Rebecca Saunders (00:03.864)
Hello and welcome to the EMDR Doctor podcast. This is a podcast for clients where I share and explore information about all things EMDR.
My name is Dr Caroline Lloyd. I'm a mental health GP and an EMDR practitioner. And my goal is to demystify EMDR or eye movement desensitization and reprocessing to help you on your EMDR journey. EMDR is a powerful therapy which helps to reduce the distress from difficult memories. And my goal is to make it accessible to everyone. I hope you enjoy this episode. Hello and welcome back to the EMDR Doctor podcast. My name is
to Caroline Lloyd and I welcome you from the lands of the Wurundjeri people. I'd like to pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging. I'm enjoying a bit of summer weather here in sunny Melbourne. Actually today's the coolest day that we've had for a bit and it's lovely to have a bit of a cool breeze and at this time of year all those mums and dads out there we are back in school mode which is sometimes a relief and sometimes a bit hectic so
Whatever you are doing in your life right now, I hope it's all going well. I'm fully back into my workflow of the year and planning my next online group EMDR course, which starts on the 6th of March. The registrations are open. So if you are keen to work with me, then that is the place to organize it right now at emdrdoctor.com.au forward slash heel. Lots of people have questions about the group program.
And it is a relatively new way of working in the therapy world. So I thought I would explore that a little bit today and walk you through it. So what is it? My course is a six week online group EMDR course. You get to resolve six different difficult memories using EMDR via Zoom.
Rebecca Saunders (02:04.978)
So you and I meet for an initial intake session to take history and figure out which memories are particularly important to work on. So we can be strategic about getting the best result for you from the allocated six sessions of EMDR therapy. And this one-on-one intake session takes place roughly a week or a few days prior to starting the course. I send you out a workbook.
for some additional information and it's somewhere to keep your list of planned target memories for the course and to make notes and write down some insights. And it gives you some resources to use as well during the course. Then when it comes to the actual therapy sessions, we do it via Zoom, usually on a Thursday night from seven till nine. So you are participating from your home on your computer in the privacy of your
Bedroom, study, lounge room, wherever you feel most comfortable. And we spend roughly 90 minutes together. So you work on one memory per week and we have already set up the memories to work on during our one-on-one appointment. And during the session, we do a couple of exercises to work on strengths and calmness and accessing personal qualities that you want more of. And then we go into the target memory.
So I'll lead you all through the EMDR process step by step and the processing part, the hard work of it takes around 25 to 30 minutes of that session. And by the end of the session, I make sure that everyone's reached a place of calm and strength and resolution for that memory. If anyone does need a little bit longer than the rest of the group, we can always stay back for a few minutes to do a little bit of one-on-one work just to make sure that you're fully settled and that
The memory feels okay, it's fully resolved and you're okay with everything. So what do people have questions about? The main thing to know is that in the group session, we do not talk about or discuss anyone's individual memories.
Rebecca Saunders (04:17.57)
This is the main point of difference. So it's absolutely not the classic group therapy that you might've seen in a Woody Allen movie. There is no relaying of stories. There is no unpacking in front of other people. There is no need in the group to console anyone or to assist them or regulate them or any opportunity for judgment or confrontation or trying to make the other person see the errors of their ways.
No one else knows what you are working on. So it is in fact highly private. So even though I know what memories you have on your list to work on, even I don't know what memory you're working on that day. So that's quite a relief to some people and especially perhaps people who have some memories that they they don't want to talk about in public.
Most people are a little bit reticent to talk about their most painful memories in public or in front of somebody else. But there's a particular group of people, you know, first responders, police people, sometimes people from the armed forces or people in the legal profession or indeed in the medical profession are privy to information that is not accessible to the public and
And they're also traumatized so that they feel really, really stuck because they can't talk about those, those distressing memories or those distressing situations that they've been in or that they know about, but they really need help with it. So this is actually a really great opportunity for people who have issues around privacy and trauma for them to process their trauma in a completely private way.
So that's sort of one subgroup of people that it's especially helpful for to do this kind of work. This also applies, by the way, to other therapists. So other therapists can be extremely shy about sharing some stuff that they know about because we also, as therapists, do hear some pretty horrendous stories and sometimes they stick. sometimes therapists need a way to
Rebecca Saunders (06:38.38)
rid themselves of the vicarious trauma that they have incurred in their work just by listening to their clients. in fact, one of the groups of people who have really taken to group EMDR are EMDR therapists. They love it. It's really a fantastic opportunity for them to do their work in a way that's really quite private. So that's the number one thing that people ask me about is regarding the trauma sharing.
The next thing they're worried about is crying in front of other people. And I get that. I get that it feels uncomfortable to think about crying in front of people. And certainly crying does happen with EMDR because we do get to the heart and center of the difficult memory. And if we cry while we are processing it, this is a great thing because it's actually processing the sadness or the grief or the loss. And I tell people that the tears they cry whilst doing an EMDR memory processing session.
they do not need to cry again. That bit of sadness is done, it's resolved. But what about doing it in front of others? Well, to tell the honest truth, the other people in the group are not looking at you. They are on the Zoom screen, busily doing their own work, which probably involves a bit of crying too. So not only are they too busy and absorbed in what they are doing themselves, even if they do happen to see that you are crying,
They don't mind. They won't judge because they're in the very same position. And also, I do ask people to arrange the zoom screen to center my screen as they need to follow the eye movements on my screen. And many people minimize the other group members so that they can't see them at all. So they have their full screen to be working on for the eye movements and they can focus directly on what they're doing. So the chances of someone being able to see you as you do your work is really minimal.
And I've had people report to me that they really are surprised at how unaware of others they are during the session and how after the first session, this concern about being in a group and doing the work just evaporates and they feel very comfortable with it all. And what if I cry too much? What if I can't stop? Now this is really exceedingly rare, but we do have a safety factor in the group, which is that I do have a co-facilitator.
Rebecca Saunders (09:04.994)
who can take you into a Zoom breakout room and give you a little bit of one-on-one attention to help you settle or help you get over the blockage or talk through a moment of difficulty, whatever is causing the distress. So the next question that I have had in the past kind of ties in with confidentiality. And so, so far we've covered off on no trauma stories being shared. We don't discuss any memories. We aren't watching each other as we process.
If by some crazy chance that it emerges that two people in the group know each other, then we can certainly work around this and sort out another arrangement so that everyone is happy. This is probably something that I don't need to be concerned about because the number of people in the world coming to my group sessions is, having two people know each other would be very unlikely. But this might look like moving one person to a different group.
And I can be flexible about that. It hasn't happened yet. If it does, we can sort it out. Now, the next concern people have is whether it is as effective as doing it in the one-to-one format. And I have to say yes to this. It is just as effective as one-to-one. So we have evidence to show in some studies with online group EMDR during COVID with frontline workers that they experience great benefit from the sessions.
And this was equivalent to the improvements that you would see in one-on-one sessions for EMDR. And there's another study that reported the same thing in groups focusing on carers for teens in residential accommodation. So not a lot of research has been done about group EMDR. It is relatively new, but the research that we have on group online EMDR is really promising, very positive.
and does show great improvement in the participants. So do you have to fit into some sort of demographic? No, no, you don't. You don't have to be a frontline worker. You don't have to be a carer for teams in residential accommodation. The groups that I run are general groups. They are for anyone who has difficult memories.
Rebecca Saunders (11:25.944)
They're not specialised groups, although I might be looking at establishing some more specialised groups later this year. So the Heal Your Past groups that I run are for anyone who has difficult memories. The range of memories that people have brought to the groups in the past have been around divorce trauma, adoption trauma, medical trauma, including birth trauma and cancer survivors. Other people have brought
memories around bullying or accidents or some grief focused memories. So these are just some of the things that that I've helped people with within the groups and there's been a wide range. So I haven't mentioned sexual trauma. Certainly people in my groups have processed memories to do with that kind of trauma. I would suggest though
for childhood sexual assault, that might be an issue that is best served with one-on-one therapy. And certainly online is fine for that. Some people prefer in person, but that kind of trauma from a very early age involving that specific realm of trauma is probably not suitable for the group EMDR process online.
That's not to say the group EMDR doesn't work for childhood sexual assault because I've done in-person groups at Cabrini and we have processed some trauma from that realm. and it has worked beautifully, but it is probably, as I said, probably not for online group EMDR. So who else shouldn't do the online group EMDR course? Aside from childhood sexual assault, if the memory that you're working on is related to
upcoming litigation or police processes. We need to consider this a little bit carefully and it probably needs an in-depth discussion about it. talk to your EMDR therapist about it. If you don't have a reliable internet connection, then group online EMDR might be a bit tricky as I would hate for you to be halfway through processing a memory and be left high and dry if the internet connection dropped out.
Rebecca Saunders (13:47.096)
So that's not usually a problem in Australia, but for some people, especially in rural areas, that can be a big issue. So that's probably less of an issue with online individual EMDR sessions because you can always convert to either a phone call or reorganize for another time. But in a group scenario, that does get a little bit tricky. If you are in a situation of abuse or in
danger in any way or in a crisis in your life currently, then I would advise against doing EMDR in general. At that kind of time of your life you need assistance in different ways. Another reason perhaps to not do online group EMDR therapy is if you are currently using substances or alcohol. It doesn't mean that you can't do EMDR, it just means that we would have to tailor it more carefully.
So an online group is probably not suitable. And the same goes for people with dissociative disorders or psychosis. EMDR certainly can help, but these conditions do need a particular skill set and do need certain conditions and EMDR certainly can help, just not the online group scenario. So there's a couple of people who can't participate in the online group EMDR process.
But for the vast majority of people, the group online EMDR process is really helpful. It's a more affordable, more accessible way to access help and a great way to resolve some difficult memories. So I hope this has been helpful to you in helping to understand how it all works and what it involves and who it's for and who can benefit.
and the particular kind of surprising benefits of online group EMDR. And if you're ready to join me in the Heal Your Past course that I'm offering starting on the 6th of March, feel free to head over to my website, emdrdoctor.com.au forward slash heal and register through that page. If it happens to be full when you go to register, you'll be directed to a wait list so I can contact you.
Rebecca Saunders (16:07.04)
for my next course, which will be a little bit later in the year. So the group is quite small. There's only six spots available in this course. So if you want to secure your spot, please head over to that page and you'll be welcome. So I hope this has been helpful. Any questions, please feel free to reach out to me and I'll be really happy to answer any individual questions. So in the meantime, I hope you have a great week. I will talk to you next week.
Take good care. Bye bye.
