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EMDR Advanced Training
EMDR with Avoidance, Idealization, and Shame
Advanced EMDR Training for Targeting the Defenses That Block Trauma Processing
Every EMDR therapist has a client like this. You approach the target and processing loops on the same image for three sets in a row. Or they go blank and report that nothing is happening. Or they remind you, one more time, that their childhood was fine and their mom did her best. Maybe they show up after another blowup with the partner they keep on a pedestal and tell you they've decided to stay, because he really is a great guy.
If you're honest, these sessions do something to you too. You feel the frustration creeping in, or you catch yourself dreading a certain name on the schedule, and then you feel guilty for dreading it. Narcissistic and idolizing traits are genuinely hard to sit with. But the countertransference usually isn't a sign that you've run out of compassion. More often it means the case conceptualization is missing a piece. These traits are defenses that formed around unmet needs, neglect, and unresolved trauma, and once you can see what a defense is protecting, both empathy and treatment get easier.
Here's the bind with standard EMDR: it assumes your client can hold dual attention while the memory network lights up. Complex and dissociative clients often can't do that yet. The defenses that kept them alive are still on duty, so every time you get close to the material, avoidance, idealization, or shame shuts the work down. Push harder and they flood. Back off and you can spend another year circling the same targets.
Jon Roberts, LCSW built this half-day training for exactly that bind. Drawing on Jim Knipe's EMDR Toolbox and the Theory of Structural Dissociation, he'll walk you through a road map for targeting the defenses themselves: mapping your client's system, protecting dual attention in real time, softening defenses with bilateral stimulation, and building enough internal cooperation that deeper reprocessing finally becomes possible.
Practical Skills
Practical Interventions You'll Learn
Across four modules, you will learn how to:
- Map a client's dissociative parts visually with the Language of Ovals, creating safe distance from disturbing memory networks
- Track present-moment orientation in real time with the Back of the Head Scale (BHS) and titrate access to trauma networks with CIPOS to prevent overwhelm
- Target avoidance and idealization defenses that block trauma processing using the LOUA and LOPA protocols, with step-by-step scripts for each
- Loosen dissociated memory elements with the "What's Good About..." interweave to unstick stalled processing
- Move clients through defensive shame with shame-to-grief interweaves that access the mourning beneath the defense
- Resolve clients' fear of their own traumatized parts and build internal cooperation with Loving Eyes and the Internal Healing Dialogue when reprocessing stalls
What You Get
What's Waiting for You Inside This Training
Conceptualize a client's dissociative system
By mapping Present Oriented Parts, Trauma Reliving Parts, and Psychological Defense Parts, so hidden structural dissociation stops catching you off guard
Recognize avoidance, idealization, and shame
As adaptations rather than resistance, and spot each one in session through cognition, affect, and the body
Protect dual attention in real time
Using the Back of the Head Scale, somatic grounding anchors, and CIPOS to keep processing inside the window of tolerance
Target defenses directly with bilateral stimulation
Using the LOUA and LOPA protocols, so blocked material becomes accessible instead of walled off
Assess contraindications
So you know when defense-focused work is indicated and when to slow down, stabilize, or seek consultation
Learn on your schedule
On-demand access means you go at your own pace. Lifetime access is included, so you can return whenever you need it.
Repair internal relationships between part
Using Loving Eyes and the Internal Healing Dialogue when clients fear their own traumatized parts
Free community membership
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Meet Your Trainer
About Your Trainer
Jon Roberts
LCSW
Jon Roberts, LCSW has served in the mental health field since 2005, much of it in community mental health treating highly complex populations. His clinical background includes work in a domestic violence shelter, on a sexual assault crisis hotline, on an SPMI team, in day treatment, and in child and family outpatient therapy.
For the last decade, Jon has focused on integrating advanced EMDR protocols with parts-work principles, drawing on Internal Family Systems, the Theory of Structural Dissociation of the Personality, and Jim Knipe's Toolbox Method.
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Break Through the Defenses Keeping Processing Stuck
When avoidance, idealization, or shame shuts down trauma processing, pushing harder isn’t the answer. This advanced training gives you a clear, parts-informed approach for identifying what’s blocking the work, targeting defenses directly, and helping complex and dissociative clients safely access what’s underneath so you can move beyond stalled sessions and create meaningful therapeutic movement.