EMDR Advanced Training
EMDR with Adolescents: Parts Work, Modified Processing, and High-Risk Behaviors
Trainer: Jon Roberts, LCSW, CAS
On-Demand:Â Thursday, July 30th | Available for synchronous, live learning
Working with adolescents is different. Most therapists know this. What’s harder to articulate is exactly how EMDR needs to be different, and what to do when the standard protocol stops working.
Teens don’t process the way adults do. Their brains are in the middle of a structural renovation, back-to-front, with reward circuitry running ahead of impulse control and prefrontal regulation still years away from completion. When you add complex trauma, dissociation, and high-risk behaviors to that picture, the standard EMDR script isn’t just insufficient. It can push clients away from therapy entirely.
This five-module on-demand training with Jon Roberts, LCSW, CAS gives you a complete, developmentally grounded framework for EMDR with adolescents aged 13 to 18. You will learn how to adapt preparation, work with parts, modify phase 3, and apply specialized protocols for the teens whose risk behaviors are both symptom and barrier. The course is built around a continuous case study of a 15-year-old client named Riley, moving from intake through treatment so you can see every adaptation applied in real clinical context.
Practical Interventions You’ll Learn
You will learn how to:
- Â Adapt standard EMDR preparation using titrated, concrete, and creative alternatives to cliche exercises that teenagers are most likely to reject
- Build a Safe/Calm Estate, a teen-appropriate memory palace that functions as a container for resourcing across sessions
- Map and contact parts using an IFS-informed, structurally dissociative framework adapted for adolescent presentations
- Use concrete scaling, such as lumps of Play-Doh instead of 0-10 numbers, to avoid triggering school anxiety during phase 3
- Apply titration techniques, including the Walkie-Talkie and Videotape approaches, to prevent working memory overload during processing
- Use the Feeling-State Protocol to target the emotional drivers beneath high-risk behaviors
- Apply DeTUR (Desensitization of Triggers and Urge Reprocessing) for adolescents with substance use and addictive patterns
- Use the LOU-A (Level of Urge to Avoid) protocol for avoidant and shutdown presentations
Conduct Internal Healing Dialogues between teen parts to resolve internal phobias and unblock processing
What You’ll Learn in This EMDRIA Approved Advanced Training
By the end of this training, you will be able to:
- Describe the trajectory of adolescent brain development, including synaptic pruning, myelination, and back-to-front maturation, and explain how these factors shape EMDR case conceptualization and pacing
- Titrate preparation intensity to safely move teens closer to the processing phase without triggering shutdown or dropout
- Apply parts work techniques grounded in IFS, the EMDR Toolbox Method, and the Theory of Structural Dissociation, to help adolescents identify and communicate with different parts of themselves
- Activate traumatic memory networks using a modified phase 3 assessment adapted for adolescent attention spans, nervous system states, and processing styles
- Select and apply evidence-based protocols, including DeTUR, Feeling-State Protocol, and LOU-A for adolescent clients with substance use, self-harm, or other high-risk behaviors
Who is this course for?
This training is for EMDR-trained clinicians who:
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Work with adolescents aged 13 to 18 and want a developmentally specific EMDR framework
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 Have tried applying standard EMDR with teens and run into resistance, shutdown, or dropout
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 Are working with adolescents who present with self-harm, substance use, or other high-risk behaviors
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 Want to understand how dissociation and parts work apply in adolescent presentations
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 Are looking for concrete, creative adaptations they can begin using right away
You do not need to specialize in adolescents to benefit. If teens are part of your caseload and EMDR has felt like a poor fit for them, this training will change that.
Prerequisites note: Participants should have completed EMDR Basic Training. Prerequisite: EMDR Basic Training.
About Your Trainer, Jon Roberts, LCSW, CAS
Jon Roberts is a licensed clinical social worker, certified addictions specialist, and EMDRIA Approved Consultant based in Colorado. He specializes in bringing EMDR to children, adolescents, and their families, with a caseload that routinely includes complex trauma, dissociation, and relational distress. He has a strong foundation in family systems and brings both clinical rigor and creative flexibility to his work, drawing on the approaches of Ana Gomez, Jim Knipe, Sue Johnson, and Richard Schwartz.
Jon’s approach is grounded in the belief that effective EMDR with adolescents requires genuine adaptation, not just simplified adult protocols. He strives to bring play and imagination into treatment and consultation, and to meet teens where their nervous systems actually are rather than where a protocol expects them to be.
