Mindfulness and the Courage to Feel: Affect Education within the EMDR Protocol

(1 or 2 day format)

Much of affect education is focused on managing and tolerating emotions. What is missing in this is an emphasis on the positive reasons for having feelings and how they work.  We need to be able to sell our clients on the importance of emotional expertise and honesty if they are to heal. They need to develop the courage to feel, but won’t do this if feelings don’t make sense.
Because the emotional journey cuts through what is foreign territory for many of our clients, there is also a need for a map, a hands-on, practical guide that clients can refer to when learning how to do this "feelings thing". For this I have developed the Four Steps to emotional competence, very teachable and very learnable.
Specific skills are needed to implement the Four Steps. These include the practice of awareness (the sine qua non) of any therapy, breath work, visualizations, resource development and anchoring, grounding techniques, trance busters and the L.I.D.S. strategy for managing strong feelings. Many of these will be practiced during the workshop, particularly within the two-day format.
Finally, it is important for the therapist to have a trauma treatment phase model in mind in order to know where this affect education fits in and when it may need to be revisited. The use of EMDR to reinforce learning will be demonstrated and/or practiced during the learning of the seven skills.

OBJECTIVES:

• Will describe how to explain the nature and purpose of feelings to clients.

• Will name the Four Steps to emotional honesty.

• Will identify and practice seven skill sets for emotional expertise.

• Will describe where affect education fits in a trauma treatment model.

• Will apply EMDR to enhance these skills.