The Gaps in Traditional EMDR Basic Training

By Susie Morgan, LMFT - April 6, 2026

After 15 years of providing EMDR Consultation and more than 20 years as an EMDR therapist, I have seen certain patterns emerge.

Patterns in where clinicians get stuck.
Patterns in places of confusion and misunderstanding.
Patterns in what too many therapists were never really taught in the first place.

That is a large part of why Precision EMDR Academy exists.

Over and over, I found myself working with consultees who were thoughtful, invested, and wanting to do excellent work. But the same gaps kept showing up. Not because these consultees were not trying, but because these things were simply not being taught—or at least not being taught clearly.

Those gaps kept gathering around a few places: Readiness, Target Sequence Planning, and understanding the procedures of EMDR therapy in a way that goes beyond following the script into the deeper why behind the work.

In this piece, I want to focus on three smaller components that serve as examples within those larger areas that I believe deserve much more emphasis in EMDR Basic Trainings: dissociation screening, feeder memories, and target activation in the assessment phase.

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Dissociation Screening: If All You Learned Was the DES, It Is Not Enough

It is about recognizing the signs that matter before reprocessing begins.

Again and again, consultees would come in talking about where the work had gone sideways. Over time, it became clear that many of those stuck places were not random. They were often predictable.

If the clinician had had eyes to see readiness more clearly from the beginning, there were usually signs that could have been recognized much earlier—in Calm Place, in Container, and in dissociation screening. If those signs had been understood for what they were, there often could have been more front-loading, more preparation, and far less likelihood of ending up in the woods later.

One of the most critical aspects of readiness I have seen clinicians struggle to recognize is dissociation. I learned its importance through my own early experience as an EMDR therapist.

When I was first trained, I was taught to use the DES. That is still how many clinicians are being trained now in many of the big box or “gold standard” EMDR trainings. The problem is that the DES does not give enough direction.

At best, it may tell a clinician there is reason to slow down. But it does not tell enough about what kind of dissociation is present, how that dissociation is functioning, or what the implications are for the work.

And that matters because dissociation is not one thing. It is a spectrum.

There can be the derealization or depersonalization we see in response to a shock trauma. There can be derealization and depersonalization functioning as an affect management strategy in daily life, especially for clients with complex developmental trauma. There can be trance experiences, somatoform manifestations, and disremembered actions. There can also be more severe and sophisticated dissociative symptoms, involving parts of self each holding a first-person perspective, so that some can hold the trauma while others maintain the responsibilities of daily life. I was not taught how to think about that spectrum, and that gap mattered.

At worst, the DES’s inadequate sensitivity can cause a clinician to miss severe dissociative symptoms altogether.

Two of my early clinical experiences made that painfully clear.

In one case, I simply could not make sense of what I was seeing until a psychiatrist recognized that the client was likely presenting with a Dissociative Identity Disorder. In another, I had not yet been taught that dissociation must be screened for before beginning any bilateral. While guiding my client through creating a Calm Place and Container, my client used the Container to contain a part of self. It created significant distress, and it scared me too, because I did not understand what was happening.

That was the beginning of a much deeper learning process for me.

I went to training after training. I sought consultation. Eventually, through consultation with Dolores Mosquera and through working carefully with the MID, I began to develop a more structured way of screening for dissociation that could actually help make the spectrum clinically visible. That structure is now part of what we use in both our Basic Training and Advanced EMDR Trainings at Precision.

Because if all clinicians walk out of EMDR Basic Training with is “use the DES,” they do not have enough information. They do not know enough about the type of dissociation they may be seeing, its degree, or the constellation of symptoms that may be present. And they do not know enough to determine whether standard reprocessing is appropriate, whether modifications are needed, or whether the case is outside their scope of practice altogether.

That is not a small gap. It is a readiness issue. It is a safety issue. And it is one of the clearest examples I know of where clinicians are often left with far too little for what the work actually requires.

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Feeder Memories: The Missing Logic in Target Sequence Planning

It is not just about what hurts the most. It is about what fed the dysfunction first.

Target Sequence Planning is one of the areas I find most critically under-taught in traditional EMDR Basic Trainings.

There are programs that do this well. Some teach symptom-focused treatment planning. Some teach schema-focused treatment planning. But many clinicians leave training with something much thinner: take the top 10 worst memories and process those. Or use a floatback on the “problem of the day” and see what turns up.

That may sound like treatment planning, but it does not offer enough of the deeper logic needed to move strategically through complex trauma.

At Precision, Target Sequence Planning is taught much more extensively. Sometimes that means comprehensively mapping all of the relevant schemas and trauma memory networks in advance. Sometimes it means decoding present symptoms, identifying the primary schemas connected to them, and tracing back the trauma memory networks driving those symptoms. Sometimes, in a crisis, it means using a floatback model.

What matters is that the work is not being organized randomly. It is being organized according to AIP logic.

Feeder memories are intrinsic to Target Sequence Planning, but the concept often still feels new to consultees—or unclear, if they remember hearing the term at all.

A feeder memory is an earlier memory in the trauma memory network that is still feeding the dysfunction in the target currently being processed. The original maladaptive learning happened earlier than the target in front of the clinician now. So if that earlier memory is still intact, it can block the work later on.

In many trainings, feeder memories are handled almost like expected detours. If processing gets blocked, go back and process the earlier one.

But the AIP model points to something much more strategic than that. If the root can be processed first—the place where the meaning became distorted in the first place—the later work is often far more efficient. This is a cornerstone of Precision EMDR’s methodology: if at all possible, go back to the root first.

Because EMDR and the AIP model are based in learning theory.

If the original learning was I am not safe, or it’s my fault, or I am worthless, and later experiences kept getting filtered through that same lens, then of course it makes sense to go back to the origin first. That is where the dysfunction began. That is where the later meanings started gathering.

This is why random top ten lists, low-hanging fruit, or jumping to adult memories because they feel easier can create so much inefficiency. Clinicians can spend a very long time working around the root while the original learning is still sitting there feeding the dysfunction.

And because this work so often involves complex developmental trauma, clinicians need to think much more strategically about what must be cleared first so less is feeding the dysfunction later on. This means organizing the work in a way that allows later targets to fall more efficiently because the original learning is no longer in the way.

Yes, those early memories are often more tender. That is real. But that is a different problem, one solved with attachment repair interweaves—another subject for another blog. It is not a reason to abandon strategic sequencing.

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The Assessment Phase: Reprocessing Does Not Happen Without Activation

It is not enough to gather the baseline. The target has to be lit up enough for the work to actually move.

The last area I want to highlight is one I have seen come up again and again in consultation, especially with clinicians trained in more traditional or big box EMDR programs: misunderstanding what the assessment phase is actually for.

Part of the confusion may be in the name itself.

Francine Shapiro calling it the assessment phase naturally put the emphasis on gathering information and getting baseline scores. And yes, that is part of what is happening. But that is not the part of the phase that makes reprocessing possible. What matters is that the memory is being activated.

That is what those questions are for.

The image is not just a detail to note. It is the sensory living color of the memory.
The negative cognition is not just a line in the protocol. It is the meaning the client’s system assigned to the experience.
The body sensation question is not simply one more piece of data. It is the way the nervous system is still holding what happened.

If the target is not sufficiently activated, what follows is often not really reprocessing at all. It is much closer to free association. The channels do not move through the relevant material as they need to. The disturbance does not really come down. The work can look right on the surface while failing to do what EMDR is meant to do.

Part of why I think this gets so muddied is the way window of tolerance is often taught in EMDR trainings.

Window of tolerance is an important concept. But I think it has often been over-applied in ways that create affect phobia in clinicians.

Therapists can become so concerned about clients getting outside the window of tolerance that they back away too quickly, without understanding that big feelings do not necessarily mean someone is reliving. Big feelings can also mean the memory is activated optimally for reprocessing.

What we are looking for is one foot in the past and one foot in the present—that place where the memory is activated enough to move, and the client is still present enough to stay with it and stay with us.

That is why it is not enough to simply read the script correctly. Clinicians need to understand the why of each step and what is critical that we are actually accomplishing in each part of the procedure.

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Conclusion

It is not just about learning the protocol. It is about learning the missing pieces that let the protocol actually work.

Dissociation screening, feeder memories, and target activation in the assessment phase are three examples of what I have seen missed or misunderstood again and again when clinicians leave traditional EMDR Basic Trainings.

But each of those reflects something larger.

They all point back to larger gaps in clarity about Readiness, Target Sequence Planning, and the critical WHY of EMDR therapy procedures beyond the script.

That is the reason Precision EMDR teaches differently.

Because clinicians need more than a protocol. They need the depth, strategy, and understanding that let the work be safe, effective, and responsive to what is actually in front of them.

Resources

• Develop and Deepen Your EMDR Skills:
  
  • Precision EMDR Basic Training: CLICK HERE
  • Precision EMDR Refresher Course: CLICK HERE
  • Advanced Certification in Complex Developmental Trauma: CLICK HERE

References:

Ecker, B., Ticic, R., & Hulley, L. (2023). Unlocking the emotional brain: Eliminating symptoms at their roots using memory reconsolidation (2nd ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003200653.

Matthijssen, S. J. M. A., Brouwers, L., van Beerschoten, M., & de Jongh, A. (2021). EMDR 2.0: An integrative and strategic approach to EMDR therapy. Journal of EMDR Practice and Research, 15(1), 22–35. https://doi.org/10.1891/EMDR-D-20-00035

Shapiro, F. (2018). Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy: Basic principles, protocols, and procedures (3rd ed.). Guilford Press.

Siegel, D. J. (1999). The developing mind: Toward a neurobiology of interpersonal experience. Guilford Press.

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