[SPEAKER_01]: Therapy chat podcast episode 503. [SPEAKER_01]: This is the Therapy chat podcast with Laura Regan, LCSWC. [SPEAKER_01]: The information shared in this podcast is not a substitute for seeking help from a licensed mental health professional. [SPEAKER_01]: And now, here's your host, Laura Regan, LCSWC. [SPEAKER_02]: Hi, welcome back to Therapy Chat.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm your host Laura Reagan, and this week, as we've been talking about attachment development and the importance of addressing attachment wounds in childhood, I'm bringing you a replay of my conversation with Anne Beckley Forrest and Annie Monica. [SPEAKER_02]: who created playful EMDR. [SPEAKER_02]: It is a way of using EMDR with play therapy.
[SPEAKER_02]: And in our conversation we talked about how intervening when children are still in childhood saves them so much suffering over the lifespan. [SPEAKER_02]: And it can really be important for [SPEAKER_02]: countering the long-term impact of unadressed, unresolved childhood trauma, which we know impacts us, it impacts the developing brain in childhood, but it continues to impact us over the lifespan all the way up to end of life.
[SPEAKER_02]: So this is a really interesting conversation and we don't talk as often about working with kids on therapy chat, [SPEAKER_02]: Every adult that we work with was once a kid, obviously, but thinking about how we can help children during childhood is really important. [SPEAKER_02]: So I hope you'll find this conversation to be interesting and thought provoking. [SPEAKER_02]: Let's get right into it. [SPEAKER_02]: I welcome back to Therapy Chat.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm your host Laura Reagan and today I'm so excited to be speaking with Ann Beckley Forest and Annie Monaco. [SPEAKER_02]: Anne and Annie, thanks so much for being my guest on Therapy chat today. [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for having us. [SPEAKER_02]: Yes, this is going to be fun. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I'm excited on the show.
[SPEAKER_02]: I've been talking with more and more therapists who use EMDR and I was really interested in talking with you too because you are integrating Play Therapy and EMDR together and I'm really, I'm really curious about that as someone who's [SPEAKER_02]: and not trained in EMDR yet, but, you know, other things.
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to really like absorb how you bring those two together and why, but let's just start off with by you too, sharing a little bit more about who each of you are and what you do. [SPEAKER_03]: Sure, I'll go first. [SPEAKER_03]: So I have been a play therapist for about 25 years or so, give or take.
[SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, obviously for those of us who love play therapy, we know that it's the best way to get the child in the kind of, you know, rapport that we need for therapy, the kind of equality that you need with your therapist, and also signals of safety, like having [SPEAKER_03]: But I was at kind of a reluctant student of EMDR because 10 or 12 years ago, my agency asked me that go to EMDR training, Annie was the instructor.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I was a little bit of one of those annoying students who sits in the front row and goes, I have a question about that. [SPEAKER_03]: I work only with kids. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm not really sure this is going to work.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, that kind of, you know, constructive engagement, but annoying, I'm sure, but instead of disengaging from me Annie kind of leaned into that and that's really how our collaboration started in terms of how to make EMDR more playful, but Annie had I'll let her tell her about her long history and the EMDR world. [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_04]: So I actually have been trained for very long time. [SPEAKER_04]: I was trained in the really kind of beginning years.
[SPEAKER_04]: So Francine Shapiro is the person that developed DMDR an amazing woman who is unfortunately passed away. [SPEAKER_04]: But she really wanted fidelity to the model. [SPEAKER_04]: So when I got trained in 1998, it was a very controversial year because people thought EMDR was a big hoax.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so [SPEAKER_04]: researchers, top people in the trauma field that helped to make it evidence-based and it is the most highly researched treatment in the world and one of the top treatments for obviously trauma and we look at trauma in many different ways. [SPEAKER_04]: So I got trained. [SPEAKER_04]: I was already working with teenagers who commit crimes in the community. [SPEAKER_04]: I was doing family therapy. [SPEAKER_04]: I was being trained in a model.
[SPEAKER_04]: we combined EMDR family therapy, working with teens, working with children. [SPEAKER_04]: And again, like I said, when I met her, I had not, I had been doing some work with small children, but then, you know, went into private practice and started doing more. [SPEAKER_04]: And it's really our mission [SPEAKER_04]: And so, you know, we know that high-risk children and teens are very hard to treat.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's hard to involve the parents, caregivers, and it's hard to make them successful. [SPEAKER_04]: And so EMDR works very quickly. [SPEAKER_04]: And people don't talk a lot about that, but it can work very quickly with this population. [SPEAKER_04]: And I work with foster care kids now. [SPEAKER_04]: I work with highly dissociative kids. [SPEAKER_04]: and I can do amazing wonders and just some few sessions with these kids.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so right now, and in our training together, we travel internationally, we travel locally, we do lots of virtual trainings, we hold these cool summits where we'll talk about that later, but it's all about making therapists be able to feel confident, have the knowledge, and be able to treat high-risk kids. [SPEAKER_04]: So that's our goal.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, so, and, you know, one of the things that the new we're asking us, but before we got on a little bit about our work, you know, as a play therapist, I of course was doing my best within the complete therapy environment to help kids to digest traumatic experiences.
[SPEAKER_03]: One of the things that I had a growing discomfort with and I think EMDR should have helped me to answer is the fact that some kids because avoiding reminders of the traumatic experience is part of PTSD, part of anxious, you know, avoidance.
[SPEAKER_03]: We just weren't getting to that work and that's really what I hear from a lot of play therapists and consultation is I know that my therapy is at least providing [SPEAKER_03]: corrective experiences attached to my eyes, but we aren't doing is the exposure work to the trauma.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: And the research is really in and has been coming in over the last 15 or 20 years that that is actually how the brain and the body in particular can heal from these adverse experiences is exposure and just managing it in such a way that [SPEAKER_03]: We can de-sensitize some of the most upsetting parts and sort of reorganize the story, our own story in a way that makes sense.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so I deemed here as the added a lot to my practice, as far as being able to do that in a kind of coherent way. [SPEAKER_03]: And as Andy said, also a sort of a quicker way than, you know, this kind of painstaking tiptoeing towards it that was happening in some of my play therapy sessions prior children and EMDR. [SPEAKER_03]: People go to EMDR training that you get trained in the adult protocol first.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's the standard of training and then you have to start adapting from there. [SPEAKER_03]: And so that adaptation that's where all the excitement and all of the energy is in our work is like let's really spell that out. [SPEAKER_03]: So we added a book together. [SPEAKER_03]: We had 20 different authors. [SPEAKER_04]: I look like I have the book right here. [SPEAKER_04]: I just a grab one for some break.
[SPEAKER_03]: And these were all play mostly play therapist child therapists who are using EMDR and talk about how they're integrating it. [SPEAKER_03]: And so for us that was kind of the beginning of really spreading the word like to other people, having a go beyond our own practices in our own community and trying to cast a little wider net. [SPEAKER_03]: And really, my goals is that all the play therapists should have EMDR and their tool get to.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I don't know if I'll close the hour to that goal, but we're making progress. [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_04]: So, you know, Laura, just to bring it, you know, for your listeners, like, we are really playful people. [SPEAKER_04]: So, you know, foster care kids come in with, you know, that's my population right now mostly. [SPEAKER_04]: And they come in with the worst of the worst traumas, right? [SPEAKER_04]: And so, Hannah and I teach therapists about how to get at that.
[SPEAKER_04]: horrific traumas, right? [SPEAKER_04]: But we're doing it with playing with swords, magic ones, in the sand, high-fiving, right? [SPEAKER_04]: And the other thing is we teach therapists how to bring those caregivers those parents in the room to do EMDR with these kids. [SPEAKER_04]: And it doesn't just have to be foster care kids. [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, all children we bring in the parents, as well as we do this with teens.
[SPEAKER_04]: So a lot of our trainings are really their videos of our work with kids. [SPEAKER_04]: They're very lengthy transcripts of what we do in every session. [SPEAKER_04]: And, you know, we just have good evidence of showing that this works. [SPEAKER_02]: So thank you for explaining this and I'm just, I want to like reflect back what I heard.
[SPEAKER_02]: I heard you saying that the dilemma is in play therapy and I certainly can relate to this in my experience with play therapy that the avoidance that is so protective which happens through the process of dissociation, you know, at whatever level of, [SPEAKER_02]: Consciousness with the action of dissociation like I'm deliberately pushing it away or it's just happening because that's how I'm protecting from knowing what this life-threatening thing that I can't know, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: So, in working with children, I've definitely experienced especially in like four or five, six, seven year olds. [SPEAKER_02]: And nine, even where, you know, you know, something happened to them. [SPEAKER_02]: You know, they experienced trauma, but they are not going there. [SPEAKER_02]: They're just not going there.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I'm like, you know, you know, you know, you know, generally bring up the topic or you somehow, you know, go near it and they're like, [SPEAKER_02]: No, just nope, you know, they're just they change the subject or they're just not engaging with you. [SPEAKER_02]: For exactly, they look away. [SPEAKER_02]: They might literally zone out in the moment. [SPEAKER_02]: Either way, you know that talking about this right now is not happening.
[SPEAKER_02]: They don't feel comfortable talking about this right now. [SPEAKER_04]: And Lord, they're never going to feel comfortable, right? [SPEAKER_04]: Like, you know, I mean, we know what foster care kids have been through, right? [SPEAKER_04]: We know what severe neglect cases, you know, and deals with a lot of out-of-country adaptions, [SPEAKER_04]: like, no, they're never going to feel comfortable. [SPEAKER_04]: And so we, because it's not comfortable.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not comfortable. [SPEAKER_04]: It's not comfortable. [SPEAKER_04]: And we can't get adults to do this work, right? [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, you know, so the avoidance is our job is therapists to work around it, find a way. [SPEAKER_04]: to make it easier for kids and that the greatest thing about children and teens is that the processing is so much quicker than adults.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so, you know, that being too graphic, I've worked on a memory of this little girl being removed from her home firm. [SPEAKER_04]: lots of physical injuries. [SPEAKER_04]: And, you know, we're talking within 40 minutes, 30 minutes, she was able to process so much and just, you know, stopped hitting the, after that session, stopped hitting the animals in the home, stopped touching her sister and her private parts.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, that's the kind of results that me and Ann Gat. [SPEAKER_04]: And we want to teach their [SPEAKER_02]: And so it's kind of like you're saying that by what they can't go to in session because they need to avoid it is perpetuating the continued reenactments and re-experience things.
[SPEAKER_04]: We did it what we so her and her mom did it with so her and her foster mom did it with swords they we did that and then we also did drumming we did a parade like that's what we teach and you know of course it was hard for her but she's playing an instrument. [SPEAKER_04]: she's hitting a sword right it's done in a way that's so much more able to help her talk and process it and that and you know because of course she avoids.
[SPEAKER_04]: She looked at me and she goes on that we're talking about this right. [SPEAKER_03]: Well, you know, for people who, for some of your listens are not trained in EMDR or, you know, other protocols like that, the real magic part of it down magic the science part is what makes it seem like magic right is the idea of dual attention. [SPEAKER_03]: Look at the memory, Marcher on the room bang on the drum. [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, you remember that bad thing that happened?
[SPEAKER_03]: Show me in the sand. [SPEAKER_03]: Nope, get up. [SPEAKER_03]: Move around the room. [SPEAKER_03]: We're going to hit the drum. [SPEAKER_03]: We're going to hit the zylophone, you know, having a parade. [SPEAKER_03]: Now, mom's going to tap on your shoulders. [SPEAKER_03]: We're all going to take a deep breath together. [SPEAKER_03]: Let's have a snack. [SPEAKER_03]: Now let's do it again.
[SPEAKER_03]: So this idea, as you have to be able to hold the yucky stuff, while at the same time stay in the room. [SPEAKER_03]: And that's where the play really has enhanced, I think even what's possible, you know, EMDR has been an amazing perk, I'll spend around a long time. [SPEAKER_03]: Some of what's happening now is I think what I think play therapist are bringing to the table is a repertoire of playfulness that just makes that space a little bit bigger.
[SPEAKER_03]: Can we do it one more time? [SPEAKER_03]: Can we, you know, can we? [SPEAKER_03]: do that. [SPEAKER_03]: In EMDR, we do bilateral stimulation, right, left, right, left, left. [SPEAKER_03]: That's the eye movements, right? [SPEAKER_03]: With kids, it tends to be more tactile or movement-oriented, just because they don't sit there and move their eyes.
[SPEAKER_03]: But even that moving and all of that, this is counteracting that dissociative response is counteracting the freeze response that wants to kind of, you know, come in when they're triggered or reminded, you know, have reminders of the [SPEAKER_03]: So I think that's really what play therapy is bringing to EMDR is kind of already the sense of co-regulation and a big repertoire for how to do that with a kid.
[SPEAKER_03]: We're not going to sit there and you know, passively say, okay, now remember what it is that you know and do lots of talk talking and so we're going to try to use play and expressive materials to make it more possible because little kids are not going to be able to say, [SPEAKER_03]: in words, everything that they experienced.
[SPEAKER_03]: But with their bodies, they can show the intensity with a sword fight or they can be sometimes we have kids show us with artwork or with with miniatures or some other kind of play material show us something about what happened. [SPEAKER_03]: Okay, now we're going to do that desensitizing that bilateral. [SPEAKER_03]: So it's kind of, I mean, it's really quite exciting.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a very different, much more active, kind of therapy, and it's more directive than a lot of play therapists were raised to be, but even in that, there's still that dance in and out of the content, I think.
[SPEAKER_03]: And it can't be forced, you know, and and since we might consider the EMDR part of a session might be six or seven minutes out of a 45 minute session, [SPEAKER_03]: But we're in and we're out and we're out and that's what makes you know kids able to be successful at it. [SPEAKER_02]: So titrating it. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that's exactly. [SPEAKER_03]: Perfect word. [SPEAKER_02]: titration and penculation, right? [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, there you go. [SPEAKER_02]: There you go.
[SPEAKER_03]: Two of my favorite words. [SPEAKER_03]: That along with the toys with the cat it's old and kinesthetic. [SPEAKER_03]: That's the other you know. [SPEAKER_03]: So. [SPEAKER_04]: You got a form and acrimon, acrimon, and man. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, right, yeah, it's been over now. [SPEAKER_03]: There's too many teas in there. [SPEAKER_03]: I can't do it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I'm curious about, I mean, is the play part of the expression is the play regulating, is the play, the attunement, the holding space, you know, the containment of the relationship,
[SPEAKER_02]: Is that you can dive right in and do this like from the very beginning or how much time does it take to build up their a cute a rapport, especially when you have like disrupted attachments and the child may have like and you know the indiscriminate attaching or the, you know, very avoidant way of not being able to attach easily. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, you know, obviously there's no one size fits all.
[SPEAKER_03]: I do think that we've had a tendency to wait too long to be kind of stuck in perpetual preparation because the therapist as well as the child is waiting for some sort of all clear that we can go towards this stuff that every fiber of my being says we should avoid. [SPEAKER_03]: And as the caring adult, every fiber of my being says, I don't want to upset this kid. [SPEAKER_03]: You know, it's not easy to say, hey, it's Tuesday.
[SPEAKER_03]: After noon, let's talk about the worst thing that it would happen to you. [SPEAKER_03]: Like that's, you know, it takes quite a bit of sort of therapeutic confidence to even lead kids that way. [SPEAKER_03]: So I do think that establishing a relationship where kids can say no, you know, which is one of the great things about play therapy and it's kind of, you know, especially sort of child centered or child led.
[SPEAKER_03]: dimensions of play therapy is establishing more equality in the therapeutic relationship than kids wouldn't naturally have. [SPEAKER_03]: And then kids who have attachment patterns that are about defying adults, they don't make good customers for trauma therapy either, or the people [SPEAKER_03]: Either one of those has got a potential disruption because I what I really need is co-regulation, right? [SPEAKER_03]: So I think it depends on the scenario how much time.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't think there's a magic amount of time. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm necessarily because some kids are able to get there pretty quickly if they have good current caregivers. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm much bolder. [SPEAKER_03]: So in a good foster care situation, or and I had a kid who had a really bad experience but had very secure attachment prior, we did not spend a lot of time in preparation, but we had the attachment in the room with parents in the room to kind of supervise some of that.
[SPEAKER_04]: So, and I'm, yeah, I'm going to build on what I said, and this little girl is a great example of, [SPEAKER_04]: you know, not wanting to go there having had been in plate therapy alone for almost two years. [SPEAKER_04]: And the the foster parents said we can't adopt her. [SPEAKER_04]: She's so aggressive.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I moved a little bit quicker because like I said, they were very stable foster parents very [SPEAKER_04]: They were willing to be in the room with me, they were willing to do what I asked, and she realized how great she felt after the EMDR session, right? [SPEAKER_04]: She's not in trouble for hitting the dogs, not in trouble at schools, not in trouble, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: So she started really coming in, not going, hey, any, I want the EMDR, but she was so much more willing to share things. [SPEAKER_04]: And remember, like I said, this is not the whole hour, right? [SPEAKER_04]: So, and we're playing a lot of it, and we're touching, you know, the titration, penjulation of the material, and then she feels really good after.
[SPEAKER_04]: So it was recording one day of her session and, you know, she really didn't want to do it that day and, you know, so I just backed away with other things we're going on in her and her life and so Alva Sunch was up to the camera and she goes like she's recording herself and she's like, you know, I'd like to say that, you know, sometimes I don't like this, but I just feel so much better after and so, you know, and I looked at her and I'm like, I thought you were made at me today.
[SPEAKER_04]: And she goes, oh, I feel really good. [SPEAKER_04]: And she had just fully disclosed every single thing that had happened to her that day. [SPEAKER_04]: You know, because the MDR really opens kids up to feel comfortable to be able to say details, right? [SPEAKER_04]: And so it was such a powerful session and so I started interviewing her.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then by mistake, she hit the camera and it fell and I was like, oh, I got this perfect interview of why is EMDR good for a six year olds, you know, who's living in foster home, right? [SPEAKER_04]: You know, but I think if I help therapists of in and I help their pissed get past that first really hard session with the kid, they then like, and uses that word bold. [SPEAKER_04]: They become their best become very bold.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then kids become very invested in feeling better. [SPEAKER_04]: So it's getting past that at home. [SPEAKER_03]: And you know, so big part of what we're trying to do is not just give trainings, but also built into the EMDR world, much like the Play Therapy World, there's a structure for consultation for the developing therapist in the model. [SPEAKER_03]: And so what we have been trying to do is really grow the pool of consultants who can speak to work with children.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so we have like a lot of, I'm Dria, consultants in training now, who are registered play therapist who then learned EMDR. [SPEAKER_03]: And so I think that's just as important that people have that kind of resources for storytelling about their individual situation because it's different. [SPEAKER_03]: I can't give you a rule.
[SPEAKER_03]: hard and fast rule, but how long do you need to spend preparing or how much time should you spend, you know, if a child has a post trauma narrative that's a part of their own play, should you let that go, you know, unfold for a while and be kind of preparing for the EMDR by noticing. [SPEAKER_03]: What's coming up in the play, you know, so there's different ways to approach it.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think that's where good consultation, which, you know, really on the EMDR side, there hasn't been a huge repertoire of people who had that chavary child specific experience. [SPEAKER_03]: And so we're trying to increase the, you know, credential consultants on that side to do that. [SPEAKER_02]: So yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: That's great. [SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, and I think that's really important because what I've found over the years, what I go to a training.
[SPEAKER_02]: If they're not. [SPEAKER_02]: speaking my language. [SPEAKER_02]: I wonder if the trainer understands what I understand about the topic. [SPEAKER_02]: And I think, well, this is great if you didn't know this, that I know, but they're not apparently entertaining that. [SPEAKER_02]: So like, having, you're also a bad student that sits in the front. [SPEAKER_02]: Yes, I am. [SPEAKER_02]: Yes, I am. [SPEAKER_02]: Yes, I am. [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, I think there is something about you.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: I wanted to ask you what were your like critiques in the training because that's me like you know I'm like but how do you and I have a few more things to ask but it's like how do you if you work with dissociative highly dissociative kids who are in foster care like how you know they're safe enough to be able to go there like [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you know, because they are in the environment of loss of their attachment experience.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I will tell you this. [SPEAKER_03]: This is where I have come to and has taken me a while to get to this point, but it's not getting better. [SPEAKER_03]: So every year, every month that kids are living with unprocessed trauma, it's interfering with normal growth and development.
[SPEAKER_03]: So it's actually an emergency that they be able to at least digest this much at a time, but start because it we're waiting for analysts and stats of disaster on process trauma and adolescents is way more dangerous than bringing up, you know, poking, there's a woman out in Australia, EMDR therapist who talks about the challenge of this particular population, [SPEAKER_03]: and she calls it waking the sleeping dog. [SPEAKER_03]: Like nobody wants to wake up the sleeping dog.
[SPEAKER_03]: Everyone just wants to tip to around and go, they're doing so great in school. [SPEAKER_03]: That's just great. [SPEAKER_03]: But meantime, the layers upon layers of avoidance. [SPEAKER_00]: Yes. [SPEAKER_03]: And the inside turmoil is not improving. [SPEAKER_03]: So, you know, I would say to parents who don't want to do go down this road is play the tape to the end. [SPEAKER_03]: how do you want to turn out? [SPEAKER_03]: Do you want this kid to be able to own their own story?
[SPEAKER_03]: We got to start now. [SPEAKER_03]: We can't wait for them to be 13 because then at 13, you're supposed to be ditching your caregivers. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, not, you know, and you want to be able, you know, little kids will accept the attachment, interweaves and the support and they'll try things in these dissociative patterns are not set in store. [SPEAKER_04]: You know, and I think U.S. too, Laura, like, how do you know if they can handle this?
[SPEAKER_04]: And, you know, obviously we teach a very comprehensive approach, and it's many things, right? [SPEAKER_04]: So that case in particular, you know, somebody said to me, uh, could be it, could have been [SPEAKER_04]: I sometimes have other, you know, foster care kids have to have another therapist in an agency to get medication. [SPEAKER_04]: So the other therapist is the one that approached me and so she was solid.
[SPEAKER_04]: She told me how great the foster parents were, how great they were. [SPEAKER_04]: I knew the agency case worker. [SPEAKER_04]: I interviewed them myself, right? [SPEAKER_04]: And sometimes I will see people twice in one week for several weeks to make sure that we're getting them through the material and that it has a positive impact. [SPEAKER_04]: So it's so many pieces. [SPEAKER_04]: I'm a person that involves school people.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm the first to call a social worker or teacher and say, hey, I'm doing some work with this kid, can you help out? [SPEAKER_04]: Can you give them a break? [SPEAKER_04]: Can you support them? [SPEAKER_04]: My one of my best stories is a foster care boy that I went to go meet with the two kindergarten teachers and, you know, he was a [SPEAKER_04]: physically burned on his body. [SPEAKER_04]: And I said, well, you take care of him Monday through Friday.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm going to do the trauma work on Sunday. [SPEAKER_04]: And they were like, of course, we will. [SPEAKER_04]: And so he'd walk in on Monday. [SPEAKER_04]: They would hug them. [SPEAKER_04]: They'd give him candy. [SPEAKER_04]: They're like, we heard you did great work with Ms. Monica. [SPEAKER_04]: You're Miss Annie, right? [SPEAKER_04]: And it was this, it was the team approach, right? [SPEAKER_04]: And then the case worker made sure to go visit on Tuesday, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: We had people lined up [SPEAKER_04]: us is having some right and Anne is right I mean my first one of my first population was working in prisons and that is the image those men in prison used to tell me their story of childhood and it's the foster care kids story so when Anne says emergency it is an emergency we know that kids who are dissociative [SPEAKER_04]: Right. [SPEAKER_04]: And many foster care kids end up in prison.
[SPEAKER_04]: This is our, our, the four walls is filled with people who have significant trauma, you know, the four walls of prison. [SPEAKER_02]: So the little prison pipeline. [SPEAKER_02]: Yep. [SPEAKER_02]: And the child welfare to prison pipeline. [SPEAKER_04]: There you go. [SPEAKER_04]: So if we do some work, you know, and foster care kids are moved all the time, right? [SPEAKER_04]: Or our kids wouldn't neglect, or whatever things get happen.
[SPEAKER_04]: But if we do some work, you can really stop. [SPEAKER_04]: Like if you look at all your school shooters, you know, these young people, [SPEAKER_04]: who do you think they are? [SPEAKER_04]: These are highly neglectful children that people let the dissociation continue, didn't treat them. [SPEAKER_04]: And of course, you start hearing voices in your head and parts of self, right? [SPEAKER_04]: We teach lots about parts of self.
[SPEAKER_04]: So, you know, our approach is very comprehensive. [SPEAKER_04]: Of course, we have some one day trainings, but you know, I've pushed in. [SPEAKER_04]: We're now at a five day training and just blinged because, you know, like any, how are you going to get people to sign up to come for five days? [SPEAKER_04]: And they're coming because people want to see our videos, right? [SPEAKER_04]: They want to see my work with dissociation. [SPEAKER_04]: They want to hear the stories.
[SPEAKER_04]: They want to know everything we do to be able to do what you just asked us. [SPEAKER_04]: and I want people to learn that. [SPEAKER_04]: I don't want, you know. [SPEAKER_03]: Well, that's what you people in the field just they feel like they're being helpful instead of spinning our wheels. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: Right. [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I think one of the things that you just highlighted is that what you're doing is not happening in a vacuum.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a there's a surrounding of support for your clients. [SPEAKER_02]: And I think that's one of the things that's missing. [SPEAKER_02]: Two things are missing in our field. [SPEAKER_02]: One is that so many therapists don't know how to identify trauma, but they don't know how to identify when their client is associating. [SPEAKER_02]: And then the second part is that they think that their intervention is happening and then, you know, that's it.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's like [SPEAKER_02]: The person might be left with this open gaping wound when they leave, and you don't realize it, and they come back and tell you that they, you know, decomposated for days, and you then are like, oh, what did I do? [SPEAKER_02]: So I think that it's kind of highlighting just the need for a different. [SPEAKER_02]: approach.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then when we talk about foster care, I mean, the whole system of care for children in foster care and children who are involved in the child welfare system in general is just so focused on their behavior and not their healing is what I think.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, and we have the least experience clinicians with the toughest case loads and that system is not doesn't seem to be going anywhere and you know, that's that's a real is a real issue for me because, you know, the kind of those skills that we're talking about are not in the clinician are not built in a day either, you know, well, in the whole front of me is to see it the right way to
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, and you know, many therapists who come to our training say I don't want to involve the parents and I you know, and I say I already know the answer why don't you they're scary. [SPEAKER_04]: They're not effective and I said so you've been seeing this kid for two years and you don't involve the parents and the behaviors are not improving. [SPEAKER_04]: right. [SPEAKER_04]: And so, you know, we really, this is, I mean, I was a young therapist too, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: And of course, the scary father, the scary mother, whoever, right, and I'm like, oh, I don't want them in, I'm just going to take the kid in. [SPEAKER_02]: You don't like someone being aggressive with you, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: Sure. [SPEAKER_04]: So, you know, it's, we, we try to cover all those pieces, you know, and just doing more in-depth work with those therapists that have really come with us all the way and we just get so many amazing emails like, all right, Annie, I did it today, I went in and I did the swords and my gosh it worked, you know, and it's, you know, again, it's just, it's consultation.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I hear you saying that it's kind of like triaging and this person needs a tournament right now, you know, and it's like we could say we're not going to treat that, you know, we're not going to do that yet. [SPEAKER_02]: It's, you know, we're here in the field instead of an hospital, but they need to turn it now. [SPEAKER_02]: So it's kind of saying like to avoid the deepening of the [SPEAKER_02]: on the developing self. [SPEAKER_02]: We have to intervene now.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, even though it might be painful and imperfect in the short term, you know, just going to be more layers that need to be processed later, but we have to get started. [SPEAKER_04]: And Laura, you know, if you, if people have children that have to go to the hospital and get a medical procedure, we do not give children a choice, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Right. [SPEAKER_04]: If I got broken, I have to be hurt to be reset, but you know, and again, we're not forcing and that's never what we do, but we know, you know, I'm very honest with children, like,
[SPEAKER_04]: You're going to come in here and you get to play with everything in this room and we got to talk about your piss because what's happened to you is really hurting you You know, we have very yeah creative ways right and so it's helping kids get to that point of not avoiding so you know [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: Well, I know we are just about out of time, but I want to ask, can you just tell us quickly how, how are you offering this?
[SPEAKER_02]: I hear you say that there's different lengths of time. [SPEAKER_02]: What, tell us what you have going on. [SPEAKER_02]: So people who are now fascinated and [SPEAKER_02]: can't wait to hear more. [SPEAKER_02]: No, what to do next? [SPEAKER_04]: Can I talk and let me talk about the flow chart and then you talk about the summit. [SPEAKER_04]: So we finally created this great flow chart that's on playful EMDR.com and the flow chart gives you our different levels and where to start.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay, so that's, you know, go to our website, go to training's page. [SPEAKER_04]: You'll see that and of course, you can always email us. [SPEAKER_04]: We answer emails all the time about what should I take, you know, [SPEAKER_04]: And we're doing in-person stuff too. [SPEAKER_04]: We're going to next year we're going to be doing some in-person cities, so that'll be announced soon. [SPEAKER_04]: But we do these other cool things too, and I'll let Anne talk about our summits.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, one of the summits is happening right now this week, which will be too late for people who are listening to the podcast because we're recording it right now, but this spring what we've tried to do is find build some community amongst therapists who are trying to do this integration of play therapy and EMDR and so our next event for that community will be in May in Springdale, Utah, which is at the entrance of Zion National Park, so it should be a wonderful place to also feed this spirit and
[SPEAKER_03]: We have great presenters, including Annie, is going to teach everything she knows about dissociative children in 10 hours. [SPEAKER_03]: It's a today master class that she's doing. [SPEAKER_03]: And then we have Carmen Jimenez Pride, who is going to talk about IFS, Play Therapy, and EMDR, a kind of triple integration. [SPEAKER_03]: And then we also have jiffy flin and curing freed talking about Gestalt Play Therapy and some EMDR applications for that.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so I'm very excited about just the creative juices that are going to flow at that event and we would warmly invite people. [SPEAKER_03]: If you're not trained in EMDR yet, you can't go to that, but there's time to get trained before them. [SPEAKER_04]: If we are basic trainers, yeah, there's come to this side. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah, there's only a handful of child therapists who are basic trainers play therapists for our basic trainers.
[SPEAKER_03]: So our trainings that we still teach the adult protocol as well as child applications, but because we both see kids we tend to sprinkle more kids stuff in so we have a lot of child therapists who come to our basic. [SPEAKER_02]: So even in your basic training, you do teach about child. [SPEAKER_02]: Yes, okay. [SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely. [SPEAKER_02]: At least, sometimes I feel like you need to learn about child therapy to help adults anyway.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes. [SPEAKER_02]: Yes. [SPEAKER_03]: For child therapy and the child within us all, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: Well, we, we've got your website, playfulemdr.com and I will put that in the show notes and Anne and Annie, thank you so much for spending some time with me today and talking about this. [SPEAKER_02]: I think this is beautiful, powerful, super important work and I'm really, really glad that we got to connect. [SPEAKER_04]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for listening to Therapy Chat with your host, Laura Reagan, LCSWC. [SPEAKER_01]: For more information, please visit Therapy ChatPodcast.com.