Episode Details
We delve into the essential role of advanced resourcing techniques within Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy for treating addictions and compulsions. Our guest, EMDR Certified Therapist Gerard Ilaria, LCSW, shares insights on how EMDR’s resourcing phase can help create safe, stable, and adaptive emotional resources for clients struggling with addictive behaviors.
We discuss how integrating these advanced resourcing techniques allows therapists to build clients’ internal strength and resilience, providing them with coping mechanisms that support long-term recovery. The episode explores the science behind resourcing, practical strategies for EMDR practitioners, and real-world examples of how these approaches have transformed clients’ therapeutic journeys.
Whether you are an experienced EMDR therapist or beginning to explore its potential for addiction treatment, this episode will deepen your understanding of the vital role resourcing plays in healing deep-rooted compulsions and behaviors. Tune in for an in-depth conversation that offers both theoretical frameworks and practical tools to enhance your EMDR practice.
Episode Resources
- Addictions Toolkit (login req)
- OnDemand Library for Summit and Conference sessions and continuing education credit
- What Is EMDR Therapy?
- Online EMDR Therapy Resources
- Introduction to EMDR Therapy (video), EMDRIA, 2020
- EMDR Therapy and Addictions Episode with Julie Miller, Let’s Talk EMDR Podcast, September 1, 2022
- EMDR Therapy, Addictions & Mindfulness with Dr. Stephen Dansiger, Let’s Talk EMDR Podcast, September 15, 2022
- Focal Point Blog
- EMDRIA™ Library
- EMDRIA™ Practice Resources
- EMDRIA’s Find an EMDR Therapist® Directory lists more than 17,000 EMDR therapists.
- Follow @EMDRIA on X, @EMDR_IA on Instagram, Facebook or subscribe to our YouTube Channel.
- EMDRIA Foundation
Musical soundtrack, Acoustic Motivation 11290, supplied royalty-free by Pixabay.
Episode Transcript
Kim Howard 00:06
Welcome to the Let’s Talk EMDR podcast brought to you by the EMDR International Association, or EMDRIA. I am your host, Kim Howard. In this episode, we are talking with EMDR certified therapist Gerard Ilaria about discussing the role of enhanced resourcing in the treatment of addictions and compulsions. Let’s get started. Today, we are speaking with EMDR, certified therapist Gerard Ilaria, to discuss the role of enhanced resourcing in the treatment of addictions and compulsions. Thank you, Gerard, for being here today. We’re so happy that you said yes.
Gerard Ilaria 00:36
Thank you so much, Kim for having me anytime I get an opportunity to talk about enhanced resourcing, specifically with this group of people, I’m happy to be able to talk about it. Absolutely so.
Kim Howard 00:47
Can you tell us about your path to becoming an EMDR therapist?
Gerard Ilaria 00:51
Yes, absolutely so. I had been a LCSW since 1988 when I graduated Columbia School of Social Work, and I jumped straight into what we now call trauma, but was then called the AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome) epidemic in New York City. So for many years, I worked with only patients with AIDS, many of whom had substance use as well. And did that for a long time with the skills that they gave me at Columbia and in my training, but it did not include EMDR, because that was before all that. And it wasn’t until 2012 when a co-worker of mines, friend who was a Marine Corps captain who returned from Iraq said, I need your help, because all of my men, women, you know, comrades in arms, are committing suicide. We’ve lost more to suicide now than we did on the battlefield, and they had fought in some pretty terrible battles. So he said, I’ll get all the money you guys. At that point, I worked at Cornell in the Department of Public Health, and this is very much something we were interested in. He said, go figure out the best way to take care of veterans, and we’ll, you know, we’ll make it happen. So we did our due diligence, looked around, looked at what the VA was doing, and looked at what was happening in for trauma, in the sort of, you know, more the general community. And our feeling was, let’s do EMDR, they’re not doing it at the VA. It seems to work so much better than prolonged exposure or CPT or anything like that. And so that was our path to EMDR. We just sort of looked around, probably read Bessel’s book back then, and, you know, we’re just asking folks, and they said, Yeah, if you can make this happen, if you could deliver EMDR to this population, that would be a huge boon. So that’s what we did. We trained a bunch of us all at one time in our group, and then, you know, since then, trained the whole division. So we had psychiatrists and psychologists and social workers who were all doing EMDR with this population. So that’s how I got here.
Kim Howard 03:07
That’s a great story and and I’d like to touch on a couple of points. I can only imagine that working with HIV at the time, I don’t think HIV was an option. I felt like everything just kind of went through that phase and went through straight to AIDS. But that must have been extremely traumatizing for the patients, the clients, and for the people who are trying to treat them and work with that. We’ve interviewed Rick Levinson a while back about, I want to say it was chronic illness, and he talked about treating patients who were HIV positive and who had AIDS. And what a what a beautiful way to contribute to humanity anyway, to be a therapist, but to help people who are really in that kind of need as a bulk and group is so wonderful. And thank you for all of that work with that population. But as well as veterans, my dad was a Army vet lifer, two tours in Vietnam, and so I have soft spot for veterans because of the service that they do and the work that they have to do, and the things that they see that they can’t unsee, and how that impacts them. So thank you very much for all of that. I’m so grateful that they were able to find you guys all both populations, you know. So thank you for that.
Gerard Ilaria 04:17
Yeah, no, I similarly was tied up in both communities being a gay man in the 1980s myself, and having many friends who were getting sick, including a partner who died of AIDS, I was very much up close and personal with that epidemic. Happily, I am well, and nothing bad ever happened to me. And I was I felt fortunate to be able to, you know, care for folks, but it was mostly grief work back then, a lot of advocacy. You know, I think I lost more than 200 patients, and it was one of those things where you, when you shook their hand Hello, you knew you’d be saying goodbye within two years, because that was about, you know, the average amount of time that people would stay with us once diagnosed. So that was rough. But again, amazing. I’m grateful to have been able to do something there and then. In terms of veterans, yeah, my father was a bomber in World War Two in the Army Air Corps, and flew 31 missions over Europe and Germany, et cetera. And I only found out much later, after he died, and I was looking through his papers that he came out with a diagnosis of what is now known as PTSD. He had something, I think they just called it, basically anxiety or nervousness, and he was in a sanatorium for six months before he came home. And I never appreciated his quietness or what it is, you know, in the time that I did spend with him, he died when I was 15, I didn’t quite know what was going on, but of course, have so much better of an understanding what he might have been going through now. So again, veterans also a big part of my personal story.
Kim Howard 05:54
Yeah, they used to call it shell shock.; that’s World War One. And I think before that, they didn’t even have, you know terms for it, they just didn’t know, you know, they would just….
Gerard Ilaria 06:03
Soldier’s heart in the Civil War. Is another thing that they called it, yeah. And then shell shock, and then yeah.
Kim Howard 06:09
So, finally, PTSD, yeah. So thank you for all of that work. What’s your favorite part of working with EMDR therapy?
Gerard Ilaria 06:16
My favorite part is getting out of the way. My favorite part is, sort of the is the you’re going spelunking in a cave, and you have no idea where you’re going, but you’re just like, curious and excited for what’s coming next. I mean, the protocol allows you to do work without a preconceived notion. And you know, I think one of the things that when I’m supervising new EMDR students or training folks something that they have to really put aside is their thinking brain, you know, is their prefrontal cortex that wants to make all kinds of elegant connections between this and that based on their life story, not necessarily the life story of the of the patient that is sitting in front of them. So, EMDR, the sort of beauty of getting a little bit of information. I mean, obviously, after all the, you know, Alliance building and all of the safety and all the resourcing, everything you do before, but when you start on that journey of reprocessing, for example, you just don’t know where you’re going to go. And I love that. I just love listening and using, you know, replacing the old brain that I had, which was, well, is this about the mother or the father or, you know, what is this? You know, what part of the replacing that part of my brain with, instead just listening for, you know, what might be blocking beliefs, what might be, you know, some work that we’re going to adjunct ifs with, or we’re going to add junk, you know, something else with, and staying out of the way and just letting AIP, just letting the thing run so that they can heal themselves, you know, with our assistance. So that’s what I think is really fun. That’s great.
Kim Howard 07:53
So you’re the kind of person who, when you like, take a trip, you’re like, let’s just go down this road because we don’t know where it’s going.
Gerard Ilaria 07:58
No, not at all. That’s totally different. Total Control. The rest of the time. I have to say, the thing about EMDR that’s so useful is you are you do feel in control as a therapist, because you have this elegant model and you have these different trail heads that you know based on what you’ve done 100,000 times before. Maybe we’ll go this, maybe we’ll go that way, but just the idea that the client really has the secrets, it’s their subconscious that’s guiding us. It’s their you know, the part that’s most wounded is the part that they’re going to guide us to is just so much better to me than when I see people who just, they just know right out of the gate. You know, they’ve read the assessment and they’re ready to go in and do some work, and they don’t know who’s what nervous system or what history is actually sitting in front of them.
Kim Howard 08:49
True story. Thank you. What are the specific complexities or challenges of using enhanced resourcing during EMDR therapy, when treating addictions and compulsions?
Gerard Ilaria 09:00
Yeah. So you know, the challenges mostly have to do with the addictions and the compulsions part, meaning people with addictions and compulsions are coming in with a sort of special kind of trauma. It’s not just not that any trauma is easy, but it’s not just what happened to them a long time ago. It might be what’s still going on right now. It might be the scrape they just got themselves into last week, or certainly the shame that they’re walking in with today. So I think the the issue is mostly thinking about, how can I make this person most comfortable? How can I de shame this situation, whether I’m doing, you know, history, taking where, for example, I’m always actually having them doing some tapping or some grounding work while we’re even doing history taking, because I’m interested in them being in their body, in their window of tolerance when they’re telling me something, and not running out of the room when they get to the really embarrassing part, you know, or I might be using resources. Thing at the beginning, certainly just butterfly hug or tapping, so that they when they leave the session, they have some skill to keep them coming back next week. I you know, I think that there’s you’ve got two things going on at the same time. You’ve got the underlying trauma that they’re self soothing with the addictive behaviors or substances, and then you’ve got that system of the sort of, you know, in my talk that I gave at EMDR recently, thank you for inviting me. I love Nora Volkows from NIDA, sort of circular thing of how addiction works, and that it’s always going, you know, it’s always cycling through if you’re not craving, you know, or if you’re not, and then you’re not using your in withdrawal, and then you’re seeking again. So it’s sort of being on top of both things, being on top of that system, which is the sort of perpetual spinning thing of the addiction or compulsive behavior, while also keeping your eye, on the on the underlying trauma, and kind of knowing when to go where and when not to go to the underlying trauma.
Kim Howard 11:07
Yeah, my Dad was a recovering alcoholic, and I’ve mentioned this multiple times on this podcast before, whenever we’ve been talking about anything remotely related to it, because I don’t, and I’ve I’ll say this again. No one when their child grows up and says, Oh, I think I want to be an addict. Nobody says that, you know. Nobody says, Oh, I think I want to have some kind of compulsion or some kind of, you know, OCD situation. No one really wants that in their life. Unfortunately, it happens to us, and usually it’s in knowing my father’s family history, I can understand, quite frankly, why He used to drink to soothe because his father was horrible. So it’s important that people understand that, so that when they come to somebody, that they know they come from a place of love. And it’s important for people who want to seek therapy to realize that they are really brave for doing what they’re doing, whether they have an addiction or not, what doesn’t matter, why you’re going to therapy, the fact that you have made the appointment, and you go, yes, is quite a big step. And so please give yourself some grace and know that what you’re doing is going to help you down the long run, and it’s a brilliant, brave thing that you’re doing. So thank you for doing that.
Gerard Ilaria 12:16
Yeah, you know the reason I think that people need to arm themselves with all the resourcing tools and techniques that they can have when working with this population. Is the client may even come in. And, you know, I’m, I’m thinking of a client right now who came in after having been in 12 step for years, having done a number of individual therapies, and said, look, the thing I’ve never processed is, you know, my rape at 18, and I we’ve got to do that work, because we, I’ve talked about it, but, you know, this EMDR thing I hear, I, you know, I think we can really get somewhere with it. And I’m like, Sure. And I’m thinking, well, he’s plugged in. He’s got some years of sobriety. You know, I don’t want to say that I jumped the gun, but I, but somebody should say I did jump the gun. You know, I mean, what I found out afterwards, because he, he was so insistent on wanting to go to this root trauma memory was we did it, and it seemed to be effective. It also was wildly dysregulating for him. And what I didn’t appreciate was that we were going into a three day weekend, which for people who use substances or get themselves in trouble, you know, it’s always a big red flag. I should have thought about that. And then, you know, I heard from him, he kind of didn’t come in, but then didn’t tell me why. And then eventually he did. And you know, he ended up in the emergency room. I mean, it was a bad relapse. But what I what I knew later, was that when I asked him the history, he also because he wanted to please me and wanted to look like a good, shining patient, he was like an exec at a, you know, at a big firm. He didn’t tell me that he was involved in all this compulsive behavior that was going to take him out. I didn’t have an appreciation for that. So, you know, the history taking, giving them a ton of tools and gently, gently, you know, I mean, it’s EMDR is amazing with this population. And, you know, just try to do no harm, right?
Kim Howard 14:18
Exactly. Gerard, what successes have you seen using EMDR therapy for this population?
Gerard Ilaria 14:23
Yeah, I mean, so many successes right from, from the most you know, like least kind of aggressive, you know, behaviors. I mean, somebody a therapist who just was using beard tugging, for example, and he was tired of that, and would notice it in Zooms when he was talking to his patients, and we did some resourcing with a mash up that I talked about in my in my talk at EMDR, that I call Buzzkill, where we essentially desensitized him from this behavior of beard pulling, which made him feel. Calm he thought in his mind, and then sort of unpaired that, and then repaired it with breathing, which actually really physiologically, you know, makes you feel calm, and then sort of resourced that, and got him there. And, you know, he hasn’t been beard, you know, he hasn’t beard tugged, for example, not that that’s not a big problem for people, but I’m just saying on that, on that end, all the way to people who, you know, have crystal meth and sex addictions, which are inextricably linked. And having done EMDR at various points in their journey with, you know, additional 12 step help with additional other types of work really made inroads, you know, for prolonged sobriety. So EMDR is great for this population. I think that some people get scared, or they refer out a lot. But I think that again, if you can do the resourcing, if you sort of know where your client is, if you’re maintaining a non judgmental and open rapport with them, where they really can tell you if they’re feeling itchy or they’re feeling cravings, you can steer the ship safely with them.
Kim Howard 16:13
So for the non therapists who might be listening to the podcast, can you please briefly explain what resourcing is?
Gerard Ilaria 16:20
Oh, yeah, sure. I mean, resourcing is really helping somebody’s nervous system in such a way where they can stay within their window of tolerance and not get super activated and then have to self soothe by using either a behavior or the substance. So for example, in for those of us who train an EMDR, Francine Shapiro would always have people know safe or calm place, and that’d be something that we would teach somebody early where with alternating bilateral stimulation, either eye movements or tapping, the person would either install or, let’s say, resource, or reinforce the idea of engaging parasympathetic in your body, where you’re calming down while thinking about a place that’s very safe and calm for you. That’s an example of a resource. But there’s so many other types of ways that we can help folks with resourcing, and that can look like a lot of different things. And I think you can always make them stronger by adding alternating bilateral stimulation as they consider doing it, plan to do it, rehearse doing it imaginably. But yeah, there’s a there’s a bunch of sort of figures or inner wisdom or adult self or other things that you can privilege, if you will, through tapping or through eye movement. But you know, you can also just help people. It’s all about having them be able to tolerate whatever is going to happen, whether you’re going to do reprocessing, which might make you very nervous or make you cry or make you want to run out of the room, or, you know, even as people leave the office after you’ve done some heavy duty work, getting them back in their bodies, their feet under them again, and feeling comfortable in their own bodies. That’s, that’s a, I guess, a long description of resourcing. And I kind of dashed around, but I was trying to give some examples.
Kim Howard 18:17
Yeah, no, that’s a great explanation. And it made me think of when I had both of my children. Our son is 27 and our daughter’s 24… We took a back in the day, it was Lamaze class. I don’t know if they still do that, or they call it something different now, but one of the things they talked about when you’re in the birth room is to bring an image with you that helps you, that’s a fun space, that helps you stay calm. And we had a sunset image. And then they also, obviously, they also teach you breathing techniques. For me personally, through I found that the breathing techniques work, worked much better than the sunrise sunset image, but we had, but it made me think of that when you said that, I’m like, Oh, we’ve done a little bit of that. So that concept bleeds over into things that are beyond therapy, you know, because this is just a birthing class, not just but, you know, so that’s good to know that things like that help people outside of the therapy room in terms of managing their bodies. So absolutely,
Gerard Ilaria 19:06
I think if you look on Instagram and you’re in the algorithms that I’m in right now, which are largely self help or trauma or whatever, increasingly you will see young people who are teaching butterfly hog, or are teaching ways of thinking about imaginable, like you said the sunset through either tapping or breathing or something. And that’s broadening to the general population, because everybody wants to be emotionally regulated nowadays, especially but in general, people really do. And if you can offer this to a person that you may not even do EMDR with, if that they don’t need it or it’s not indicated, at least offering them that type of resourcing, I think is really helpful.
Kim Howard 19:49
Yeah, thank you. Are there any myths that you would like to best about working with EMDR therapy and those with addictions or compulsions?
Gerard Ilaria 19:56
Yeah, I think early on, people and there’s been. Lot of great work done by people who are more famous than me in addiction and EMDR. But early on, the concern was that either it was an either or like you treat the addiction first and only when they’re fully sober, you would do the EMDR or something like that. And you know, if that was, if that were the case, you’d sort of never get to do any EMDR is the issue. So it really is. I think the big myth is you can do both at the same time. People don’t have to be completely sober. Of course, there are the regular guidelines of, don’t come to the session high or make sure they’re not using cannabis or an opiate or something rather, within 24 hours. But that aside, if people are sort of slipping and sliding with either behaviors or with substances that are, you know, that they’re trying to not do anymore, you can definitely do EMDR or parts of EMDR at different at different times. And then as they really are stable, as they have their full armamentarium of resources, so that you’re not as worried or worried as I should have been. They’re not in the position that my patient was when I just went right in on that root cause. You know, after only knowing him for two weeks and sent him out, they really are resource. They really do have. You know that they and you prepare them, you know, you say EMDR is a power tool. I mean, this is going to be, we’re going to be moving some stuff around, and you’re going to have some experiences later. How can we plan for that? You know, if you become dysregulated tomorrow or at midnight, you know, is there a meeting you could click on to? Is there a sponsor you can call? Is there something you can do? I think if you prepare people well enough, you can definitely and they feel great relief for the same reason you dreamed are with anybody else. You want to get a W on the board. You want to give them a win so they really can feel a shift and a change in their body that something that’s been plaguing them all these years is finally, you know, behind them, or they have a different perspective on it. So, yeah, I think you that’s the myth is that you can’t do it if somebody is using, but you really can. You just have to be skillful and sort of listening and hopefully have an honest rapport with the client about what they’re feeling or how close they might be to relapse.
Kim Howard 22:17
Yeah, we’ve done a couple of podcasts about addictions, and and I will link those in the description. And I remember distinctly when I interviewed Julie Miller, she talked about, you know, back in the day, there used to be like, Oh, the client has to be sober for nine months or six months, or whatever she says. But most of the time, if somebody has a an addiction, it’s because they’ve had some other trauma, and they’re trying to deal with the trauma through the addiction. So you can’t treat the addiction until you treat the trauma. And, yeah, you’re right. You don’t want, do you want? You don’t want anybody high or drunk in your in your session. But you can’t wait until they’re quote, unquote sober, you know? I mean, if there’s anything, it was anything like my Dad’s experience. You know the difference between dry and sober? You know, you’re dry for the first couple of months, few months, whatever. And you don’t get to a sober level until you no longer crave whatever you were doing that was harmful to you, and that you live your life in a different way. And so there’s a transition period that I don’t think generally people understand unless they’ve loved someone who was like that, or work with people who who have addictions. And so they need to be aware that they had to wait to treat my dad till he was sober. It would have been six or eight months, maybe a year down the road, you know. And in the meantime, he’s got all these other issues to deal with. So thank you for clarifying that. I appreciate that.
Gerard Ilaria 23:28
Oh yeah, of course.
Kim Howard 23:29
What advice do you have for EMDR therapist listening on how they can implement enhanced resourcing for the clients?
Gerard Ilaria 23:36
Well, first, they should buy the 2024 EMDR package [2024 Virtual Conference Session] so that they can go watch my talk.
Kim Howard 23:43
Yes, that’s true!
Gerard Ilaria 23:46
That there’s a lot, there’s 80 or 80 minutes or more of material in there, but I guess you know my advice would be to really start making a list with your clients early on of things that are adaptive behaviors for them, that they may have used in the past, or that they might occasionally use and really resource those behaviors. So for example, you know clients when you meet them, might really be in a bad place, but maybe they used to live in the country and went for walks outside a lot, or maybe they used to play the drums or the guitar, or maybe they used to journal, or maybe they used to do any of that. If you can find out what those strengths or those adaptive behaviors are, and sort of seed them with the idea that this is sort of where we’re going, almost like a positive cognition seeds, you know, the idea of, like, you know, this is sort of where we’re going to go in an EMDR session, letting them reminding their nervous system, both the patient’s prefrontal cortex as well their nervous system, that they have things or experiences in their life, actually, that can calm them down and can help them through a period of time where they may become dysregulated and be tempted to use so i. Would you know, in addition to the more classic resourcing, I think you can just have them tell you stories about, like, the best times of their lives, and what those were, and are any of those within reach right now? And are they practicing any of those between, you know, behaviors between sessions, and just have them think about those with maybe a positive thought or affirmation of like, I can do this, or I can get through this and turn on the tappers, you know, and let them have an imaginal experience of sort of paving the way for that behavior, rather than the addictive or compulsive behavior.
Kim Howard 25:39
Good answer. Thank you. What would you like people outside of the EMDR community to know about EMDR therapy with this population? Yeah.
Gerard Ilaria 25:47
I mean, look, I would love for EMDR to be part of every inpatient rehab, part of every detox center, maybe even in emergency rooms, you know, if somebody’s being held for 36 hours. I mean, if we had at least one EMDR clinic trained clinician, or if we even developed a protocol that was maybe not full training, but even just resourcing for folks that weren’t you know, for case acts or somebody else, that would be amazing, because I think you’d have an opportunity when people are feeling especially raw and vulnerable, to start to get familiar with this therapy so that they could then later on, do the, you know, do the work when they get out of the inpatient unit or somewhere else. So I guess I just would like EMDR to be more synonymous with the treatment of addictions and compulsions, when people think about it, I don’t know why, but certain therapies, whether it’s and these are all great therapies, whether it’s motivational interviewing or act or something like that, are more typically, I think, thought of when you come when you’re thinking about or CBT, when you’re thinking about substance use treatment. But look, if the person’s in trauma, which we think they are, because we think that when you look at the ACES score, or the ACEs study, and you see the correlation between more adverse childhood experiences lead to high predictability of substance use. So then who is coming into substance use treatment people who have a lot of childhood trauma. So if we’re not addressing that, and not addressing it somatically, but just saying to the person, don’t do that, or don’t you realize the consequence if you do that, or where are you on this? It’s all working with the front of the brain, which is fine, but if they are dysregulated, if they are freaking out, if they’re in dorsal shutdown, you know, wherever they might be in their nervous system, a lot of that’s just blah, blah, blah, and it goes in one ear and out the other, as opposed to engaging them in a somatic proven, you know, APA, World Health Organization, top tier trauma treatment, which is what I think you need to think about when you’re treating substance use.
Kim Howard 28:06
Absolutely. How do you practice cultural humility as an EMDR therapist?
Gerard Ilaria 28:10
Gosh, I think I hopefully am practicing cultural humility every time I see a patient, because I don’t know what their story is, and I don’t know where they’re coming from. I mean, I’ve made some of the biggest mistakes, probably with cultural humility, with in my own culture, meaning I might, as a gay man, let’s say, enter into a therapy with another gay man, and make a lot of assumptions about, oh, his gay coming up, if you will, is the same as mine, only to find out that no, in fact, it’s the complete opposite, or things that I think are typical or so. I just try to leave all of my thoughts, you know, at the door, other than more clinical assessment kind of insights, but the rest of it based on what somebody either looks like or where they’re from, or what their accent might be, or even their gender presentation, I just am curious Margaret Mead style, and just am asking questions in a respectful way to better understand it and just be that. You know that up front? I mean, obviously when there are big differences, I always acknowledge it right up front, like, look, you know you’re that. You Are you, are you and I am me. And I think anyone can tell that we’re sort of different. But please, I want to be respectful. Can I ask you, you know, X, Y, Z, and whenever I approach anything like that, they usually thank me. They usually say, well, thanks for that, even if what I’ve said is an elegant or I’m struggling a little bit they appreciate the fact that I’m not walking in in a very egocentric way. Yeah,
Kim Howard 29:49
no, I think the acknowledging that is not a bad thing in therapy room. So thank you for reminding everybody of that. Gerard, do you have a favorite free EMDR related resource? You would suggest either for the public or other EMDR therapists?
Gerard Ilaria 30:05
I would say that, yes. I mean, if people write to me at Gerard at bilateral health.com I will send them a script for Buzzkill, which is one of the innovations that I talked about in my recent talk in EMDR, and I love that, because people, we had hundreds of people that saw that. I got 80 people wrote me asking for the script. I sent it out, and now I’m in communication with everybody back and forth, like, how’s it working? What do you use it for? So I have a lot of fun with that particular resourcing technique, and it’s free. I just just email me and I’ll write you back and send it to you.
Kim Howard 30:46
That’s great. I will also include that email in the link in the podcast description. So if anybody’s driving, we don’t want you writing that down while you’re driving. Pay attention to the road. We’re good. If you weren’t an EMDR therapist, what would you
Gerard Ilaria 30:58
be? Oh, Kim, I guess I’d be a not as good therapist. I’d be a therapist using, you know, probably the same old techniques for things that, you know, I can’t really imagine it. I didn’t know how much I was a trauma therapist until I sort of learned more about trauma, and then when I realized that everything I’ve ever done or sort of experienced in a way, and I’m not, I’m quite lucky in many ways, but I have had some things that have happened that have shaped me. I just think that when I found EMDR, you know, I was home. I mean, I use and I learned many things that I’ve learned along the way, but when I talk to folks who are our therapists and don’t have it, I always men like, you know, not an evangelist, but I’m really saying, Come on, let’s, let’s get you in here. So, so I think I’d still be a therapist. I’d still be helping people. That’s what I that’s my graduate degree is in. But I don’t think I would be helping probably as effectively, or being as impactful and also not having as much fun as I have.
Kim Howard 32:05
That’s a great answer. Thank you. Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Gerard Ilaria 32:09
Kim, I think I just want listeners to know that, first of all, working with addictions and compulsions is a lot is can be great fun. And also there’s and I was trying to with the beard tagging example before, trying to say that there’s a lot of people who don’t present as being addicts or having big time compulsive behaviors that kind of do like I think we all know people who post COVID started drinking a little bit too much, And suddenly they wake up and they’re realizing that one glass of wine that dinner has become two or two and a half so in most people’s caseloads, I think there’s an opportunity to use some of these techniques and methods to really get people out of behaviors that are not serving them. So I would just think about things more broadly, and also to be curious about all the ways that people self soothe. I mean, if you do a good history that includes a sexual history that that men use for them all the how is your shopping? Do you ever shop more than you think you should? How about gambling? How you know all the process behaviors that people forget, because we might just do, you know, a genogram and a family history and, you know, drug and alcohol history, but kind of forget that, you know, little kids before they can get drunk, spin around until they’re dizzy and fall over, you know, I mean, people figure out how to dissociate early on in a variety of ways, and I found that I just run through all the lists, and sometimes they’re really surprised, you know, oh yeah, I did have a shoplifting problem once, and I’m like, Oh well, that kind of has given me some information. And what was that about? You know, thrill seeking behaviors, for example. So there really are a lot of places to intervene that go outside of what people typically think of as a substance using or alcoholic. Kind of patient, you have probably clients that have behaviors that they’d like to mitigate, reduce or get rid of. And there’s a lot of opportunity there. So it’s fun.
Kim Howard 34:18
That’s a great way to end the podcast. Thank you, Gerard.
Gerard Ilaria 34:20
Thank you.
Kim Howard 34:21
This has been the Let’s Talk EMDR podcast with our guest, Gerard Ilaria. 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.
Date
February 1, 2025
Guest(s)
Gerard Ilaria
Producer/Host
Kim Howard
Series
4
Episode
3
Topics
Addictions
Practice & Methods
Resourcing
Extent
34 minutes
Publisher
EMDR International Association™
Rights
Copyright © 2025 EMDR International Association™
APA Citation
Howard, K. (Host). (2025, February 1). The Role of Advanced Resourcing for Addictions & Compulsions in EMDR Therapy with Gerard Ilaria, LCSW (Season 4, No. 3) [Audio podcast episode]. In Let’s Talk EMDR Podcast. EMDR International Association™. https://www.emdria.org/letstalkemdrpodcast/
Audience
EMDR Therapists, General/Public, Other Mental Health Professionals
Language
English
Content Type
Podcast
Original Source
Let's Talk EMDR podcast
Access Type
Open Access