Future Templates for Clients Experiencing Grief
EMDR for Complicated GriefEMDR therapy is not only helpful in reprocessing the pain and trauma of loss, but to enhance the ability to function in the future. An example is somebody loses a partner, now they're alone. Maybe the person did go to some kind of social engagement and felt very awkward. We can target that. And then a future template. Imagine going to a similar social engagement and now being able to function in an adaptive way. So we would run the movie, for example, of arriving at the party, going on in, talking with people.
After doing several sets with the movie feeling good, then we can have the client run the movie again, this time thinking of the positive cognition, which is usually the same one that we use for the present trigger. Grounded and confident, for example. And we want to install the positive cognition to a VOC of seven or whatever is ecologically appropriate. So when you bring up that image those words I'm confident noticing that sense of confidence too that you feel in your body. How was that? And if it feels good, we will add sets of bilateral stimulation.
Again, it's difficult to hold on to the image when you're doing eye movement, but they can be thinking about the movie and the positive cognition at the same time. What if the client is bringing up the scene and it's negative? We can maybe do sets of bilateral stimulation. That's a possibility. But maybe what we need to do is change how the client is responding to the situation.
So maybe instead of going to the party, you meet somebody and you say this, let's talk about what else you could say that may feel more comfortable, so we can fine tune the response. If there's still negative material that's being experienced, we can do float backs or affix scans because it indicates that there's other past experiences that need to be identified and targeted, and then we can come back to the future template. After doing the future template, we can ask about a challenge situation. So here you are in the social situation, you go with your response, what can go wrong?
I get a rude response back, for example. Alright. Let's talk about how you would handle that. And so now you talk about with your client how they would handle this challenge. Then we go through the future template procedure again coping with this challenge. And, of course, we will do this as much as is necessary.