Consultation Toward EMDR Certification as an Indispensable Bridge

By Susie Morgan, LMFT - May 10, 2026

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Why Basic Training Is the Beginning, and Mentored Consultation Is What Actually Builds a Fluent EMDR Therapist

Don't go into the garage. Don't go into the garage. And they go anyway.

Every time I watch a new EMDR therapist walk out of Basic Training and not directly into a consultation group, I feel the way I feel watching a horror movie when the character is heading toward the garage.

That might seem a little dramatic or silly, but it is how it lands for me as a trainer. From a bird's-eye view, I can see what clinicians can and cannot take away from Basic Training. I can see what is enough for them and what is not.

And I can see the wide stretch between finished Basic Training and a fluent EMDR therapist. That stretch is where consultation lives. It is also where most of the actual learning happens.

So I want to talk about why I believe consultation matters as much as it does, what tends to go wrong when EMDR therapists try to skip or shortcut it, and what I think a strong consultation experience needs to provide - both so you know what to look for as you shop for a consultant, and so that those of us who consult can keep raising the bar on what we offer.

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EMDR Basic Training Is a Foundation. It Is Not Fluency.

Six days of training does not make you fluent in an entire psychotherapy.

The bottom line is that Basic Training is not enough. It is six days, plus ten hours of consultation, and inside that container we are asking clinicians to take on a full paradigm shift.

Techniques, applications, case conceptualization, readiness, target sequence planning. What to do when processing is going smoothly. What to do when it gets blocked, and why it gets blocked.

And we are not, most of the time, treating people with simple PTSD. We are treating people with layers of trauma and a kaleidoscope of symptoms, and we owe them treatment that does justice to that complexity, both to make the work safe and to make it effective.

When I am leading a Basic Training, I am doing everything I can to provide a foundation that is far more robust than what I got when I was originally trained, and far more robust than what I have watched many of my consultees walk in with over the years.

And even then, even with everything we pack into those six days, I know it is not enough to do a thorough job in that constricted of a setting. This is an entire psychotherapy. We are working with real human beings.

My team and I have gone back and forth on this. Could we begin consultation a little later? Could we extend it further out? Could we restructure the dosing somehow so that students could metabolize the material before they were also expected to apply it?

The answer we keep landing on is: consultation has to start at the beginning, and it has to continue well past where Basic Training ends. Both. There are too many questions at the front end about how to begin and who to begin with, and there are too many questions later - questions you cannot even know to ask until a particular client walks in your door.

If we shorten the front end, we leave new clinicians stranded. If we only stretch out Basic Training consultation, the dosing is still inadequate for what this work actually requires.

Basic Training is the foundation. Fluency is something else. Fluency is what comes from continuing on - into more training, into structured consultation, into the long, careful process of learning how to think in EMDR rather than how to recite it.

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Going Into the Garage: What Happens for an EMDR Therapist Without Continued Consultation

You don't always know the question until the client is already in front of you.

This is where I get protective. When a newly trained EMDR therapist finishes Basic Training and does not move directly into a consultation group or a certification process, what happens next is that they are out in the wild of clinical practice - and they have people's lives in their hands.

There is so much to this work. There is so much to what their clients have been through. And there is so much they will not know to ask until a particular client surfaces a particular complexity that the training simply could not have anticipated.

This came home to me again over the last couple of days, when I had nearly identical conversations with three different consultees. All three had finished Basic Training years ago. All three were finally embarking on the path toward EMDR Certification. And all three, as they joined our consultation groups, were having the same realization: Whoa. There is a lot I still need to learn.

And of course, each of them had personalized it. Each of them thought they were the only one. They were not the only one. Their story is not unique.

What happens, again and again, is that clinicians come out of EMDR Basic Training with the impression that this is most of what there is, further training and consultation are optional, they are may-haves, not must-haves. I have even seen other EMDR clinicians recommend that their newly trained colleagues practice for a while before seeking further guidance or support.

But then a wide world of things these clinicians actually need to know opens up in front of them, with no one giving them firm or clear direction about the path that leads to competence and confidence.

Some of that disorientation is structural.

It is not even as if EMDRIA is the only game in town. There are non-EMDRIA-approved trainings that require less than what EMDRIA requires. And even within the EMDRIA-approved standards, there is a variety pack of levels of training you can get.

That is the cultural problem I want to name. EMDRIA sets a benchmark, and the benchmark matters. But the benchmark is a baseline.

So the messaging needs to change. Yes, you are EMDR trained. Yes, EMDR Basic Training is the EMDR Basic Training. And no, that is not the finish line. The next step is to beeline into a structured consultation experience and stay there long enough to actually develop fluency.

This is part of why we structure Precision EMDR the way we do. We design our program to meet EMDRIA's standards, teach Francine Shapiro's standard protocol in the required framework, and then add and deepen, with emphasis on readiness, strategic target sequence planning, mapping trauma memory networks, and meaningful attention to attachment from the beginning.

I am a big fan of what we do according to EMDRIA standards and of how we go beyond them. Even with all of that, Basic Training is still Basic Training. You still need to know where to go next. You still need to know how to deepen next.

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Teaching You to Think in EMDR, Not Check the Boxes

Consultation is mentorship, not a certification checklist.

The way our team at Precision EMDR thinks about consultation is that it is a mentorship. It is not a place where I just help you check boxes toward a credential.

It is a place where I teach you how to think in EMDR. How to dance in EMDR. How to be fluent enough to know exactly what you are doing and why, and to be able to articulate that clearly to your clients - so that their consent is an educated consent, and their voice and choice in their care is a real voice and a real choice. That is what makes treatment trauma-informed in practice, not just in language.

That kind of fluency does not come from a single, scripted right way to say a thing. It comes from understanding the model deeply enough to say something six different ways, depending on what helps the client in front of them understand what they mean.

To adjust without losing fidelity. To depart, when needed, and be able to explain exactly why. That is what I am trying to build with my consultees - clinicians who know EMDR Standard Protocol so thoroughly that they can carry it into complexity without losing it, and who can name the difference between a necessary, meaningful adaptation and a drift.

That is also what shifts a consultee out of the painful loop of am I doing this right. When clinicians have eyes to see what the model is doing and why, the question changes. They stop chasing approval and start exercising clinical judgment.

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Building Consultation toward EMDR Certification on Purpose: Integrating Advanced Training into Consultation

Structure is not a constraint. It is what allows the integration to happen.

In the 15 years that I’ve been providing EMDR consultation, I have seen patterns in where my consultees get stuck. The same gaps, in the same places, again and again.

Eyes that had not been trained to see readiness capacities, so clinicians would land in the woods of reprocessing and have to find their way out under conditions that were messier and more laborious than they needed to be.

Target sequence planning that had been taught as just start anywhere - pick the low-hanging fruit - and then the predictable consequences: piecemeal results, feeder memories blocking the way, a vague sense that EMDR was not living up to the hype.

Blocking beliefs around attachment. Strategies clients had developed in early life that needed to be understood as adaptations, not pathology.

At a certain point, I realized I was teaching the same things in consultation over and over. So I built the teaching into a course - first a readiness course, and now a much more extensive curriculum that helps consultees deeply understand the AIP model, complex trauma, attachment, and the pieces necessary to do standard protocol well with the clients we actually see.

That course, Decoding Complex Developmental Trauma Using EMDR Therapy, meets the EMDRIA requirement for Advanced EMDR Training toward certification, but more importantly, it shores up the foundational understanding that allows consultation itself to become an integration space rather than a teaching space.

That is the structure I have built our consultation toward EMDR certification around, and it is what I think a strong consultation experience needs to provide.

The required Advanced EMDR Training is designed to deliberately bridge the gap between EMDR Basic Training and real-world application. It is structured to facilitate a deepened understanding of the concepts introduced in Basic Training and to widen the application of those concepts to the more complex cases consultees actually see in their practices.

The Advanced EMDR Training clarifies the AIP model enough that consultees can hold it as their own clinical lens and explain it to their clients in accessible language. It solidifies the foundational pieces that make standard protocol actually workable with the complexity that walks in our doors.

It frames readiness assessment practically, so consultees have a rubric for what the brain and nervous system need to be able to do before reprocessing. It strategically shapes target sequence planning, so they know where they are going and why, with present triggers, key past memories, and the touchstone memory mapped clearly.

It teaches how to track the impact of the EMDR reprocessing across frequency, intensity, and duration of present-day triggers and symptoms. It deepens into attachment, so the strategies clients have built to survive early life are recognized as adaptations to be understood and worked with - not pathology to be eliminated.

Decoding Complex Developmental Trauma Using EMDR Therapy acts as a companion course while consultees are in a consultation group. We talk through the questions the material raises and the application of those concepts to actual cases.

The structure of the schedule keeps clinicians progressing through the material. The group itself provides the benefit of camaraderie in normalizing confusion, sharing clarification, and offering mutual validation that developing this level of understanding and skill takes dedication and courage.

By no longer using consultation to teach what is now taught through the companion coursework, I am able to better help clinicians metabolize what they are learning and apply it within the complexity of their practices.

Individual Consultation focuses on case presentation, skills verification, fidelity, and optimization. This is where the most precise, personalized development happens.

I begin by having my consultees complete a fidelity checklist as a self-reflection exercise, not as a test.  I ask them to complete one again regarding their case presentation, and once more again the end of our work together.  Each time, this is an invitation to share where concepts feel shaky, where skills aren’t fully developed, and where support is needed. It is equally a time to celebrate their progressive growth of understanding and competence.

I ask my consultees to present a single case all the way through - readiness assessment, where capacities were strong and where they needed to be developed, what strategy they used to develop them, what the result was. Then their target sequence plan, with the rationale for whether they used comprehensive target sequence planning or stayed symptom-focused. All three prongs and eight phases covered.

This includes a video of a specific processing session - activating a target in the Assessment Phase and moving into Reprocessing all the way through Closure.  Reviewing blocks they encountered and the rationale for interweaves they used. Each part viewed and discussed together. Not a homework assignment turned in for a grade, but an interactive exercise designed to optimize procedure, attunement, and nuanced effectiveness.

This piece is intimidating. My consultees tell me so consistently. And it is also, just as consistently, the part they say mattered the most. Because in real-time review of their actual work, I can give them feedback on things they could not have known to ask about. I can tell them when they are getting in their own way. I can show them the small adjustment that changes everything downstream.

And the arc of assuredness that develops between the first fidelity self-assessment and the last is well earned. That is what consultation is for. To help clinicians refine their work, their effectiveness, and their confidence in a setting where someone is paying close enough attention to show them what they would never have seen on their own.

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Why This Matters

Consultation is the secure base from which competence actually grows.

There is a reason I keep coming back to this. There is so much to learn in EMDR, and so much that does not become visible until a clinician has a relationship with someone who can both challenge them and cheer them on.

Ideally, the consultation relationship is itself a manifestation of what we talk about when we talk about secure attachment - attunement, nurture, support, guidance. The whole point being that clinicians are protected when they go into the garage. That they know what they are doing. That they know how to navigate what they find there.

Basic Training is the basics. Consultation is where clinicians become fluent. Fluency is what allows their work to be safe, and it is what allows it to be effective. And it is what allows them, eventually, to feel as confident as the work demands they be.

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Train and Consult With Us at Precision EMDR

So here is my plug. Do not walk into the garage without adequate support first. There are ways to feel much more competent in this work. There are ways to feel much more secure in it. And there is a path.

Find a consultant who is not just signing off on your hours, but who is mentoring you into fluency. Find a structure that meaningfully integrates advanced training into the group and/or individual consultation process. Find a relationship that is safe enough for you to bring your I don't know to the table and have it met with care, precision, and a clear next step.

Find that, and you do not have to figure this out alone.

If you would like to learn from us, we offer EMDRIA-Approved Basic Training, a Refresher Course, and an Advanced Certification in Complex Developmental Trauma.

Myself and others on our team lead consultation groups that are curriculumed alongside our advanced coursework, with individual consultation built in for skills verification and case optimization toward Certification. The whole thing is designed to do exactly what we have been talking about - to help you build fluency, on purpose.

If you are shopping for a consultant, whether or not it ends up being one of us, these are the pieces I would encourage you to look for. Mentorship over checklist. Advanced Training alongside consultation. Group for shared learning, and individual for precision and skills verification. A consultant who can hold both the teaching voice and the relational voice, and who is in this with you for the inevitable stretch between foundation and fluency.

If you would like to train and consult differently - on purpose - we would love to have you join us.

Leave a comment here, reach out on Instagram @precisionemdr, or email me at susie@precisionemdr.com. I am here to dialogue with you about any of this.

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Resources

• Develop and Deepen Your EMDR Skills:
  • Precision EMDR Basic Training: CLICK HERE
  • Precision EMDR Refresher Course: CLICK HERE
  • Decoding Complex Developmental Trauma Using EMDR Therapy: CLICK HERE

References

EMDRIA Certification Requirements: https://www.emdria.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/A-Guide-to-EMDR-Certification-Requirements.pdf

Precision EMDR Certification Guide: https://www.precisionemdr.com/emdr-certification#basic

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