Course Description

Our Step Three: Discovery & Beyond 2-Day Advanced Live Experiential Workshop, is a 13 hour live advanced IFS-Informed EMDR course for psychologists, social workers, mental health counselors, and marriage & family therapists who treat individuals with a trauma history and have taken Syzygy Institute's Step Two (IFS-Informed EMDR 2-Day Experiential Workshop). Fidelity to both methods is maintained as course material is developed from standard EMDR (Shapiro, 2018) & IFS (Schwartz & Sweezy, 2020; Anderson, 2021; Anderson et al., 2017) background texts with supplemental references, and each workshop is led by an instructor who has completed IFS training and certification by the IFS Institute and has completed 6 or more hours of Coherence Therapy workshop training. Learn the details via PowerPoint slide lecture, Q & A discussion, and case examples. Observe the process being set up and carried through into healing with live volunteer demonstrations, and guided practice in the roles of client and therapist.

Internal Family Systems therapy (IFS) is an evidence based (Hodgdon et al., 2022) ego state therapy which offers unique qualities that match key components of the EMDR’s foundational Adaptive Information Processing (AIP) model. IFS methods have been utilized in the context of EMDR therapy to enhance therapist-client communication about their internal experience and troubleshoot processing difficulties (O’Shea Brown, 2020; Gomez & Krause, 2013; Twombly & Schwartz, 2008).

Both IFS and EMDR have been described as experiential psychotherapies which can facilitate a form of neuroplasticity called memory reconsolidation, which uniquely unlocks and rewrites implicit memories that underlie many of the symptoms treated with these methodologies (Ecker et al., 2012). Concepts and language from Coherence Therapy support and clarify key IFS concepts around exploring positive (adaptive) intentions behind symptoms with curiosity, compassion & persistence (i.e., Self-presence), and healing sequence (Anderson, 2021) while also mirroring the requisite dual attention condition for EMDR processing. These additional conceptual tools enable the IFS-informed EMDR therapist to more consistently generate juxtapositions (a critical condition required for memory reconsolidation), beginning in the Assessment Phase of EMDR and continuing through the subsequent phases of the EMDR Standard Protocol (Ecker & Bridges, 2020; Ecker et al, 2012).

In this course, we dive deeper in exploring the Discovery process outlined in previous IFS-Informed EMDR workshops and move all the way through healing (desensitization/reprocessing, retrieval, unburdening). It combines strategies and perspectives from Coherence Therapy derived from memory reconsolidation research, IFS, and EMDR in a gentle, organically unfolding way (Anderson, 2021; Ecker et al, 2012). It begins with the recognition that parts involved in the target network may be organized differently (Watkins & Watkins, 1997), with protectors organized by urges more so than affect (Knipe, 2019; Popky, 2005), paving the way for limited and safer indirect trauma processing (Knipe, 2019; van der Hart et al., 2014).

The Discovery process works like a centrifuge. A burdened & blended internal system led by a protector is a solution, both in the sense of solving a problem and in that it is like a mixture containing dissolved components. A centrifuge unblends the solution into its separate components. In a blended internal system, these components are the Self, a protector, and an exile. Bilateral stimulation and attuned, informed curiosity, along with opportunistic and spontaneous Self-resourcing results in increasingly clearer differentiation of these components (Seubert, 2018; Twombly & Schwartz, 2008) until a critical mass of Self-energy flips the system from protection to healing (Anderson, 2021; Knipe,2019; Ecker et al, 2012). At this point, functional dual attention is obtained and sustainable, leading to rapid and powerful healing processes commonly observed in the most successful and effective EMDR or IFS sessions; desensitization/reprocessing, retrieval, unburdening, etc. (Schwartz & Sweezy, 2020; Anderson, 2021; Shapiro, 2018).

Discovery is a term taken from Coherence Therapy (Ecker & Bridges, 2020; Ecker et al, 2012). It means uncovering the emotional truth behind a symptom derived from implicit memory. It will make sense given the original context. Implicit memories are unconscious and reflexive, and they are at the heart of most of the symptomatic behavior and reactions we see in our clinical practices (Ecker & Bridges, 2020; Ecker et al, 2012). Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy guides us to understand that in healing work, we are almost certainly going to encounter protectors. These parts are responsible for what might otherwise be seen as resistance, acting out, etc., but they always have underlying positive intentions. They are embedded within an entire protective system of parts. (Schwartz & Sweezy, 2020; Anderson, 2021; Anderson et al., 2017). When we select a trauma target in EMDR, we necessarily activate this protective system, which can very often be complex and vigorous (Paulsen, 2018; van der Hart et al., 2014). Often, pushing forward with processing our selected target paradoxically induces resistance (Twombly & Schwartz, 2008). But backing up and doing intensive resourcing delays productive processing, sometimes indefinitely. This is the dilemma EMDR therapists routinely face (Paulsen, 2018; Shapiro, 2018; van der Hart et al., 2014).

Ideas from Coherence Therapy and IFS intersect at one point in the EMDR process, on the verge of the Assessment Phase. It is here that we can utilize sets of alternating bilateral stimulation in a new way to process protectors (Knipe, 2019; Seubert, 2018; Twombly & Schwartz, 2008; Popky, 2005). A way that is in-between resource installation and desensitization and has advantages of both. The Discovery process is a bridge from the Preparation Phase of EMDR to the Assessment Phase and beyond. It will clarify the protector's positive intention, uncover the original problems the symptom is designed to solve, and stimulate emerging Self-presence (Ecker & Bridges, 2020; Ecker et al, 2012). All this clears the way for a conventional Assessment Phase and Desensitization with Functional Dual Attention. This culminates at the point where continued bilateral stimulation and attuned, informed curiosity, along with opportunistic and spontaneous Self-resourcing results in increasingly clearer differentiation of these components until a critical mass of Self-energy flips the system from protection & defense to healing, as described above.