to add?

 

Lee Simmons  25:15

I would like to mention secondary trauma. Secondary trauma, obviously can affect practitioners. But it’s also something that will be affecting the wider public, particularly, as you know, we do have a lot of different bad news unfolding around the world and the way that social media has evolved a lot of very distressing images available constantly. So I think when learning about vicarious trauma, it’s fairly natural to also learn a bit about secondary trauma, and how even seeing the news on repeat, and then creates those traumatic symptoms within the viewer. So thinking, anyone who’s listening to this who’s not an EMDR therapist, or has a friend who’s like stuck on their laptop, looking at news or the TV, maybe think about taking a little bit of control over when you’re looking at news, what time when that’s good for you and just safeguarding your own mental health around that.

 

Kim Howard  26:18

Yeah, absolutely. And we’ve talked about this before on this podcast, too, because I’m in charge of our social media accounts. And there are days when be honest, social media is not fun, be honest with that. And there are days when I just have to limit what’s going on with that. And I know some people can’t do that. But if you can possibly limit your news exposure, and or your social media exposure, it’s better for your mental health anyway, when there’s not something dramatic, overly dramatic going on. I mean, the news is generally not not that great most of the time anyway. But if there’s something like an extreme incident happening, it’s even more traumatic to absorb what’s happening. And so it doesn’t help any of us, I think, to just stay glued to our TVs or phones or social media feeds and constantly watch that they’re just something’s you just your eyes cannot, cannot let go of. And so, yeah, if you can limit that it’s healthier for you in the long run. So that’s wonderful advice. Is there anything else you’d like to add?

 

Lee Simmons  27:18

I’ve really enjoyed talking to you. And yeah, thanks. It’s, it’s great to have this conversation at the same time is doing the work with EMDR U.K. and just filled up, we can share our information and yeah, I really, really appreciate you taking the time. Thank you.

 

Kim Howard  27:34

Absolutely. It’s good way to end the podcast. Thank you. This has been the Let’s Talk EMDR podcast with our guest Lee Simmons, visit wwww.emdria.org for more information about EMDR therapy, or to use our Find an EMDR Therapist Directory with more than 15,000 therapists available. Like what you hear? Make sure you subscribe to this free podcast wherever you listen. Thanks for being here today.