How Can I Get Trained In EMDR?

If you are reading this post, and you've read other entries on this blog, there is likely no reason to explain EMDR, or why you would want to learn how to be an EMDR clinician!

But how would you go about learning? How can you afford it? One issue is that there are so many trainings out there, and so much confusion about what EMDR is.

Here are some facts about learning EMDR, before I recommend where to do so:

-You need to be a therapist, or working toward being one. That is, a Master's or Doctoral-level clinician, or studying to be one, who either has a license to practice therapy, or is working on obtaining one.

-EMDR is a comprehensive approach to doing therapy, just like other respected, research-validated therapies such as CBT or ACT. It is not a "technique" to add to a bag of tricks, or to instantly blend with or add to other therapies.

-EMDR therapy is not regulated by law in the USA, so unfortunately 90% of EMDR trainings are unapproved and do not actually teach EMDR as it is used in the research. PESI's EMDR trainings are an example of an egregious violation.

-Real EMDR training does not have to "break the bank," and some unapproved trainings are actually more expensive.

-EMDRIA, the EMDR International Association regulates and approves real EMDR trainings.(emdria.org).

You can find approved trainings on emdria.org, but the best thing to do in my opinion is to sign up for an EMDR Institute training at emdr.com. The Institute is the late Francine Shapiro's organization--the original one, which also organized EMDRIA in the first place. You will get what is in the research, a solid foundation for getting as complex as you want to--treating complex trauma, chronic pain, addictions, depression, or many other specialty treatment areas, and even incorporating other therapeutic modalities.

But, you may work for a non-profit, and feel unable to afford an Institute training--although these trainings are affordable compared to trainings in other modalities (compare IFS, for instance). Yet you don't want to save money to receive an inferior or unapproved training.

If so, there is an excellent alternative, the trainings offered by EMDR-HAP, the Humanitarian Assistance Program (https://www.emdrhap.org/). Dr. Shapiro founded this nonprofit to organize EMDR clinicians to do things like respond to disasters, and to train new EMDR clinicians in troubled areas worldwide (they are active in Ukraine, for instance). HAP has trainers who are volunteers, entirely unpaid--so their trainings are half-cost. Although I facilitate for the Institute, assisting with their trainings, I had a Basic Training through HAP. All HAP trainers and facilitators are required to first be experienced working for the Institute, so quality is not an issue. But you must work for a nonprofit, or for a business that serves 75%+ impoverished clients.