#64: A Guide to EMDR Therapy with Dr Gurpreet Kaur

Ever wondered how EMDR works or whether it could help you or someone you support?

This week I'm joined by Dr Gurpeet Kaur, a Clinical Psychologist and EMDR practitioner. We have an honest, myth-busting conversation about everything EMDR. 

We break down the science and explain how this therapy gets right to the root of problems, not just trauma or PTSD, but anxiety, shame, and those stuck feelings so many of us carry. We pull back the curtain on what an EMDR session actually looks like, breaking down the eight-phase protocol and introducing the innovative world of EMDR intensives - targeted, short-term therapy designed for lasting impact.

Highlights include:
05:30 Science of EMDR
08:45 Addressing misconceptions
12:10 Bilateral stimulation explained
18:35 Traditional phased approach
22:50 Exploring EMDR intensives

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Head over to Hello Therapy's Substack for an exclusive extra video episode. WATCH NOW!

This week's guest:
Dr Gurpreet Kaur is a Clinical Psychologist and EMDR practitioner who specialises in treating trauma and helping people overcome their imposter syndrome to live life fully without being held back by anxiety or self doubt.  She shares mental health and therapy information on several social media platforms including TikTok, Instagram and LinkedIn and has contributed to several media articles. As well as 1:1 therapy Dr Kaur also runs a group for women who want to overcome their imposter syndrome and has a free resource on her website for anyone who wants to take the first step to resetting their imposter cycle. 

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The Hello Therapy podcast and the information provided by Dr Liz White (DClinPsy, CPsychol, AFBPsS, CSci, HCPC reg.), is solely intended for informational and educational purposes and does not constitute personalised advice. Please reach out to your GP or a mental health professional if you need support. 

Transcript

Dr Liz White 0:02

If you're looking to improve your mental health and well-being, then keep listening. I'm Dr Liz White, a consultant clinical psychologist with over 20 years of experience. Whether you're a frazzled parent, a stressed out professional or finding your way through the challenges of midlife, you're in the right place. Through a mix of solo episodes and insightful conversations with expert psychologists and therapists, I'm bringing you evidence-based tools and strategies to help you navigate life's ups and downs with confidence, clarity and compassion. With confidence, clarity and compassion this is your space to feel seen, supported and empowered. Welcome to Hello Therapy. What makes EMDR different from traditional talking therapy and could it be the game changer you've been looking for?

Dr Liz White 1:12

This week, I am talking to returning guest Dr Kapreet Kaur, a clinical psychologist and EMDR practitioner, and we're delving into the world of eye movement, desensitization and reprocessing, better known as EMDR. Kapreet unpacks the science, the practicalities and the misconceptions surrounding EMDR, including its unique focus on processing stuck memories using bilateral stimulation, and how it can help a range of difficulties, not just trauma or PTSD. You'll hear first-hand insights on the traditional phased approach of EMDR and what that looks like, as well as an exciting look at a new approach to practicing EMDR, which are EMDR intensives and they offer more targeted work in a shorter time frame. So whether you're new to EMDR or considering it for your own healing, or you're just curious about how therapy continues to evolve, then keep listening. And if you want more, over on Substack we have an exclusive mini episode where we get a little bit more personal, and the link is in the show notes, so let's dive in. So, gurpreet, thank you so much for joining me again on the Hello Therapy podcast. This is your second time, isn't it?

Dr Gurpreet Kaur 2:29

Yeah, thanks for having me back.

Dr Liz White 2:31

Yeah, you're welcome. Today we're talking about EMDR, but before we get into that, do you want to tell our listeners who you are and what you do?

Dr Gurpreet Kaur 2:40

Yeah, so my name is Gurpreet Kaur, I'm a clinical psychologist and an EMDR practitioner, and I work online. What exactly is it and how is it different?

Dr Liz White 3:08

from the sort of traditional talking therapy that we all hear about.

Dr Gurpreet Kaur 3:13

It's a kind of a big question. I suppose let's just define what it is, because that's a lot of letters it's. It stands for eye movement, desensitization and reprocessing, and it's a bit mouthy, and I think even the founder of it really came back to that term later and thought, you know, maybe it should just be called something simpler, like reprocessing therapy. So what it basically means it's trying to find the way. I see it is like it's trying to get to the root of the problem whatever the problem is for people, and trying to process it so that it doesn't show up in the same way and cause them a problem in the same way. So it's based on this whole idea of this adaptive information processing model. So I don't know if you heard of, you might have heard of that or not. So that basically means, essentially our brains do what they need to do, they're really healthy, they want us to be healthy, they want us to be well, and so they're going to take in information, they're going to encode information, process the information and store information away in our brains, and so that's a really normal, healthy way of just living and we feel OK with that. So if I want to recall a memory, like when I eat mint ice cream, for example. I can recall when I used to be a kid and stand outside the ice cream van waiting for my Cornetto. I can recall when I used to be a kid and stand outside the ice cream van waiting for my Cornetto. I can recall other times, and I can recall the most recent time, like when I ate Viennetta at my parents'. So that's about those memories being stored in a really healthy adaptive memory network, and so that's the adaptive information processing model.

The Science of EMDR

Dr Gurpreet Kaur 4:38

Problem is, when we get a difficult experience in life, when we get like a traumatic experience or really painful experience, those memories do not get encoded in the same way Because the amygdala kicks off the threat system in our brain and then that prefrontal cortex, it just can't do the job in the same way and so those get kind of chucked into our brain but they're not encoded in the healthy way. They're kind of just stored in that state-specific experience. So if we experience stress in the moment, those memories are going to be connected to that stress. Right, and every time we think of those memories they're going to create that same stress. So, emdr, the aim of it is to use something we call it's called bilateral stimulation. We can talk about that in a minute. But we want to get those really difficult memories, those maladaptive memories, and take them along and process them so that they get stored in the adaptive memory network essentially and it's a lot of words, isn't it?

Dr Gurpreet Kaur 5:32

but yeah, yeah, that's the basic model of it and you know, as I just said, the kind of it's based on the basic cornerstone. I suppose that makes it really different to whether talking therapy is. It's based on bilateral stimulation. So all that means is we want to activate the left and right side of the brain, so, through the kind of the middle part of our body, we've got to create some kind of movement, and that's where the eye movement comes in. So it was developed originally to move the eyes whilst we're thinking about a traumatic experience, and the theory behind that is it helps to process the memory.

Dr Gurpreet Kaur 6:07

There's something in the bilateral stimulation that helps that memory to get processed, similar to, like, you know, when we're sleeping and you see people's eyes like flickering around. Rem is similar to that. I mean, that's one theory of it. Okay, essentially, it's kind of taking the weight off the the working memory when it thinks about that difficult experience. It gives it something neutral to do. At the same time, it allows that process to happen, where it gets stored along into more of an adaptive way. And yeah, some people are a bit dubious about eye movements, like does it always have to be eye movements? Yeah, it doesn't have to be, that's the one I prefer. But some people, for example, like I've got a client anytime she moves her eyes a lot, she gets headaches. So she will be doing something like tapping or do some auditory processing instead.

Dr Liz White 6:53

So it's yeah, it's a really interesting yeah therapy, and what is the mechanism there in terms of the bilateral movement or the tapping? I'm curious about what the process is in terms of how that helps process the memory.

Dr Gurpreet Kaur 7:11

So I think one of the criticisms and one of the major criticisms of EMDR is that no one knows no one actually knows how it works or what the process is behind that.

Dr Gurpreet Kaur 7:23

So that's the difficulty, but we do have a lot of evidence and it's growing saying it does work.

Dr Gurpreet Kaur 7:28

I mean so if we think about how it originated, if it's in 1987 and the founder, francine shapiro she had like a bit of a stressful day or whatever. She went to the park she just is known as the walk in the park and she was thinking about this difficult thing and she noticed that when she finished her walk she felt better. And she was thinking about this difficult thing and she noticed that when she finished her walk she felt better. And she was curious as a psychologist, like how did I feel better? And she noticed that she was moving her eyes a lot. And then she went and tried it with colleagues, tried it with friends, they did a little case study and then it developed into this thing where they noticed that if you move your eyes whilst thinking about this distressing thing, it actually lowers your distress Okay, which is really really interesting. So it's just been based and kind of developed from there really and it's growing in terms of popularity and evidence base.

Dr Liz White 8:12

So tell me what problems can EMDR help, Because obviously it started out as a treatment for PTSD and trauma didn't it?

Addressing Misconceptions

Dr Gurpreet Kaur 8:21

Yeah, it's still known predominantly for that. So people think EMDR, they think severe trauma and PTSD, and that's probably because of all the evidence based on where it sits and you know what's been researched. But actually what we're finding on the ground basis, you know as we're doing the work, is that actually I'd say it's less diagnostic specific and it's more case presentation specific. So, for example, it can help with it, definitely help with anxieties, fears, phobias, can work with some level of dissociation and numbing, not too much, definitely with some addiction kind of problems. But it can also work on those big feelings like shame, guilt, anger. So I would say it's more about the stuckness that the person is experiencing and the core issue related to that and trying to kind of process that. So let me just be a bit clearer with that. So when I think of EMDR I think of it as like a thread. So whatever the client is presenting with, so they might present with, you know, anxiety or depression, or you know whatever sadness, whatever it is that's coming up, or grief, and I suppose we can work in a very CBT way around that and there's lots of tools to help process that and other talking therapies will work in more of a kind of a top-down way where we'll go with the thought challenging. We'll try to get more analytical and logical about things. Emdr basically is like a thread.

Dr Gurpreet Kaur 9:51

So what we're trying to do is we're trying to get that core experience. We're trying to understand what's that real physiological response that you get when you think about this core experience. So I have a pain in my chest, I kind of breathe, I feel overwhelmed. And then we can find other experiences that person has had in their life that have connected to that similar physiological experience, because the trauma is held in the body, not the mind, so we can't talk our way out of this. And then what we do is we find those experiences and we process those. So it might be related to a specific experience, it might be related to specific beliefs connected to that experience, and so in that way it can actually be quite quick when we're doing the work so how does it work in terms of I know that there's there's a protocol, isn't it?

Dr Liz White 10:37

eight phase yeah, eight phase. Eight phases and is it that you spend all of that time talking about traumatic memories, or I'm guessing? Not. I'm guessing there's a bit of preparatory work.

Dr Gurpreet Kaur 10:48

Yeah yeah, and that's again that's. That's kind of something quite unique about it. There's definitely these eight phases that you need to go through. It's very similar to to other work that we do. So when we meet clients, we assess them, we establish their goals. We might do a little time lining and it's similar in that way, um, but then the whole point I suppose with the time lining, if that's the way we go is we want to try to identify those core targets. So which ones are the core experiences that we had that are related to your current problem?

Dr Gurpreet Kaur 11:17

So we do like a past, present, future thing and that's called a case conceptualization, where we want to get the present difficulties figure out. Actually, what's it blocking you from doing in the future, or what you hope to do in the future? And we want to identify well in the past what's connected to this. And then we go in through the first experience you've had that was maybe connected to this. So I was bullied at school and that's why I struggle to speak up now and be assertive or the worst experience or the most recent. So actually I was bullied at work and so I'm really struggling to go for that next job interview.

Bilateral Stimulation Explained

Dr Gurpreet Kaur 11:54

So there's different ways to kind of pinpoint it, and I suppose we map all of that out in the first few sessions and then we identify and we agree together, collaboratively really, with the client. You know where do you want to start. Some people are more up for kind of getting stuck in. Other people are a bit more oh not sure about this. So we just start off a bit more gently with with some of the targets that are maybe a little less stressful, just to build up their confidence with her and so when you say the target, you mean the memory, or whatever it is so somebody could start with a difficult memory from the past yeah, or from the present, yeah, or you know that's happened recently, yeah.

Dr Liz White 12:35

If they start with one something that happened in the past, it's maybe like one of the big ones as it were, and one of the thing that that sort of set everything else off. Do you then need to do the the more recent stuff, or?

Dr Gurpreet Kaur 12:47

we don't know. I mean, yeah, it depends, and a lot of people will. You know, emdr experts will say that actually once you deal with the biggest one, the rest just trickles through, and so, again, it's a case-by-case basis, but they do emphasize that kind of first, worst, most recent, and yeah, we just see, we talk it through and I guess we think of it like I was taught. I was taught this by Sandy Richmond for people who know she told us to think about it like a hand like this is the main issue. So this is the anxiety and these are the channels it can go down.

Dr Gurpreet Kaur 13:20

So the fingers are the channels and these are the channels it can go down. So the fingers are the channels and so what we want to do. So the main issue is anxiety and able to, I don't know, do that big presentation, and then we want to figure out the channel. The channel might be doing a presentation of being left at school and we want to process that memory until we can think of that memory and it doesn't create any distress. So we want to get those sud subs, those subjective units of distress, from however high they are, to really really really low, like zero one.

Dr Gurpreet Kaur 13:48

But we might find that memory is connected to other things. We might find it's connected to like being a little bit told off quite a lot as a child or you know other things. So we go down those channels as well if we want to and if we think they's still cause of distress. So some clients might come and do a lot of work around the main issue but they might not feel quite ready to go down certain channels and then they might come back and do that as well or they might just leave it there yeah, okay, and something that you are now uh specializing in or talking about a lot is emdr.

Dr Liz White 14:25

Are now uh specializing in or talking about a lot is emdr intensives. So there's. So what we've been talking about so far is the traditional emdr protocol. Right, talk to me about emdr intensives. What are they.

Dr Gurpreet Kaur 14:34

I love emdr intensives because I think it challenges the way we are told we need to do therapy and challenges the way we think we need to heal, if that makes sense. I think there's a lot of emphasis now on trauma. Mental health. Awareness has gone through the roof and a lot of people, I think, understand that we need to do the deep work we need to understand ourselves, which is absolutely brilliant. But I think the way we're told we need to do it in terms of traditional therapy can lean a little bit more towards. It has to be long term. It's going to take quite a while. The more kind of deeper the trauma, the longer the healing and all of that, and I'm not disputing any of that. But the reason I like intensives is because it offers another perspective which actually can shift things forward quite differently for people, especially if they're really ready and willing to go and jump in and do a little bit of that work. And intensives are very different. They're quite a new thing. I would say. Well, in some regards they're a new thing.

Dr Gurpreet Kaur 15:36

I don't know. I don't know where they kind of started, or weekly therapy started from, but I think of Freud. I don't think he was seeing people for one hour once a week. You know I think he was doing quite intense work, but somewhere along the line it's got changed to us having to see patients for what? 50 minutes an hour, and I know certainly insurance clients. You know we can't see a client who's funded through insurance in private practice for two hours a day. They will not get funded for that. So but this kind of the system around us, I think, encourages the weekly therapy bit, whereas intensive they just offer a different ownership, I think, of the healing process and I really like that so what is an intensive then?

Dr Liz White 16:16

is it like a few hours a day for a few days, or how does it work?

Dr Gurpreet Kaur 16:19

you know, interestingly enough, because it's a fairly newish thing in the EMDR world. I say newish it's not like new as in this year, but you know, last couple years I think it's definitely been growing. Um, it looks different and there's no one standard definition of what an intensive is and practically I think most clinicians will be doing it slightly differently. So an intensive for me will look like one week, we deep dive and we focus in on whatever the issue is and we meet three times a week. But we will do a little bit of pre-work and we'll do a little bit of post-work if we think, if we, you know, deem that necessary. So I, for example, see people for two and a half hours three times a week, but before we do that I'll expect them to have completed a workbook.

Dr Gurpreet Kaur 17:02

Okay, I will meet them once to go through that and then, if we think it's necessary, we will meet after the intensive as well and maybe do a little bit of the review session. You get other people who do, let's say, day-long intensives, maybe two or three days, or they might do a retreat. There might be horses there and things like that. You know I can't do anything elaborate, but I think the way I do it works. I've seen some good results with that.

Dr Liz White 17:30

That's so interesting and I think I do think it's important for us to to be trying different things, to see what what helps and what suits different people, right?

Dr Gurpreet Kaur 17:39

yeah, well, that's I'm quite I'm. You know I'm a fan of that, I'm a fan of living just just trying to figure out what works for you as well, and I know, as a therapist, I feel like it just gives me an opportunity to get really into it with the clients. I feel like I'm really there.

Traditional Phased Approach

Dr Gurpreet Kaur 17:53

My concern with weekly sessions was absolutely just anybody get into therapy in whatever way you can. I'm not dismissing them, but I do find that the weekly sessions sometimes you've got to warm up a little bit. You do the review and then you've got to cool down a little bit at the end. The actual time for the work 30, 35 minutes, 40 maybe if you're doing 50-minute sessions, whereas an intensive, that's a good amount of time, two and a half hours to be able to really do some deep work. And even though I do seven and a half hours a week, I think with the workbook beforehand, you're talking probably about the equivalent of 20 weekly sessions. Yeah, not in terms of time, but in terms of the therapeutic progress that can be made and the workbook.

Dr Liz White 18:38

What would that look like? Is it sort of to prepare?

Dr Gurpreet Kaur 18:41

the person. Absolutely. It's getting them thinking about all the things we need to think about. So a big part of the protocol and intensive work with any trauma work is stabilization. So I'll get them to be thinking about things that make them feel safe. Their kind of safety plan, um, a little bit about family. There's questionnaires in there. Get them to think about their goals. It's really doing a lot of that assessment work. We would probably take a couple of sessions to do with clients and getting them to do it, and then I review it and then that's why we need to kind of fast forward all of that process and kind of start from there. Interesting, yeah, it's really it's interesting. It's like I said it's.

Dr Liz White 19:17

I'm finding it to be quite effective as well and what's it like for you as the, as the therapist? Because two and a half, is it two and a half hours of intense work. I'm guessing you have a break after that. I have?

Dr Gurpreet Kaur 19:30

oh, absolutely, and I'll always encourage clients, so I'm led by the client. Maybe I should be a bit stricter. But you know what, even though I've given my clients options to take breaks, they rarely do, and not because they want to get the most out of it, it's because they're there in it with me yeah and so you, yeah, you have to prepare, I think, and you have to kind of have your stuff around and your drinks or whatever.

Dr Gurpreet Kaur 19:47

But you, I find, personally I work, I really enjoy that deep work with clients, and so it's just kind of understanding where they're at and reading the cues for them and really, if they need a break, really kind of forcing them to just go and stretch or whatever. But I'd like to do more of this Absolutely Because I just think that, like, like I say, I see change happening quicker because it's just sitting in that deeper space and getting through that stuff.

Dr Liz White 20:15

But it's what you're witnessing and observing isn't it so? That, and that's really important yeah in terms of the, the types of clients that would be suitable for intense versus yeah, versus sort of just the box, standard weekly emdr.

Dr Gurpreet Kaur 20:32

What that would be like I think the emdr full stop it's it's got to be about. Actually, can that client learn to self-soothe? Because I don't want to do trauma processing if that client can't self-soothe and ground. I think that's really really massively important. I think it'd be ideal if that client had a little bit of a support system around them. I think that's quite nice to be able to kind of dip into that.

Dr Gurpreet Kaur 20:54

Um, I wouldn't work with anyone who's really, you know, obviously in a crisis point or particularly triggered or go through a manic episode or, you know, psychotic or anything like that. But I think the more geared up people are towards understanding therapy and understanding that it's going to take effort on their side as well, like I'm not here to do it for you, I'm here to help and support you. But the majority of it is going to be you experiencing it. And then also outside of the sessions and in between our sessions, I'm going to be expecting that client to do grounding work, reflection, journaling, self-soothing, and that's kind of a part of the plan that we develop, so anything that really allows that client to to do those things.

Dr Liz White 21:35

And then if the clients are not quite in that space, then probably an intensive wouldn't be the best thing for them I mean I'm really interested in emdr because I know that a lot of my fellow therapists, psychologists, that I know a lot of them now are trained in.

Dr Liz White 21:51

EMDR and I kind of feel like I'm the only one left that doesn't do EMDR, and it's always been one of those things I'm really curious about, because the work that I do with people who experience PTSD, you know it can be really intense and long-term work, and I guess that's the question that I have in my mind when I'm thinking about some of the clients that I've seen over the years. The relationship, the therapeutic relationship, has been so key in helping that person feel safe enough to process their trauma. And I'm curious about your insights around how that fits into EMDR, but also EMDR intensives, because you've got to be pretty skilled, haven't you, I think, at sort of bringing someone along and engaging someone in the process in such a sort of quick way, I'm guessing.

Dr Gurpreet Kaur 22:47

I think it's massively relational and I think that that was kind of me figuring out that I work that way better. You know my own professional journey. Clients often say, you know, when they see me, I'm not too different. How I am now, it's just, I am as I am. I'm not going to put on the professional mask. But I think that, yeah, it's really important for clients to feel safe. But you know, some clients work differently. Some clients are okay with not having too much of the emotional relational bit, but I tend to work with clients who do like that relational aspect and I feel a lot more comfortable, kind of in that space as well. I don't know if I answered your question, but I do think it comes down to being kind of more relational yeah, and I guess you're.

Dr Liz White 24:06

You're obviously making an assessment, aren't you, of who who is going to suit the more intense work and I'm also thinking like how practical it is. You know, there are some people that don't just don't have the time to invest every week, do they in therapy, but they might have two weeks off or something from work and exactly, yeah, I can now do this now.

Dr Gurpreet Kaur 24:29

So 100, that's. That's one of the massive benefits of it. So I see I see a lot. I tend to work with a lot of medics and healthcare stuff and the only way I can see them is if I give them a link to my diary where they can slot themselves in anywhere if there's space. But that's not ideal because it's not the weekly model, but that's the only way they can work. But this is an alternative to that.

Dr Gurpreet Kaur 24:49

I've actually, if you have a slot between your shifts or if you can get a week off, let's do it this way and it works for, say, it works for parents in the same way when the kids are at school. Actually you can have the day times to focus in on this. Or it works for people who are kind of project managers in between those contracts, veterans who are going to go to deployment. You know, it's kind of a really nice way to just do some deep diving on something that actually has been with you for a while and it's causing a block.

Dr Gurpreet Kaur 25:17

And I don't want to scare anyone here. I don't want people to think, oh my god, it's going to open up all the big stuff, and I don't want to. I think when I mean deep dive, I just I literally do mean therapeutic progress. I don't mean we're going to work with that really traumatic memory and we're going to heal it and we're going to get through it regardless, because that depends on each person but we will make progress and then that person can come back at other times to continue that progress if they want and are you measuring the progress in the sense of the distress that it causes the person around that and around that memory or that experience?

Dr Gurpreet Kaur 25:52

I think I measure it in terms of the phases and where we're at. So what I can guarantee people that we'll do is we will absolutely do resourcing, we will absolutely work on stabilisation, we will absolutely work on those targets. As in identifying those targets and getting a clear story around like why am I feeling like this? So this isn't an intensive I mean, these are the things we can definitely cover I'm hoping we will definitely get on to some processing. That that's essentially the aim of it. But sometimes the story's so big and people need more time, or actually the resourcing is so useful, they need more time and want to have that time to just stay there, because that could be so healing in itself.

Dr Gurpreet Kaur 26:29

Most often, I do get onto processing and we're going to probably process one experience. We're not going to do more than that because we just haven't got the time. Yeah, and then, if we're thinking of that, I do want to get those suds down. You know, if we get them to zero one, that's ideal, but I definitely want to get them down. And what would you say are some of?

Dr Liz White 26:56

the big misconceptions about emdr that you hear about and you want to.

Dr Gurpreet Kaur 27:03

You want to squash I'm gonna ask you actually, what have you heard about there have?

Dr Liz White 27:08

you heard any kind of biggies? I always get the question is EMDR the same as hypnosis? Okay, and I always say no, um, but I don't know much about hypnosis so I wouldn't sort of, uh, go into that. But can you have you heard that before or not? I haven't, I think.

Dr Gurpreet Kaur 27:27

I direct people towards my blogs or you know information about you, so they're quite well versed in EMDR before they kind of do that work with me. But I think that's probably something I thought when I was doing the training. And again, I'm no expert at hypnosis at all, I don't know enough about it, so I don't. I don't want to upset anybody, but I think that from my understanding, hypnosis is more of a kind of you're in a more of a trance or you're in a space where you're kind of led more and guided more into thinking a certain way or being taken down a certain route, whereas because of the adaptive information processing model of EMDR, what we're doing is we're actually working more with memory networks. So we're not guiding, we're highlighting and we're bringing up the traumatic memory, but then we're letting the work happen as it needs to happen. We're not necessarily guiding that too much.

Dr Gurpreet Kaur 28:18

Some EMDR therapists say literally, stay out of the way, let them do the processing. Other ones will be more kind of well, a common thing that we do is cognitive interviews, so we can kind of guide them a little bit, but not in the same way as hypnosis, where I think it's really really guided. So I think the fundamental process is different and I also think I think I came across some research that said the brain areas that are highlighted when you're doing hypnosis and emdr they're different okay, they're not the same yeah, so I think there's similarities, but I think there's there's much more difference.

Dr Liz White 28:53

So just to pick up on your point there, cognitive interweaving is that when you're asking the client to talk about their experience or their memory or what it might be similar to a little bit of Socratic questioning.

Dr Gurpreet Kaur 29:06

Okay, so if you see the client's getting there and they just need a little bit, so they might be stuck there and they might just need a little bit of a nudge, so you might just ask them something that makes them kind of move forward a bit. But again, the main aim is just to stay back. Let the brain do what it needs to do to get to that place.

Dr Gurpreet Kaur 29:24

So when people are processing, the main thing is we want them to feel safe, and sometimes we might even have to bring some resources in for them to feel safe in that traumatic memory. So these are the little lint weaves that we might do as therapists just to keep them as safe as possible, but they're enough to do some processing work. We don't want to pull them too far out, we don't want to push them too far in. We just want to keep them in that kind of safe space for that dual processing to happen.

Dr Liz White 29:50

So in terms of misconceptions, then then is there anything else that I think that you wanted to think?

Dr Gurpreet Kaur 29:57

about. It's not for ptsd only. That's the thing it really isn't. It's literally, if you're feeling stuck and and you've tried things and it's not going, come and get some processing done. I've heard, I've heard people do it just for coaching. Okay, you know, they just want to get over a bit of a block and move forward. It can be for the deep path stuff, but it can also just be the bit to to move you forward a bit. It's it's really not just about finger wagging you know we can do the lesson in different ways and it's about understanding the why and you'll understand more, I think, kind of when you come to therapy.

Dr Gurpreet Kaur 30:29

I think being careful about the idea that we can do everything really quickly in one go. I don't want people to have that misconception that even though it's intensive and intense, it doesn't mean you're going to work through everything that you need to. And that's where the case conceptualization, right formulation, basically comes in, where people can clearly see which issues are linked to which difficulties and what we're working on right now and what they might want to work on in the future. Um, yeah, and I think some people might dismiss it as a bit woo, woo, what is this? This doesn't make sense, but there is science behind it. Yeah, we don't know the fundamental how, but we didn't know that with anesthesia did we? Until kind of more recently.

Dr Liz White 31:10

So it's thinking about understanding the benefits that people get from it and maybe trusting the process a little bit and I think it's that thing, isn't it of, um, that people can assume that emdr is like the easy option compared to talking therapy, because with talking therapy you know you've really got to talk about your problems and your emotions and your thoughts, um, and I think people can have that misconception that EMDR is just quick, easy and someone just wags their fingers in front of you and then and then you're done. But there's a whole lot of work that the client needs to do, isn't there?

Dr Gurpreet Kaur 31:48

there is absolutely and I suppose how do we, you know? How do they define easy? Does it just mean that because I don't have to say it, it's easier because we can work that way? There's a blind therapist protocol that actually the client doesn't have to tell us everything. If we really think they're too distressed to do it and they can we just do this and they're processing. But I'd rather not use that, I'd rather be more present with the client and I don't think it's so. Yeah, I think it's defining what date? What do they mean by easy? But also, you know, you're, you're feeling it. You're not just cognitively trying to talk your way through this or rational, you are feeling this, the stuff, in order to kind of process it and move through it. So I wouldn't say it's easier, I would say it's different, yeah, and I would say it really gets to the root, which is how I love working as a therapist.

Dr Liz White 32:38

Well, I feel like we have literally just we've lifted the lid a little bit on EMDR. I know there's so much more we could talk about, but we're running out of time. Thank you so much for coming on today again, no problem, thanks for having me. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of hello therapy. We'd love for you to join our growing community over on substack. You can sign up for free or become a paid subscriber for access to exclusive perks like never before seen video interviews and downloadable guides designed to support your mental health. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe so you never miss a new release, and if you got value from this episode, it would mean the world if you left a five star review. As always, check the show notes for my full disclaimer. Thanks again for listening.