Plagued with trauma, low self-esteem, relationship problems, and difficulty regulating their emotions, adult clients who’ve experienced childhood emotional abuse and neglect can be some of your toughest cases.
Not only are you facing therapeutic challenges like fragmented self-identity, dissociation and difficulty forming healthy attachments – you’re often left trying to identify and reprocess what may be unrealized, absent, or lacking…
…all while trying to attune to experiences for which the client struggles to have words.
Fortunately EMDR is up to the challenge, giving you the tools you need to successfully treat these clients so they can move past their traumatic childhoods to achieve lasting healing.
Now in this advanced training, you’ll join Sarah Freeze, LCSW, a certified EMDR therapist and consultant who has been working with clients who have experienced childhood emotional abuse and neglect for over a decade.
Through a combination of lecture, discussion, and insight building case studies, Sarah will teach you how to build your clinical expertise with EMDR so you can:
- Apply adult attachment principles for a fuller understanding of your client’s presentation and history
- Develop skills to better address your client’s defenses for gentler and more effective trauma reprocessing
- Identify and address adaptations to unavailable and dysfunctional caregivers
- Use creative techniques to process unseen wounds that clients may have trouble verbalizing
- Help clients feel in control by working with them to stay in their window of tolerance during trauma reprocessing
- And much more!
With ample opportunity for questions and discussion, you’ll leave this training with the tools you need to identify targets specific to complex childhood experiences and guide clients toward the trauma resolution and relief they need.
Who should takes the course
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychiatrists
- Addiction Counselors
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Physicians
- Other Helping Professionals
Learning Objectives:
- Describe the link between childhood trauma and the development of Complex PTSD, insecure attachment, and emotional regulation.
- Analyze research on the feasibility and efficacy of using EMDR with childhood emotional abuse and neglect experiences.
- Identify clinical implications of childhood trauma.
- Develop individualized treatment plans for clients with differing attachment styles and experiences of childhood relational abuse.
- Incorporate attachment theory and polyvagal theory into current understanding of trauma an EMDR treatment.
- Use three resourcing skills to strengthen client’s adult self and relational functioning for gentler trauma reprocessing.
- Develop an understanding of how to track the body and use strategies to return to the window of tolerance during trauma reprocessing.
- Employ target mapping for EMDR informed by specialized knowledge of complex trauma.
- Recognize key components to an integrative treatment plan, incorporating EMDR with other treatment approaches.
Course Modules / Outline
Childhood Abuse and Neglect Experiences: The Latest Research and Relationship with Complex Trauma
- Newest Research on ACE Studies
- Relationship with Complex PTSD
- Impact on Attachment and the Therapeutic Relationship
- Lack of Care and the Loss of Words
- Polyvagal Theory and the Window of Tolerance
- EMDR Research, Risks and Limitations
Client History and Assessment: Assessing Attachment, the Body and More
- Understanding Adult Attachment
- Skill: Assessing Attachment Based on Client’s Conversational Style
- Skill: Five Adjectives to Describe Your Caregiver
- Assessing the Body and One’s Ability to Care for Oneself
- Online Sandtray as a Creative Technique for Self-Understanding
Case Conceptualization: How Clients Adaptations to Dysfunctional Caregivers Informs Treatment
- Target Mapping Related to Unavailable Caregivers and Dissociation [vs focus]
- Skill: Identify Unspoken Agreements between Child and Parent
- Understanding how the Child Maintained Connection
- Adaptation and Defenses
- Skill: Listening for the Split
- Idealization of the Caregiver
- Skill: Targeting Idealization Defenses
Preparation and Assessment: Relational Resourcing to Strengthen Adult Self
- Understanding What Grounding Techniques Have Worked Historically
- Resourcing to Strengthen Adult Self
- Skill: Circle of Love
- Skill: Using an Online Sandtray for Relational Resourcing
- Resourcing the Body
- Skill: Somatic Container
- Caring For Oneself as an Act of Resistance
- Clinical Vignette of Peter: Identifying Loss of Appetite Related to Lack of Food in Childhood
Advanced Applications for Verbal and Non-Verbal Trauma Reprocessing
- Empowering Your Client to Foster a Sense of Control
- Physical Sensations and Associative Processing
- Skill: Pendulation
- Ideas on How to Target Affective Moments
- Addressing Shame and Avoidance
- Skill: Using an Online Sandtray for Nonverbal Trauma Reprocessing
- Clinical Vignette of Tina: Target Mother Being “Emotionally Vacant”
Why Take This Course?
Working with adult survivors of childhood emotional abuse and neglect is incredibly complex — these clients often carry invisible wounds, fragmented self-identity, and deep-rooted attachment injuries that are difficult to verbalize and treat.
This advanced EMDR training gives you the clinical edge to help them heal.
Led by Sarah Freeze, LCSW, a seasoned EMDR therapist and trauma expert, this course equips you with practical tools to:
Target unresolved trauma rooted in emotional neglect, idealized caregivers, and dissociation
Adapt EMDR techniques to clients with insecure attachment and emotional dysregulation
Use creative, nonverbal strategies (like Sandtray and somatic work) to reach what words can’t
Strengthen the adult self through resourcing, relational repair, and body-based grounding
Keep clients safe within their window of tolerance while doing deep trauma reprocessing
Whether you’re struggling to move past stuck points or looking for new trauma-informed methods, this course helps you confidently treat even your most complex clients.
Meet the Course Expert:
Sarah Freeze, LCSW is a psychotherapist and licensed clinical social worker in private practice based out of Denver, CO. She is a certified EMDR therapist, and her practice includes psychotherapy, consultation, and teaching. She specializes in treating trauma/PTSD and utilizes EMDR, psychodynamic, relational, and Sandtray therapies. Her passion is working with adults who have experienced childhood abuse, neglect and emotional non-recognition, using a person-centered and culturally informed framework. Beyond her private practice, Sarah has clinical experience in community and agency settings, working with children and adults who have experienced sexual abuse, sexual assault, physical abuse, and domestic violence. With a strong background, she takes great care in applying clinical research into practice.
11 reviews for EMDR for Adult Survivors of Childhood Abuse and Neglect: Advanced Treatment Techniques for Insecure Attachment and Complex Trauma