EMDR Therapy Quarterly

Reflections following EMDR Europe’s Consultants’ Day 2025.

Just because ‘you’ think you are great does not mean that everybody else would agree. Who do we want working with clients? Training other practitioners? Representing us in the therapeutic and the wider community? There are many stakeholders in the accreditation process; the supervisee and the supervisor are the most obvious, but we also need to hold in mind all the other people that are impacted by our work, i.e., the clients, their families and loved ones and potential future supervisees of the accreditation applicant. And then there is the standing of our profession and the interests of the wider community.

Accreditation provides a set of agreed standards and triangulation to ensure those standards are met. This is why the accreditation process, in order to work, has to be conducted in good faith. Each of us, in our role as a consultant, is a mentor guiding our supervisees through this process of scrutiny, and mentors have a responsibility to ensure the work is taken seriously and carried out ethically.

The term ‘ethics’ derives from the ancient word ‘ethos,’ which means ‘character.’ Tylim (2004:610) describes how freedom, authenticity, genuineness, being real, respect, honesty and humanity are all highly valued, and these ethical values “…remain silent, invisible – like a ghost – until they are violated.” As consultants, we are in a position to mentor these ethical values. We must try to live up to them.

The word ‘mentor’ comes from a character in Homer’s Odyssey. Mentor was entrusted by Odysseus to care for and guide his son, Telemachus, while he was away at war. Mentor, along with a swallow, a shepherd and a seagull were all used as “credible messengers” by the Goddess Pallas Athene to impart wisdom to human beings, who would otherwise have ignored her. One could say that when we mentor our supervisees, we are in a sacred position of trust. We are required to hold the ethical frame. 

The EMDR Europe Consultants’ Day was infused with this spirit of true mentorship. The EMDR Europe Practice Committee (EEPC) shared the results of their large-scale survey on how best to motivate therapists through accreditation. 

A key finding was that supervisees loved to hear the personal growth stories of their mentors. When supervisors shared what they had learnt from their mistakes, this had the paradoxical effect of encouraging trainees (Ytje van Pelt, Netherlands Chair of EEPC). When supervisors hide their human failings, it can alienate and actually disempower those they are trying to motivate.   

This theme was also taken up by Eva Münker-Kramer (Austrian, former EMDR Europe Vice President). She spoke eloquently about how consultants are the gardeners “taking care of the seeds.” We are responsible for “keeping the energy and buzz of new trainees alive.” Consultants help mentees to acquire the language and values of our profession and welcome them into the EMDR community. Consultants model the use of a specialist language and show how one ‘thinks’ in a trauma-informed way. Eva, like Ytje, emphasised the importance of sharing our mistakes so others can learn.

Antonio Onofri, a psychiatrist based in Rome, brought his reflections to the Consultants Day as a clinician who is deeply involved in research. He emphasised that consultants do not just teach protocols; they shape mindsets. EMDR is growing fast in Europe, and both he and Michael Hase, who chairs the EMDR Europe Research Committee, are keen for practitioners to keep up to date with the latest research. Clinicians are seeing far more complexity in patients being presented for EMDR treatment, and this poses challenges in case conceptualisation. Onofri summarised some key learnings from research into EMDR and psychosis, CPTSD/dissociation, PD, addiction, LD and dementia, and neurodivergence.

Onofri’s summary included the following observations:

• Offering EMDR to patients with psychosis requires careful preparation. The patients need a therapist who is able to acutely attune to their inner world, and consultants supervising such therapists need to help them to tolerate uncertainty (Varese et al., 2024; Every-Palmer, 2024; Strelchuk, 2024).
• After much debate in the EMDR field about whether and how much stabilisation to offer patients with CPTSD and high levels of dissociation, the research is now clearly favouring extended periods of stabilisation and making sure that practitioners have a solid grounding in the theory of structural dissociation (van Vliet, 2024; Montoya, 2024; Fernandez, 2025; Hafkemeijer, 2024).
• All the studies cited by Onofri revealed there is a relational turn in EMDR. Consultants need to recognise that supervision is not just technical but provides a space for co-regulating the anxieties of the supervisee and providing a space for meaning-making.
• Onofri encouraged consultants to read a research article every month and to share it with their supervisees. He urged consultants to be passionate about research and to stay connected and curious because this helps to mitigate against burnout. Onofri described good quality supervision as “good therapy for therapists.”

All of the contributors to the Consultants Day were singing from the same hymn sheet. Accreditation as an EMDR practitioner transforms the confidence and competence of therapists. Consultants can facilitate this process by inspiring and mentoring their supervisees to remain curious and stay informed about the latest developments. This attitude is also protective against vicarious traumatisation and burnout.

Being willing to submit oneself to questioning, examine one’s skills and be brave enough to fail and learn not only improves our competency as therapists, it keeps us humble. From this place, we are far more likely to connect with our clients’ vulnerabilities. They are more likely to trust us because we are human, not because we are perfect.