EMDR for Complex Trauma: What to do when Standard Protocol isn’t Working LIVE IN PERSON - Dr Catherine Hynes

Save $150 with Early Bird Pricing until June 30th, 2026.

Warm up this Winter and join us at the gorgeous Kirra Beach House: 4 Marine Parade, Coolangatta, QLD 4225

Prerequisites: EMDR Level 1 is a prerequisite, and this is designed for people who have completed EMDR Basic training, including Level 2.

Who is this Workshop For? EMDR practitioners who work with trauma and complex trauma, and want to adjust EMDR’s standard protocol to make it work for complex trauma clients. The focus is on adult therapy clients.

Is there any Practicum? Yes, you get an opportunity to role play formulation and/or new skills in this workshop.

What Will I Learn? You will learn:

1. A neurobiological take on the AIP, including attachment and dissociation
2. Specific strategies to enhance each part of the 8 Phases of EMDR for complex trauma
3. Strategies for blocked processing and resolving it
4. What the Progressive Approach to EMDR is, and how to apply it
5. The importance of Compassion and Values work in EMDR for complex Trauma

General Summary

The topics in this training are based on common questions and stuck point that therapists raise in consultation with Catherine in her work as an EMDR Consultant. Topics include a closer look at the Adaptive Information Processing Model, EMDR, Attachment and Dissociation, Choosing Negative and Positive Cognitions, Doing Resourcing Well, Using Cognitive Interweaves, Using Future Templates, Dealing with Blocked Processing, Using Bilateral Stimulation Progressively, Mobilising Self Compassion, EMDR and Values.

Detailed Content Summary

Part 1: Adaptive Information Processing Model: Presenting EMDR Therapy to Clients

• Overview of the AIP model in broad neurobiological terms, linking it to action systems in the limbic system
• Detailed demonstrations of how to present neurobiological rationales for trauma therapy, EMDR Therapy, and resolving emotion phobia to your clients
• Demonstration of the Container exercise

Part 2: EMDR Therapy, Attachment and Dissociation

• Brief overview of attachment and dissociation and their relevance to trauma therapy
• Assessment and formulation of dissociation for EMDR Therapy
• Demonstrations of how to present dissociation to clients
• Brief overview of some therapies that address dissociation

Part 3: Making an EMDR Formulation

• Making an EMDR formulation
• EMDR specific risk factors, attachment assessments and EMDR trauma themes
• Practice formulating 3 cases for EMDR Therapy

Part 4: The Meaning we Make of Trauma: Establishing Negative and Positive Cognitions

• This section addresses the most common question from new EMDR therapists in consultation: “How do you know when you have the right Negative Cognition?”
• Practice assessing for the three trauma themes in 3 cases
• Transcripts of real sessions determining the NC with commentary
• Resourcing considerations for each trauma theme

Part 5: Comments on the Standard Protocol

• Cognitive Interweaves as a means of bridging Maladaptive and Adaptive Information
• Review of each step of the standard protocol and special considerations for each step
• Comments on bilateral stimulation

Part 6: Help!! Processing Problems

• A close look at common challenges with the Phase 4, reprocessing
• Linking processing to formulation
• Roadmap to addressing processing problems and steps to take depending on the challenge you are facing
• Demonstration and/or of some adjunct protocols that are useful for resolving processing problems, including: Loving Eyes, CIPOS, Flash, Parts Work, Level of Urge to Avoid, Positive
• Affect Tolerance
• Overview of using the Progressive Approach to EMDR when the Standard Protocol is not possible

Part 7: EMDR Therapy and Values

• Brief comments on the relevance of values work to EMDR Therapy with complex trauma
• Demonstration of an Inner Wisdom exercise to access values
• Comments on the self and values
• Concluding remarks

About the Trainer

Catherine has a passion for helping people to achieve wellbeing by harnessing the brain’s healing potential. She is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Brisbane, who works with adults who have experienced adversity and trauma, often in childhood and throughout development. She is the director of Wellbeing Wisdom, a business devoted to training psychologists to provide high level interventions in trauma and dissociation while practicing thoughtful self care, and to sharing wisdom from the therapy room with the general public.

Catherine offers training and consultation across Australia and internationally on the treatment of trauma and dissociation. She graduated from the University of Toronto, Canada, where she studied philosophy and neuroscience. She completed a Masters Degree at Dartmouth College, USA in Biological and Brain Sciences, where she completed her thesis on the functional neuro-imaging of social cognition. She obtained a PhD from the University of Queensland, in clinical psychology and clinical neuropsychology, where her thesis developed neuropsychological assessments for social and emotional difficulties following traumatic brain injury. She is a an EMDR consultant with the EMDR Association of Australia, and a member of the Australian Association of Psychologists, and the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation.

Catherine’s current therapeutic work is founded on her lifelong interests in the philosophy of consciousness and the neurobiology of social cognition. She works integratively, and draws on therapies whose mechanisms are consistent with brain science. She uses EMDR therapy, embodied mindfulness therapies, Parts Work Therapies, Coherence Therapy, Compassion Focussed Therapy, Schema Therapy and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy in her treatments.

She develops her clinical case conceptualisations from a social neurobiology perspective, and avidly follows developments in neuroscience to guide her therapeutic and educational projects.