EMDR therapy, attachment trauma, children, Debra Wesselmann, hypnotherapy, mental health, trauma processing, family therapy, trust building, dissociation, adaptive information processing, parent involvement, therapeutic story, neurodivergence, cultural humility.

 

Kim Howard  00:07

Welcome to the Let’s Talk EMDR podcast brought to you by the EMDR International Association, or EMDRIA. I am your host, Kim Howard. Let’s get started. Today, we are speaking with EMDRIA certified therapist and approved consultant and trainer, Debra Wesselmann, to discuss integrative treatment for attachment trauma in children. Thank you, Deborah, for being here today. We are so happy that you said, yes

 

Debra Wesselmann  00:29

Thank you, Kim. I am glad to be here.

 

Kim Howard  00:31

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

 

Debra Wesselmann  00:36

Well, I graduated with my masters in 1989 and I knew I wanted to work with serious issues. I really became interested in getting my masters in mental health in the early 80s, when I was teaching school, I was teaching in a very poor neighborhood where families were really overwhelmed with poverty and addictions mental illness. I had four parents commit suicide in four years of teaching fourth graders, yeah, yeah. So as you can imagine, I was seeing the impact on my students, and I wanted, I wanted to go help them with their mental health instead of, you know, teaching additions. So, so I started thinking about that then, and then we started our family around them through birth and adoption, and that had an influence on me as well, in terms of just thinking about my daughter’s experiences coming from overseas and an orphanage care and that sort of thing. So my head went there, and I just knew I wanted to work with something around that. Shortly after getting my degree, I started my clinical work, working for a psychiatrist who worked with patients with very complex trauma, although we didn’t use that word back then and in the early 1990s I got into hypnotherapy because that was a very popular form of treatment. And then I began exploring hypnotherapy, you know, thinking this is the way to help people at a deeper level. But when I was at a meeting the American Society of Clinical hypnosis conference, I started hearing people talk about this thing called EMDR, and when they were talking about it, it was my response was, oh, that sounds so silly, but you know, it just I kept thinking about it, and it kept intriguing me. And lo and behold, I found myself at a training in Denver in 1995 with Francine Shapiro, and I was blown away by the experience. I was blown away by my own experience, even in my practicum. So I kind of didn’t look back after that man, and I was just really drawn to the way it activated my clients, insights and associations and shifts, so that, you know, the changes were happening at a deep level through their own processes. And I kind of left hypnotherapy behind, except that the, you know, the sort of hypnogogic kind of voice, the hypnotic voice in the slow, warm ways of speaking when we’re doing hypnotherapy. It did influence the way I do some of that preparation work with some guided imagery and that sort of thing. I found that was really an influence in that regard. But EMDR is not hypnotherapy. There’s there’s no doubt about that. I found it it. I was much more drawn to the EMDR, and even in my work with children, although their processing is more undeveloped, I saw shifts and changes that I couldn’t make happen through talking with them, so I let go, Yeah, of the hypnotherapy, and began just really diving in deeper and deeper into EMDR and trying to figure out how to apply EMDR really successfully with some of these more challenging populations that I was working with.

 

Kim Howard  04:23

Yeah, that’s a great origin story. Thank you for sharing. And you’re not the first guest on this podcast. You were in good company to say, Oh, I first heard of EMDR, and I thought, what that? That doesn’t even sound like that’s real. Are you kidding me? And so they were very skeptical. You know, coming to it, I certainly do understand, because it certainly do understand, because it certainly sounds like what, how can I go? But we had a nobody knew about it there, yeah, we had a podcast guest a few episodes back, and they were talking about how EMDR therapy can help with your your sleep issues. And she talked about how they like an EMDR therapy to sort of defragging your brain. Mean. And so people of a certain age understand what defrag in a computer means. It means that all of the files, back in the day, we used to have to run the program, and then all the files sort of got out in a weird spot in the computer, and it made the computer not work as well and as efficient. So we would run a defrag on the computer, and it would take all those files and put them back where they belong. And EMDR therapy has been explained to me sort of on that level. It’s sort of these memories are in the wrong part of your brain, and we’re just sort of putting them back where they belong. Great. I’m glad you, I’m glad you had it, and I’m glad you’re here.

 

Debra Wesselmann  05:31

Yeah, that’s a great analogy. I’m gonna remember that.

 

Kim Howard  05:32

Yeah, it really was, and it was really so visual. I mean, maybe people who are younger don’t understand what defrag and a computer means, but I think they understand the concept of files not being in the right place and putting them back where they belong, you know. And so that was, that was kind of a good, good analogy as well. So you’ve already alluded to this, maybe, but I’m going to ask the question anyway, in case you have something else to add, what’s your favorite part of working with EMDR therapy?

 

Debra Wesselmann  05:59

Yeah, I did allude to, you know, those those aha moments, the way those insights and perspectives and shifts come from within, from their own internal processes and people, people being people, they often don’t take to being handed a new perspective of some sort, you know, like, I want you to look at it this way. I want you to think about it like this. We all naturally are resistant to information that conflicts with information we’ve been holding forever, maybe. And you know that cognitive dissonance, we just like filter that out. What you just said, Nope, does not compute, so we don’t trust it, but in the middle of EMDR reprocessing, clients will make that connection and find those shifts on their own, so it has real meaning for them. Yeah, and they they tell me about the insights. Sometimes it’s funny. Sometimes I’ve already had this discussion with them, you know, I’ve given them some adaptive information up front. You know, here’s what I want you to think about how you know, for example, little kids aren’t responsible for the behaviors of parents or other adults. I’ve given them all that information, and then they’ll have this big shift, this big aha, and later they’ll tell me all about it, like I never said any of that before. It’s all brand new to them. So I always think that’s so funny.

 

Kim Howard  07:26

That is funny. So you have a new book coming out. So it’s called ‘EMDR and Family Therapy: Integrative Treatment for Attachment Trauma in Children,’ which offers a step-by-step guide for EMDR therapist to help them treat this issue in our most vulnerable population. Can you please define attachment trauma and explain why this matters for children?

 

Debra Wesselmann  07:47

Yes, yes, the attachment system allows us to survive in the world by staying connected to our parents. It’s really a survival thing. It’s it’s really all about survival. And so if we come to trust that our parents are there to meet our needs, we become certain of our safety, and then we can move into exploring the world and learning and developing and all sorts of ways. And in addition, our parents protection and nurturing conveys that message that we’re worthy, that we’re valuable, that we fit in, we belong. So attachment security enhances our mental health. It enhances our emotional, social and cognitive development. And yeah, that is the ideal situation. However, if we’ve had experiences that are traumatic or frightening within our attachment relationships, our most important source of safety, the person we most rely upon, then becomes also the source of our fear. That’s a real double blind and this is true also if the attachment figure has just disappeared from our lives, or there’s been long separations. And it’s even true for a lot of kids who experience early discomfort or pain due to medical trauma, they don’t understand that the adults weren’t the cause of their pain, and so our ability to rely on our most important relationship for safety is shaken to the core, and without that sense of safety, we are limited in our ability to explore and learn And our sense of worth and belonging, promoted by closeness and connection, is impaired, and our brain and nervous system adapt so that we’re more geared to survival than to exploration and learning and connection and relationships. Our nervous system is on hyper alert, and we have. Defenses in relationships to help us find some sense of safety, but those defenses also leave us alienated and disconnected, because when we go after safety, that’s a very primitive thing. You know, we’re maybe shutting down our needs or feelings, or we’re intensifying, intensifying our needs and feelings in order to be seen and heard. And those defense mechanisms just don’t work very well in relationships, and then they carry into adulthood, as we all know who we all are believers and understand the adaptive information processing theory that, yeah, those those memories stay inadequately processed, stored in a maladaptive form, and they’re triggered by reminders even into adulthood, and so in this case, with attachment trauma, any significant relationship becomes the trigger, becomes the reminder, whether it’s your partner or a close friend or your own child, even your own Baby, can be the trigger for that attachment trauma.

 

Kim Howard  11:21

Thank you. Thank you for explaining that. So for the listeners out there who are not therapists or EMDR therapists, can you quickly explain what the AIP theory is?

 

Deborah Korn  11:34

Oh, yeah, So the AIP series adaptive information processing theory says that we all have a natural information processing system. So everything that happens to us during the day, it is processed through our brain. It is things are filed away if we need though that information later, what we don’t need is sloughed off. It’s discarded. I feel at my age now, I feel like everything is getting discarded instead of filed away. But, but that’s

 

Kim Howard  12:11

I feel you on that.

 

Debra Wesselmann  12:13

But that’s the basic gist of it. And however, if something happens that is really traumatic, that natural information system, it shuts down, and that trauma memory gets stored in adequately process. I see it as being stored in like a primitive form. So it’s stored encapsulated along with the feelings and the perceptions, the images, sensations that were present at the time of the trauma. And this is actually beneficial. Well, supposedly it’s beneficial. You know, when you think of evolution and survival, if something happens that’s traumatic, that is a sign that we’re living in some kind of a dangerous environment, so we have to be ready to just react, however, in civilized life, that’s usually not that helpful. Usually, we are overreacting to triggers that are reminders, but it’s the present is actually usually very different from the past, so our brain doesn’t get that when it’s functioning in that way. Yeah,

 

Kim Howard  13:34

absolutely. Thank you for explaining that. I appreciate that. What are the specific complexities or challenges when offered EMDR therapy for attachment trauma in children?

 

Debra Wesselmann  13:37

The biggest obstacle is their difficulty with trust. Their mistrust of their parent typically generalizes to other adults, including the therapist, and rather than being open to help and support, they’re well defended for what feels to the child like, really good reasons, survival, basic survival. So there’s extreme avoidance, and sometimes that’s through aggressive behaviors. Sometimes it’s through shutting down and dissociating or heightened intensity to you know, be seen, heard, to control their environment. There’s chronic dysregulation and very little tolerance for distress. There’s often a lot of conflict in the home because the parents are overwhelmed. They they don’t know what to do to help the child, and often they’re caught up in a punitive approach. Because, you know, what do we do? You know, naturally, when kids act out, the parents think, okay, they need some punishment for this child that tells the child, okay, I cannot trust this parent. They’re mean. Yeah, and I’m bad, and so the behaviors accelerate, get even worse, and there’s just this, this vicious cycle, and the problems show up in the therapy office as well as at home. So for effective EMDR therapy, we need the child in a place where the child is willing to sit with their emotions and their memories and put observations into words as much as possible, or express themselves in some way, shape or form, but this requires some intentional preparation work, to build trust, to build safety with their parents, and to build that trust with us and capacity for some regulation, ability to notice and and reflect.

 

Kim Howard  15:55

Yeah, thank you. What successes have you seen using EMDR therapy for this population?

 

Debra Wesselmann  16:02

Well, with the EMDR and family therapy, integrative approach, I, we see, we are seeing, we have been seeing really good successes. And I’ll go into just a little bit about what that is, but I’ll just say the first edition of this book we wrote in 2014 so my colleagues and I, who helped develop the approach, we wrote in 2014 we did a case series study in 2018 that showed the promise we were seeing in in our offices with this approach. And since then, there’s been some studying of this approach in the Netherlands. There was even a case study in New Zealand. So, you know, we do feel like we have something that can really benefit folks in this newer edition brings in, of course, of course, we’re always learning more about addressing dissociation, more about addressing these issues with teenagers, as well as really young kids. More about addressing these issues for kids that also have neurodivergence or prenatal substance exposure, you know, those things that can add further complications, but it involves three stages, and the first stage is really one to one psycho education meetings with the parents to help them shift and understand their child’s behaviors through the attachment trauma lens, and to help them conceptualize as you conceptualize through talking you what, what the history is? What are those session events, as much as we know them? What are the present triggers? What? What are the themes? And we can just begin building that case conceptualization without the child in the room, because the child in the room is not going to help. At that point, the children are not willing to hear about their history or talk about it, and they certainly don’t want to hear their parents talk about their behaviors. Having about two to six sessions with parents is a start, and then stage two involves a set of family therapy and EMDR therapy activities that build good feelings in the child and build the child’s sense of trust and connection with the parent. The parent is involved every step of the way, and we build skills of co-regulation and self regulation, and the parent is learning right along with the child they we, we try to make this, you know, a collaboration between the therapist, the parents and the child, and the child doesn’t have to feel like, you know, they’re the bad one or they’re the sick one. It’s like they are all working together. And we try to be playful and engaging and fun. And then stage three involves a gentle way of approaching the EMDR processing of both the past traumas and the present triggers with the support of the parents in most cases. You know, there are exceptions to that, but once we’ve enhanced the trust and connection the parent support can really help allow us to begin processing. We start with triggers, stabilizing their behaviors through trigger processing, and then we develop a therapeutic story, a la the Joan Lovett method, if you’ve heard of her work, small wonders was her original work. And then we gradually move into reprocessing those individual traumas with standard protocol, but perhaps titrating it into small. All pieces of work, and then we can have some great successes with reprocessing, and we and we’ve seen so many, Yeah, amazing changes. I recently ran into a young lady in the store that I had worked with when she was like, 910, 11, and she had, she was adopted into a home. Good home. Had been sexually and physically abused and neglected in her biological home. Battle, more detail came out, you know, through the work, as it often does, but that child was at school. They were doing room clears on a daily basis. She was throwing chairs across the room. And she was 6/7/8, years old, doing that. Yeah, really aggressive, really aggressive. And when, when it came out, we were able to titrate do little pieces of work with the gentle, loving support of her adoptive mom, holding her through it every step of the way. And, yeah, it was, it was remarkable, and she was able to even testify in court. This is information that was, you know, new that had come out and was able to testify successfully in court, and she anyway, she told me, when I ran into her, that she had just completed her first semester of college, and she said to me, you know, I’m I’m really sorry. I remember how naughty I was for you.

 

Kim Howard  21:40

Oh, my goodness. She certainly had a lot of reasons to be that way.

 

Debra Wesselmann  21:44

She did. She really, really did. Yeah, yeah.

 

Kim Howard  21:47

Well, that’s, that’s awesome. That’s a great success story. And this question comes up, I see a lot when we have conferences and in our summit, when people talk about therapy with children adolescents. So how do you handle it if you’re in a situation where the parents are not, may not be the right word, but they’re not, they’re not as willing to work with you as they you need them to. How do you how do you handle that?

 

Debra Wesselmann  22:13

Yeah, that it can be, obviously, it can be really tricky with parents. I have situations where i i involve the parent in a more limited way, but I don’t give up working with the parent. I’m bringing the parent. I bring the parent into the room at the beginning of every session, usually one on one, unless I have an adolescent who, you know, they’re in that stage of separation, individuation, and they don’t want mom and they’re alone talking about them, but in that case, I may have to do some emailing with the parent or phone conversations. But overall, and the child knows that they know that. But overall, if the parent is difficult in terms of they don’t buy into everything they think, Oh, you’re giving them excuses with this trauma stuff, then I may need to involve them a little more judiciously, and I may have more sessions, more sessions one on one With the parent, and more sessions, one on one with the child, so that I’m continuing to bring that parent along, and I’m also continuing to bring that child along through what I can do one on one with the child. And then when it comes to trauma work, I may have the parent write the child a note, a supportive note, and leave that with the child while we start the EMDR work, or the parent gives the child their sweater to hold on to, because I’m not feeling like the parents presence is going to really be safe enough and comforting enough for that child, but some kind of sign from the parent that they do support them and that they love them is going to benefit that child through the work and then I try to, after the session is over again, bring the parent in and and really give them more understanding of what I learned about the child, and maybe with the child in the room, if the child is willing, and what the child will Need after the session. The beauty of keeping the parent in the room is that, wow, they really get a feel for what the child went through. That’s a real way to build compassion, but we have to balance that with how safe is it for the child to have the parent in the room?

 

Kim Howard  24:57

Absolutely. Thank you. Debra. So are there any myths that you would like to best about working with EMDR therapy for attachment trauma in children?

 

Debra Wesselmann  25:06

You know, I think one myth is that working with these kids with these horrible, horrible histories is all doom and gloom and sadness. You know? The truth is, if you bring an attitude of playfulness and humor into the therapy room. It can make the therapy actually so much fun. I mean, there are moments when, yeah, you feel really sad, or it’s really hard, a child’s having a meltdown in your room. And yeah, that happens. It absolutely does. But these kids can also be really fun and engaging, and they can have a great sense of humor, and they can, you know, do great artwork, and or they can, you know, they’ll, they’ll get up and they’ll dance with you, or whatever you want to bring into it. And so it actually be a lot of fun. We do a lot of, we do a lot of laughing in our in our offices, we really do. You hear laughter all the time, and that’s a great way to engage them and engage the parents too.

 

Kim Howard  26:09

Yeah, thank you. What advice do you have for EMDR, therapist listening on how they can help these clients?

 

Debra Wesselmann  26:15

Well, one bit of advice is do your own work, because these kids, yeah, they can be really triggering, you know, they can look at you and say, Oh, I, like, for example, I had a, you know, I use, I have my warm, hypnotic voice. I sometimes use, right when I’m doing, like, resource work. So I was doing something with a, like, a 14 year old. Maybe it was her safe place, I’m not sure, but it was, you know, and you’re there and you’re enjoying this beautiful place. And she said that word, fuzzy voice is so annoying. Would you cut that out?

 

Kim Howard  26:54

Whoa. If you ever want an honest opinion, ask a teenager, because they will tell you straight.

 

Debra Wesselmann  26:58

Exactly. So I’m saying, do your own work. You can so that you won’t be triggered, and it won’t activate your own child parts going, oh my gosh, I’ve been rejected. But the truth is when, when you work with these kids, you get so that you just see it as funny. And what I have to do is work so I don’t laugh, because that would be, you know, totally invalidating for the for the kiddo. So I have to, I have to, like, you know, keep it together and be like, Oh, okay, I’m really glad you told me, let me. Let me try this again. And then with that kid, I was just like, very matter of fact, okay, there you are in your safe place. What do you notice?

 

Kim Howard  27:40

That’s funny. I like it. What would you like people outside of the EMDR community to know about EMDR therapy with this population?

 

Debra Wesselmann  27:49

I would like people to know that it’s a powerful therapy for this population when applied thoughtfully and collaboratively with the child and the family, with the therapeutic trust and the Yeah, that connection is real key, really key. And if they don’t yet trust, you know doing what you need to do to build that first. But when they have that trust, and they know we have their back, and they do sense that their parents have their back as well. It won’t, you know, they’ll, they’ll feel safe enough to access those feelings and those memories. And so if we don’t do that, yeah, avoidance will feel like the only way to stay safe. And we have to remember that, if that’s the case, they’re not being naughty, they’re not being resistant, and, you know, just a bad client, they are doing what their nervous system is telling them to do to stay safe. So we have to tune into that and start where they’re at and peace with them and not take it personally.

 

Kim Howard  29:07

This is very true. This is very, very true. Deborah, how do you practice cultural humility as an EMDR, therapist?

 

Debra Wesselmann  29:16

Well, I definitely don’t ever assume that I know what it’s like to be in my client’s shoes, as a person of color, or as a person who is born into a different culture, or as a person who identifies with the LGBTQ community, or as someone with a disability, or Even as a child who’s been through what they’ve been through, I try to remember that I don’t know what they feel and experience in the world, and I try to stay humble, and I try to stay curious without prying. And I just think it’s really important to acknowledge our. Differences and acknowledge there are things that we don’t understand. And I also try to role model this for parents as well, because a lot of parents, adoptive and foster parents, are raising kids who are coming from a different background, a different race, ethnic group, culture and so on, and they often i I’ve had many parents say to me, oh, you know, I’m colorblind. They know that, but I think that’s not recognizing the real impact of of the difference in skin color or ethnic group that kids can feel. I know I raised a daughter who is Asian, and I think I was pretty naive going into that, that there was any, you know, that she would have any feelings about being different in the way she looked from the rest of the family. And, yeah, over time we, you know, we definitely came to understand more about that, and communicated and talked deeply about that because it was significant. So I tried to transmit that as well to the parents that I work with.

 

Kim Howard  31:17

one of the podcasts about EMDR therapy and adoption and foster parents and just that whole realm goes, you know, as somebody who volunteers for that, you think, Oh, I’m doing such a great thing for this child in need, right? And you could be the best person out there, but this person is, this child is coming from a broken situation, right? Yeah, it’s a foster situation or an adoption situation. Even if the child was adopted as a baby, there’s still a dis attachment from the parent, the mother and the father, the biological mother and father. And so there’s, there’s work that has to be done with it within the family that you don’t from the outsider view, you wouldn’t think that has to be done. You’re like, Oh, these fantastic people would talk to this child and needed a home and but there’s, there’s issues that come up. And so there’s nothing wrong with saying, Okay, we’ve got to deal with this. If we need, you know, some professional help get through it. There’s nothing wrong with that. So, no, please, if you’re in that situation, don’t, don’t be afraid to reach out.

 

Debra Wesselmann  32:18

Yeah, absolutely. Don’t be afraid that there is nothing wrong with that. And we all, you know, not only should we do our work personally, but you know, if we raise kids and have this, you know, kind of a challenge, it’s Gosh, it’s just doing the right thing. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

 

Kim Howard  32:37

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

 

Debra Wesselmann  32:46

On my website, if that’s okay for me to say, Debrawesselman.com I do have some free eBook downloads and great all about attachment trauma and all kinds of stuff that you can learn as a parent or as a therapist.

 

Kim Howard  33:05

Deborah, if you weren’t an EMDR therapist, what would you be?

 

Debra Wesselmann  33:09

That’s a very good question. Honestly, I think I would probably be either a writer of fiction or a musician or an artist. I love all of those things, and I come from a family where many family members express themselves through some creative medium, and I haven’t had time to develop myself in those areas the way I would like to. But you know, maybe someday, as I wind down some of this work, I may branch out into some of those things just for myself. But, yeah, that’s probably where I would have gone if I had gone into therapy.

 

Kim Howard  33:47

That’s great. I love it. Is there anything else you want to add?

 

Debra Wesselmann  33:50

I would say that therapy, I believe, is both a science and an art, but, but additionally, I want to say, if you don’t work with kids, or you don’t work with kids who have serious developmental trauma and significant behaviors, because you think, oh, that’s just too hard. Consider including that population in your caseload. It actually can be a lot of fun and and there’s so much need for treatment. There are not enough therapists. I get referrals all the time. I’m trying to find therapists for you know, here in our community and other therapists who have trained with me or read my book, they say our community, there’s not enough therapists who are treating this population. So consider treating this population. Otherwise, there’s so many kids whose potential for who they could be is is really lost, and the earlier they get the help, the better the outcome for that child and their future.

 

Kim Howard  34:55

Absolutely, that’s a great way to end the podcast. Thank you, Debra.

 

Debra Wesselmann  35:01

You’re welcome.

 

Kim Howard  35:01

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