You Don't Have to Become an EMDR Consultant Alone

Read Time: 6 Minutes

There is a moment most Consultants in Training know well. A consultee brings you something hard; you handle it as best you can; the call ends, and you sit there wondering: was that right? Was I too soft? Too blunt? Would a more experienced consultant have caught something I missed?

And then you realize there is no one to ask.

Your consultees can't be that person, because you hold their work. Your clients certainly can't. Your consultation hours help, but they are scheduled, finite, and often weeks apart. For many CITs, especially those in solo practice, the pathway to the consultant credential becomes the loneliest stretch of their professional life. It does not have to be.

Why the Consultant Pathway Gets Lonely

Consultation is structurally isolating in a way clinical work is not. As a therapist, you can bring a stuck case to peer consultation and half the room nods in recognition. As a new consultant, your questions change shape. How do I tell a consultee their target selection keeps drifting without deflating them? What do I do when someone's hours are almost done but their protocol fidelity is not? How do I set fees for something I have never charged for?

These are consultant questions, and most clinicians simply do not know many consultants.

EMDRIA requires you to work with at least five consultees and receive 20 hours of consultation, but the requirements say nothing about having colleagues who are walking the same road at the same time. That part is left to you.

The cost of going without it is rarely dramatic. Isolation does not usually stop a CIT outright. It just makes everything slower and heavier: decisions get second-guessed instead of talked through, small doubts compound, and a credential that should take a year or two quietly stretches toward EMDRIA's five-year limit.

What Changes When You Have People

Calibration, mostly. The question underneath almost every new consultant's worry is "am I doing this the way it is supposed to be done?" and the fastest way to answer it is hearing how other consultants handle the same situations. One conversation where a seasoned consultant says, "Oh, that happens to everyone; here is what I do," can dissolve a doubt you have been carrying for a month.

Community also does something subtler: it keeps the role from feeling like a performance. When your only consultant contact is the person evaluating you, every question can feel like evidence against your readiness. Among peers, questions return to what they are in every other part of clinical life: how the work gets done.

What Community Looks Like Inside TTI

We built our Consultant Network so that no one trains into this role alone. Two pieces of it matter most for CITs.

The monthly consultant connection space. A live, recurring gathering of TTI consultants and Consultants in Training. It is where the calibration happens: how others structure their consultation groups, handle a struggling consultee, set boundaries and fees, and keep their own clinical thinking sharp while spending more time on other people's cases. New consultants get the benefit of experienced ones; experienced consultants get the sharpening that comes from articulating what they do and why.

The private consultant channel. Consulting questions do not wait politely for the next meeting. The channel is where the in-between questions go, the "quick gut check before my 2 PM" kind, asked among people who understand exactly what is being asked and why it matters.

Around those two sit the rest of the program's structure: shadowing TTI Basic Training and consultation groups so you watch experienced consultants work before you lead, mentorship from multiple TTI faculty across different clinical specialties so you are never limited to one perspective, and a dedicated group of Basic Training therapists to consult with so the community includes the consultees themselves.

Shame-Free Spaces, for Consultants Too

Everything at TTI runs on one idea: people learn better when they are not busy protecting themselves. We call it Shame-Free Spaces for Learning, and it applies doubly to consultants, because the consultant role comes with a quiet pressure to already know everything.

You do not have to arrive finished. In our spaces, being a consultant in training means you get to be real, ask the awkward question, make mistakes in front of people who have made the same ones, and grow without performance pressure. Consultees can feel the difference in a consultant who was trained that way, because that consultant creates the same room for them.

Ready to Build With People Around You?

Our EMDR Consultant Training is an EMDRIA-aligned, year-long Consultant in Training internship with the full structure built in: your 20 hours of consultation (10 individual, 10 group), a dedicated consultee group, shadowing, faculty mentorship, and membership in the Consultant Network with the monthly connection space and private channel. $3,600 total, with financing and flexible monthly payment plans available.

I'm ready to become an EMDR consultant

Still weighing the decision? Two companion reads: our walkthrough of how to become an EMDRIA Approved Consultant covers every requirement in the 2026 standards, and the top 5 barriers to becoming an EMDR consultant names what usually gets in the way. Or take the full guide with you:

I'm getting the Top 5 Barriers Guide

FAQs

Does EMDRIA require CITs to be part of a community?

No. EMDRIA's requirements cover your consultees, your consultation of consultation hours, credits, and timeline. Community is the part the standards leave to you, which is exactly why so many CITs end up working through the pathway alone and why we built it into our program instead.

What is the monthly consultant connection space?

A live, recurring gathering of TTI consultants and Consultants in Training inside our Consultant Network. It is where consultants compare notes on the real questions of the role: structuring groups, giving hard feedback well, fees, boundaries, and staying sharp. Members also have a private consultant channel for the questions that come up between meetings.

I am partway through my CIT hours already. Is community still worth adding?

Often more so, because the middle of the pathway is where isolation drags the most. Wherever you are in the process, reach out to us at hello@traumatherapistinstitute.com and we will talk through what makes sense for your situation.

References

_{EMDR International Association. (2026). EMDRIA Approved Consultant in Training™ FAQs. https://www.emdria.org/emdr-training/emdr-consultant-in-training/}