EMDR Advanced Training
EMDR and Complex PTSD
Trainer:Â Erica Boham, LPC
Live Training: May 14th and 15th | 10:00 AM Central Time | Available for synchronous, live learning
On-Demand: Available one week after the live event
Working with Complex PTSD asks more of you as a clinician: more nuance, more patience, and a much bigger toolkit. Standard EMDR protocols don’t always hold when your client dissociates, loops, or floods the moment you approach certain targets.
This live EMDR training is an advanced complex PTSD training for trauma therapists who want practical, neuro‑informed tools - not just theory. You’ll learn how to confidently adapt EMDR for complex trauma presentations, pace treatment safely, work skillfully with parts and dissociation, and support real, sustainable change instead of re‑traumatization.
Practical Interventions You'll Learn
In this advanced EMDR training for trauma therapists working with complex PTSD, you’ll learn how to:
- Use a neuro-informed preparation hierarchy to match EMDR interventions to each client’s functional capacity and nervous system state.
- Apply Polyvagal Theory to EMDR Phases 1–2 to improve regulation, safety, and dual awareness before and during reprocessing.
- Implement ego state and parts-based EMDR interventions to stabilize fragmentation and support internal cooperation in clients with complex trauma.
- Integrate somatic and mindfulness techniques to increase interoception, build distress tolerance, and anchor clients in the present.
- Use constricted processing strategies (EMD & EMDr) when full EMDR would be destabilizing, including symptom-focused and fractionated targeting.
- Apply “taxing working memory” and other stuck‑point strategies when clients loop, avoid, or become overwhelmed during processing.
What You'll Learn
What You’ll Learn in This EMDRIA‑Approved Advanced Training
Clients with Complex PTSD often arrive with long histories of failed treatment, chronic dysregulation, and deep mistrust of their own bodies. They may dissociate quickly, shut down around affect, or spiral into overwhelm after sessions. Applying EMDR “by the book” isn’t enough. You need a complex PTSD training that centers safety, pacing, and the realities of structural dissociation.
In this intensive trauma therapist training, you’ll learn how to:
- Assess when EMDR is indicated or contraindicated for complex PTSD presentations, and how to communicate that clearly to clients.
- Use Polyvagal-informed case conceptualization and the AIP model to design treatment plans that honor each client’s physiology and window of tolerance.
- Build robust Phase 1–2 foundations, including resourcing, ego state work, somatic awareness, and mindfulness skills that prepare clients for trauma processing.
- Screen for dissociation, enhance dual awareness, and modify EMDR for clients with significant parts work needs and fragmentation.
- Implement constricted processing (EMD & EMDr), symptom-focused targeting, and fractionated memories to increase stabilization without opening overwhelming networks.
- Navigate looping, stuck processing, and avoidance using practical interweaves, cognitive and somatic interventions, and working‑memory taxation techniques.
You’ll leave with clear protocols, scripts, and session‑ready interventions you can bring straight into your next complex PTSD session, so you’re not just hoping EMDR will work, you’re using it strategically, safely, and effectively with your most complex clients.
Who This Course Is For
Who is this course for?
This EMDR advanced training is designed for EMDR‑trained clinicians who want to:
- Feel more confident using EMDR with clients who have Complex PTSD, chronic developmental trauma, or long histories of fragmentation and dissociation.
- Go beyond standard protocols to pace treatment, plan targets, and adapt interventions to each client’s nervous system and capacity.
- Have more options when clients loop, freeze, avoid, or become destabilized during or after EMDR sessions.
- Integrate somatic, mindfulness, and ego state approaches into EMDR in a clear, structured way.
- Ground their work in Polyvagal Theory and the AIP model without getting lost in theory or jargon.
Whether you work in private practice, agencies, IOP/PHP programs, or community mental health, if you regularly sit with clients whose trauma histories are layered, chronic, and complex, this trauma therapist training will expand what’s possible in your EMDR work.
About Your Trainer, Erica Bonham, LPC
Erica Bonham is a certified EMDR clinician, consultant, and trainer, and a licensed professional counselor in the state of Colorado. She specializes in serving the LGBTQ community, abuse recovery, and trauma related to social injustice and spiritual abuse, with a focus on somatic and attachment‑based EMDR and ego state work.
A seasoned educator, Erica has led EMDR and trauma therapist trainings and workshops across the country, including for Montgomery County School District (Baltimore, MD), Athens‑Clarke County School District (GA), and the Domestic Violence Coalition in Denver, CO. She weaves her background as a yoga instructor and mindfulness practitioner into her EMDR teaching, helping clinicians deepen their clients’ connection to their bodies and nervous systems.
Erica is the creator of the courses Cultivate Your Inner Badass and Healthy Hope: EMDR Best Practices for Healing Spiritual Trauma, and co‑creator (with Dr. Chinwé Williams) of Healing Racial Trauma with Somatic Therapy. She aspires to be a catalyst for change, justice, growth, evolution, and all‑around badassery, bringing a blend of rigor, irreverence, and heart to everything she teaches. She seeks to “get into good trouble” dismantling systems of oppression and white supremacy, and to be part of an emergent, reimagined world rooted in beauty, equity, nonviolence, and the empowerment of all beings.
Additional Information
Learning Objectives
Prerequisites
Continuing Education
Course Completion
Cancellation Policy
Schedule - Central
Free resource from Trauma Therapist Institute
Designed to help you evaluate your client’s readiness for EMDR therapy!
