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Notice That

Notice That

Auteur(s): Jen Savage Melissa Benintendi and Bridger Falkenstien
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An EMDR Podcast Hygiene & Healthy Living
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  • EMDR, Cultural Humility, and Doing Your Own Work: Conversation with Mark Nickerson
    May 8 2025

    “To be a culturally competent therapist is to be a human first—curious, aware, humble, and willing to grow.”

    In this powerful episode of Notice That: An EMDR Podcast, Jen Savage sits down with EMDR therapist, author, and cultural competence advocate Mark Nickerson, LICSW for a rich and timely conversation about what it really means to bring cultural responsiveness into our clinical work.

    This episode invites clinicians to think beyond checkboxes and intake forms—and to reflect on how their personal stories, social identities, and cultural histories shape the therapy they provide. Together, Jen and Mark explore how EMDR can help process both internalized oppression and social bias, and how the work of healing requires an ongoing willingness to look inward.

    “Cultural humility isn’t an add-on—it’s at the heart of any real change.”

    — Mark Nickerson, LICSW

    Why This Conversation Matters

    Therapists often long to be affirming, inclusive, and aware—but aren’t sure where to begin. Mark’s insights offer both practical steps and deep philosophical grounding. His perspective is shaped by decades of clinical work, social advocacy, and a commitment to human rights.

    He shares stories from early workshops where EMDR was used to process two core themes:

    1. A memory of being excluded or discriminated against
    2. A memory of holding bias or participating in exclusion

    In both cases, EMDR offered clarity, healing, and increased self-awareness—making space for deeper empathy and greater readiness to grow.


    Featured Topics:

    • What it means to do your own cultural work as a therapist
    • How identity, privilege, and power dynamics shape the therapy process
    • Using EMDR to target internalized oppression and social bias
    • Legacy trauma, intergenerational pain, and cultural narratives
    • How cultural humility invites us into lifelong self-examination
    • Why EMDR is well-suited to address culturally based trauma—when practiced with awareness

    About the Book

    Mark is the editor and contributing author of the seminal book

    Cultural Competence and Healing Culturally Based Trauma with EMDR Therapy (2nd ed., 2023).

    Spanning more than 400 pages, the book includes seven chapters by Mark and 20 more by authors with diverse identities, backgrounds, and clinical expertise. It addresses racial trauma, immigration and asylum seeking, social class, systemic oppression, and cultural adaptations of EMDR around the world.

    Whether you read it cover-to-cover or use it as a chapter-by-chapter resource, it’s an essential tool for therapists seeking to deepen their work.

    📘 Learn more about the book and Mark’s work at: markinickerson.com


    Want to Go Even Deeper?

    If this conversation stirred something in you—if you’re beginning to ask how your own story shows up in the therapy room—consider exploring the Somatic Integration and Processing (SIP) framework.

    SIP isn’t a replacement for EMDR. It’s a lens that helps therapists explore the worldview they bring into their work. It asks:

    • Why do I respond this way in session?
    • What does safety mean to me?
    • What am I unconsciously avoiding?

    SIP helps therapists do their own work—by mapping how our nervous systems, identities, and histories shape our therapeutic presence.

    📥 Want to explore it for yourself?

    Comment “mirror” on our Instagram page or visit connectbeyondhealing.com and search “SIP” to receive a free PDF chapter on the SIP model.

    See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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    1 h et 2 min
  • Is EMDR Too Insular?: A Conversation with Derek Farrell
    Apr 10 2025
    What happens when a visionary academic, a few decades of lived EMDR experience, and a global perspective meet a pair of U.S.-based EMDR trainers hungry for evolution?You get a conversation that challenges everything we take for granted about training, research, and the future of trauma therapy.In a recent episode of Notice That: An EMDR Podcast, we had the immense honor of sitting down with Dr. Derek Farrell—clinical psychologist, international EMDR leader, Trauma Aid Europe president, and editor of the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of EMDR. His voice is rare in our community: one that spans the trenches of EMDR practice, the architecture of academic programs, and the politics of international research.And he’s not afraid to say what others only whisper.“EMDR is very, very good at talking to itself,” Farrell told us. “But it would be very useful to be more friendly with other organizations.”Farrell sees the echo chamber. He names the structural gaps. And he points toward the opportunities we’re missing if we don’t open up.The Missed Opportunities of a Siloed ModelSince his first training with Francine Shapiro in the 1990s, Farrell has witnessed the evolution of EMDR from fringe to globally recognized treatment. But he’s also watched how the field’s franchise-style model has limited its ability to join the larger scientific conversation.“If you look at the ISTSS annual conference, how many papers are based on EMDR? Very few,” he noted. “And that’s a missed opportunity, because they’re one of the major political players in informing health policy.”Farrell urges the EMDR community to step out of self-reinforcing training cycles and into more robust, interdisciplinary partnerships—particularly with academic institutions and trauma researchers in CBT and related fields.“We have to stop being so insular. If we don’t, we’ll lose space to something else. The future won’t be in our hands—it’ll move on.”The Case for Academic IntegrationFarrell isn’t calling for the abolition of professional trainings—but he’s asking us to see their limits. Especially in countries where trauma prevalence is high and mental health infrastructure is limited, the standard credentialing pipeline simply isn’t realistic—or ethical.“You can’t make decisions in first-world economies about how third-world health systems should deliver care,” he said, referencing his trauma capacity work in Iraq. “They don’t have 10 years to wait for an indigenous EMDR trainer.”In one particularly poignant story, Farrell described how a UK university removed EMDR from its trauma curriculum entirely because their two course leaders—both widely published psychologists—weren’t credentialed EMDR trainers. The credentialing system, he argued, had failed the field.“That would’ve been an amazing opportunity to bring EMDR into mainstream trauma psychology. And we missed it.”Credentialing Is Not the Enemy—But It Can’t Be the Only PathDespite his critiques, Farrell is no enemy of credentialing. In fact, he sees it as critical for clinician protection and client safety.“If a client is choosing between two EMDR therapists—one credentialed and one not—they will always choose the credentialed one,” he said. “And they should.”But he’s clear: our current model doesn’t serve the spectrum of learners, educators, and clients. We need both professional and academic pathways. We need to distinguish between basic attendance and demonstrated competence. And we need to stop pretending that a seven-day training is equivalent to a psychotherapy education.“The contradiction is we call it a basic training, but we also say EMDR is a powerful therapy,” he told us. “Those two things don’t go together.”What About the Protocol? Isn’t That Enough?In the trenches, EMDR therapists often cling to the eight-phase protocol as a kind of life raft. But Farrell challenged us to see it differently.“The protocol is highly forgiving,” he said. “We miss bits out, we forget the VOC or the negative cognition, and the client still processes. That’s the magic of it. But we need to teach people not just the steps—but why and how to break the rules wisely.”Farrell encourages trainers and educators to move beyond memorization and into meaning—especially when the bulk of clients are not single-incident trauma survivors.“We’re teaching to a model that doesn’t reflect the reality of most people’s caseloads,” he said. “It’s no wonder there’s burnout and drop-out after level one.”So… Where Do We Go From Here?Farrell’s parting thoughts were both sobering and deeply hopeful.“We need to get the AIP model into undergrad. Into graduate programs. Into social work and psychology and counseling degrees. Because when students understand that model, EMDR is no longer a leap. It’s a natural next step.”He’s also spearheading a massive academic effort to support that very ...
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    1 h et 19 min
  • What if EMDR Was a Truly Somatic Therapy?
    Mar 27 2025
    What If EMDR Was a Fully Somatic Therapy?In the world of EMDR therapy, conversations about somatics are becoming more and more common. But what if somatics wasn’t just a helpful layer to add onto EMDR? What if it was the foundation? What if we could reimagine EMDR as a truly somatic therapy—one that centers the body as the primary source of healing, rather than just another variable to account for?In a recent episode of Notice That: An EMDR Podcast, Melissa, Bridger, and Jen gathered to reflect on their first EMDR Basic Training as trainers through Beyond Healing Institute—and to introduce a new series that dares to ask big, paradigm-shifting questions about the nature of trauma and the future of EMDR.Launching Something New: The First Beyond Healing EMDR TrainingAfter two years of planning and waiting for approval, the team finally launched their EMDR Basic Training—and it exceeded expectations. What struck them most was how natural the experience felt. The structure of the training emphasized spaciousness, human connection, and honoring the therapist as a vital part of the therapeutic process. Participants left not just informed, but embodied—ready to bring the work into their practice with confidence and clarity.For Melissa, this experience prompted deeper questions about the nature of EMDR itself—questions that have been simmering for years: What would it mean to practice EMDR from a truly somatic orientation? What would change if we made the body—not the memory—the primary focus?Trauma as the Disallowance of Natural ExpressionOne of the core ideas introduced in this episode is a somatic definition of trauma:Trauma is a moment when the body is disallowed its natural response.Whether through physical restraint, anesthesia, shaming, fear, or relational danger, the body’s innate need to express gets halted. What remains is energy that no longer has a context—a charge without a story. That disoriented energy gets stored in the body and, over time, leads to patterns of dissociation, confusion, and eventually depression.From this lens, trauma work is about recontextualizing that energy—giving it back its story—and then addressing the fear (or phobia) that originally caused it to be repressed. Healing, then, becomes about both remembering and reclaiming what the body lost access to.Suppression, Repression, and Depression: A Somatic Venn DiagramThe team explored the difference between suppression and repression, noting that these terms are often used interchangeably but reflect very different processes. Suppression is a conscious decision to hold something back—functional, temporary, and often socially necessary. Repression, on the other hand, is unconscious and usually the result of overwhelming trauma.Chronic repression, over time, often leads to depression—what Melissa described as a loss of access to the body’s vital energy. This devitalization shows up as apathy, confusion, loss of identity, and disconnection from wants, needs, and affect. The work of trauma healing becomes a process of revitalization—not just regulation.Moving Beyond RegulationOne of the major themes of this episode is the critique of the current cultural obsession with “nervous system regulation.” While regulation is a helpful part of the process, it is far from the whole picture. Melissa invites us to ask:Why are we so afraid of activation? Why do we associate calmness with healing, and intensity with danger?From a somatic lens, regulation is not about minimizing activation—it’s about supporting the body in accurately responding to the environment. That means we need to move beyond the dichotomy of regulated = good and dysregulated = bad. Sometimes, yelling, shaking, crying, or expressing intense emotion is the most accurate and necessary response a body can have.Rewriting the Protocol: Why EMDR Isn’t Somatic (Yet)Despite its growing popularity, EMDR in its standard form is not a somatic therapy. As Melissa puts it bluntly:“The only thing somatic about the standard protocol is one question: ‘Where do you feel that in your body?’”Even the body scan at the end of Phase 6 is often used to check if the client is “done,” rather than to deeply listen to the body’s story. Somatics, in its truest form, isn’t about control or compliance. It’s about contact. Real, honest, present-moment contact with the body as it is—not as we want it to be.The team explored how preparation in somatically-focused EMDR would look radically different. Rather than beginning with calmness and containment, it might begin with something more raw and real:“Welcome to your body. How does it feel to be here? What sensations do you notice? Can you feel your aliveness?”Preparing the Body for HealingIn this series, the team will continue to explore how trauma healing changes when we lead with the body. Upcoming episodes will dive into:The concept of affect phobia—why we’re so afraid of feeling, and ...
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    52 min

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