Episode 13: EMDR Consultation Made Easy with Mish Kumar-Jonson

Kayla: Welcome back to Your Clinical Supervisor’s Couch podcast and I’m your host Kayla Das.

In today’s episode, Mish Kumar-Jonson, an accredited mental health social worker in Australia, and accredited EMDR consultant, will discuss what you need to know about EMDR consultation.

Hi, Mish. Welcome to the show. I’m so glad to have you here today.

Mish: Hi. I’m so glad to be here and talk everything about EMDR consultation.

Kayla: Mish, before we dive into today’s episode, please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your practice and your EMDR consultation journey.

Mish: So, I’m sitting here on the unceded lands of the Woiwurrung, Wurundjeri and Boon Wurrung peoples of the Eastern Kulin Nation, also known as Melbourne, Australia. And I pay my respects to First Nations elders, both past and present.

I’m a non-binary, queer, and neurodivergent EMDR consultant of color working with the neurodivergent and queer EMDR communities.

And I’ve become a consultant in 2024 and I’ve been an EMDR practitioner for the past few years, mostly focused on bringing an anti-colonial and anti-oppressive lens to EMDR. And I am in love with EMDR, I absolutely enjoy supporting people using EMDR and excited to kind of get into their question.

Kayla: So, let’s talk about the basics. What is EMDR consultation and why is it important for EMDR trained therapists?

Mish: Perfect place to start. So EMDR consultation is this collaborative and reflective process that is designed to support EMDR trained therapists in developing their skills, but also enhancing their understanding of the approach. And ensuring best practices in their work.

So, it typically occurs one on one or in a group setting with an experienced EMDR consultant who guides and supports clinicians in integrating EMDR into their practice, both effectively and ethically, the consultation is more than just a requirement for certification. It’s really a vital resource for professional growth, ethical, trauma care, and the ongoing development of therapeutic skills.

So, by engaging in consultation, EMDR trained therapists not only can refine their practice, but also create safer and more affirming spaces for participants to heal. If you’re looking at the key goals of EMDR consultation, one is skill development. So, enhancing understanding and also EMDR’s application to a diverse participant presentation. Then there’s case conceptualization as well. So assisting therapists to conceptualize cases by selecting appropriate targets and integrating EMDR into the complex or nuanced participant histories.

Also, there’s something called protocol fidelity. That means to ensure that the therapist adheres to the adaptive information processing model and EMDR fidelity, whilst also obviously allowing for creative adaptation to meet participant needs and unique lived experiences.

The other key goal is the professional growth of the therapist. So supporting them first in addressing challenges, deepening their confidence, and also reflecting on their practice to create a really ethical practice, it also allows a space to discuss ethical considerations, participant dynamics, and even potential blind spots, because we all have them.

And then lastly, it’s great for supporting certification. So, it can help therapists meet the requirements for their association’s certification, which often involves a specific number of consultation hours that you have to do.

There is a range of reasons why it’s important, and those are one, it solidifies learning post training because for anyone who’s done the training, you know that it’s just so much information thrown at you and you leave, hopefully, really excited. But then you get into it and you go, I’ve forgotten everything, or it seems really overwhelming, and so it really helps you learn post training.

But as I touched on case conceptualization is super important because you get to really know your participants and their histories, and it helps you understand how to integrate EMDR into these histories.

And then, because it’s me, and I’m such a passionate person around anti-colonial and anti-oppressive practice. It also encouraged these lenses and participant centered practices within your EMDR approaches. So, I would say that’s why it’s so important.

Kayla: I love that. So, for any practitioner who might be thinking about being EMDR trained, but not yet have taken the training. Is EMDR consultation required in order to maintain certification?

Mish: Yes, it is. So, I can talk to the certification requirements for Australia. So, for basic training, you need to complete level one and level two, which is often a weekend or three-day workshop for level one and a three-day workshop for level two, it can slightly differ. Then you need to do 10 consultation hours, and that can be individual or in group. I find group consultations great because you get to learn from different people and really understand what different people are unlearning, relearning, coming to terms with, have questions about and that is you completing your basic training.

Now, if you want to go on and get accredited as a practitioner, you then have to do a certain amount of hours of practice, but also then consultation hours. And then as you go on, in order to maintain those, you need to do certain amount of consultation, both group and individual every year to maintain that.

Kayla: That’s really helpful. So, are there specific challenges or pitfalls that practitioners face when it comes to EMDR?

Mish: Absolutely. Now, different people face different challenges and pitfalls, but these are the ones that I find most commonly are brought to consultation, either individual or group. So, the first one is the question, how do I know when my participant is ready to do phase four? Or there’s been enough stabilization? And so many practitioners are worried about moving into trauma processing too early or before a participant has been quote unquote stabilized. And the reason this happens is because there are so many practitioners feeling the pressure to follow the protocol rather than listening and assessing participant need.

And what I say to practitioners a lot is. You are therapist first, EMDR practitioner second, right? You have done therapy for so long. You have been assessing, connecting with, understanding story, listening to people for a long time before you are an EMDR practitioner. And so, when coming to consultation, we really move through, how has this person already lived with all of the things they’re coming to you for EMDR with in their lives? And how can you then support them in phase two to prepare? And then together collaboratively move towards reprocessing. So that’s the first one is that pitfall or challenge is that readiness or stabilization.

The second one is I touched on before, but there’s difficulty with case conceptualization. So, a lot of EMDR practitioners, especially newly trained EMDR practitioners and across the lifespan of EMDR practitioners really struggle with identifying targets or organizing memories, especially for participants with complex trauma, intergenerational trauma, or systemic oppression. And I find this happens because there are so many EMDR protocols now available where people sometimes get overwhelmed and start asking the question, what EMDR protocol should I use? Rather than asking the question, what do I need to consider about this person and their experiences when utilizing EMDR? So, it’s a bit of a shift in looking at it and approaching the work. And some people face challenges in integrating systemic, cultural, or intergenerational factors into case conceptualization.

So, the way to address this, a very quick tidbit, is really get to know your participant and their parts. That’ll support you both to adjust what you need to do with each other and help you navigate the work. Also spend time really understanding the systems that impact a person and then bring this into your case conceptualization with your consultant. So that’s a little tip for some people.

Another common challenge or pitfall that people struggle with is working with dissociation. So, participants with dissociative traits may present authentically in sessions and might dissociate when they’re getting, say, to a topic they don’t want to, or don’t feel ready to discuss yet. However, I find that this impacts practitioners a lot and they are often worried about causing harm. So, we know that dissociation is a very common protective mechanism for participants with a range of trauma experiences. And so, I would say, bring this into consultation because you can develop skills in recognizing and working with dissociation that really empowers a person and their parts to approach their resources or even, connect in with their attachment resources, for example. Or their relationships to be able to address some of these underlying issues that are holding those dissociative responses in the first place.

Another tip is to ask for all parts for permission to proceed with any processing or assessing or even accessing of memory. So, you can seek consultation around this and become comfortable in the truth that dissociation is a response to keep someone safe.

And the last thing I see is this sense of adherence versus flexibility. So, a lot of people find a challenge to strike a balance between adhering to EMDR’s structured protocol and adapting it to meet a participant’s unique need. This can be really difficult for people. So new practitioners often feel bound to the protocol and hesitate to adapt it because they fear breaking the rules or causing harm. But really what I would love people to know is that EMDR is flexible and it’s a framework designed to accommodate individual and cultural needs while still maintaining fidelity. You can adapt this in a range of ways by bringing in cultural healing, adapt pacing, language, resourcing, how you do it, where you do it all of these things. So, I would really recommend people seek consultation and how to adapt those.

And I might pop in one more, which is over reliance on EMDR as a cure all. So, I see people go and train in EMDR and then come out of training and expect EMDR to work in every situation for every participant. And I find sometimes therapists neglect the importance of building a broader therapeutic foundation. EMDR, yes, has a great reputation of being a highly effective trauma therapy, but that can cause unrealistic expectations. And this is where I come to, you are therapist first, EMDR practitioner second. Use it as a tool in your tool belt rather than a cure all and really get to know your participant and assess their needs.

Kayla: Those are such great tips to keep in mind, because I think even beyond the EMDR Approach sometimes we kind of forget that our therapeutic modality isn’t us, right? We are a therapist first. It’s a tool or a method to help us with supporting the client or participant at that time.

Mish: Absolutely, and one of the core facets I feel of therapy is that connection that you build with the participant more than the modalities, even just creating safe spaces where people can just come and experience their emotions is super important. And keeping those in mind, I think is really crucial to people’s practices.

Kayla: Amazing. So, are there ways to adapt EMDR to marginalized communities throughout consultation?

Mish: Yeah, absolutely. One of the ways is addressing systemic and intergenerational traumas. And a lot of EMDR practitioners feel unprepared to address intergenerational or systemic trauma, especially for participants in marginalized communities.

And what I offer people is EMDR training often focuses on individual trauma and may not adequately prepare therapists for systemic context or participant distress. And so, I say to people, really spend time in growing your sense of cultural humility and familiarity with anti-oppressive and anti-colonial frameworks and expand your understanding of what is systemic oppression. Really bringing in how can I adapt intersectionality within EMDR so that I’m addressing systemic oppression by creating identity affirming spaces for people.

Also being able to even just recognize for people that historical trauma is why people are in situations rather than saying, this is your anxiety, or this is the reason you’re depressed. Coming to imperialism, colonization, racism, multigenerational harm, ableism, these are all things that impact a person and someone’s presentation might be a valid response to all of these inequities. And just by being able to recognize and validate that, I think is super important for people.

And the second one is this sense of the cultural context. So, I find that EMDR protocols in there, like I said before, there are a few of them may inadvertently exclude or marginalize participants if not adapted properly. So, the standard protocol itself was developed within a Eurocentric framework doesn’t mean it has to stay there. It is a great framework. The adaptive information processing model is brilliant because that can be positioned within a culturally safe and practicing framework quite easily. And so, I would really encourage people to invite participants to share cultural healing practices that they know or that they can connect with and also collaborate on how these can be integrated within EMDR.

And this is where I would say really seek out consultation on integrating these within your practice and how to address your own overwhelm and burnout because that will be super important when you have to be so reflective and so assessing and addressing and navigating of people’s trauma and you’re really hearing these stories day in and day out and to be able to offer a practice that is steeped in cultural humility, you need to also address your own burnout and, yeah, highly encourage supervision and consultation for that.

Kayla: Such great points. Mish, do you provide EMDR consultation in your practice? And if so, can you explain your approach and who you can work with?

Mish: Yeah, absolutely. So I provide EMDR consultation in both an individual and group setting that my core principles of my approach is participant centered and anti-oppressive practice, obviously cultural responsiveness and humility, flexibility within the structure and commitment to lifelong growth.

And I can work with therapists who are new to EMDR. Therapists working towards their EMDR certification with EMDRIA, which is the EMDR Association in Australia. As well as experienced EMDR therapists facing complex cases within the Neurodivergent Queer or BIPOC communities. And therapists who are really seeking an anti-oppressive, anti-colonial lens for their practice in general.

So, I provide that through, like I said, one on one consultation or every month I offer two groups. One is for newly trained EMDR practitioners and then one is for more advanced attachment informed relational integrative EMDR practitioners and I find that what sets my approach apart is my identity and perspective.

So as a neurodivergent non binary queer and BIPOC person, I really bring my own lived experience in and a deep understanding of how systems and systemic oppression shows up. But I also have a deep commitment to justice. And at the end, my goal as an EMDR consultant is to empower therapists to feel confident, competent, and compassionate in their work. And to together create a practice that not only adheres to the standards of EMDR and fidelity, but also honors dignity, resilience, cultural humility, and complexity of their participants who they serve. So, if you’d like to work with me, come and check out the website at www.niram.com.au or reach out via email at [email protected].

Kayla: So, to receive EMDR consultation from Mish, check out niram.com.au.

Or you can simply scroll down to the show notes and click on the link.

Mish, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today to discuss EMDR consultation.

Mish: No worries at all. Thank you so much for having me.

Kayla: Thank you everyone for tuning in to today’s episode, and I hope you join me again on Your Clinical Supervisor’s Couch Podcast.

Until next time, bye for now.