Presenter: Lana Epstein, LICSW

Approved for 7 EMDRIA Credits

Treating Early Attachment Wounding: Somatic Interventions to Enhance EMDR Effectiveness

Early attachment relationships have a profound impact on the developing brain, leaving an enduring attachment template that informs future relationships.  This template manifests in negative cognitions that are reflected and sustained by the body.  Although psychotherapy can’t change the actual events a person has experienced, research suggests it can change the emotional valence of those events. Somatic interventions are often an economical way to reprocess long-held emotional learnings.

This workshop highlights the importance of experiential interventions to the work of memory reconsolidation for attachment misfirings and demonstrates somatic interweaves that can be easily integrated into the 8-Phase AIP model for work with Preoccupied and Dismissive attachment patterns.  It will introduce ways  to ‘read’ the body for the limiting beliefs it holds, and a range of body-based interventions to use as interweaves if the processing loops. 

While EMDR therapy is often the treatment choice for many psychotherapists working with the sequelae of trauma, it is less widely used in the treatment of early attachment wounding.  This workshop offers EMDR practitioners an opportunity to integrate techniques into their practice to enhance the effectiveness of EMDR processing when working with the wounds of early attachment failures or disruptions.

For more information or to register contact Lana Epstein