New EMDR training dates are on the way. Get first notice
Get certified
Basic Training is step one. Consultation is where you become the EMDR therapist you meant to be. Monthly teaching consultations with an EMDRIA Approved Consultant who actually teaches, toward Certification, Approved Consultant, or steadier attachment work.
Which path is right for me?
Wherever you are on the EMDRIA ladder, there’s a next step. Pick the one that matches where you are, or write and ask.
Step one after Basic Training
You’ve finished Basic Training and you use EMDR. You want the consultation hours EMDRIA requires, and you want them to make you better, not just check a box.
The highest EMDRIA level
You’re a Certified EMDR Therapist and you want to consult and teach. This is the path to becoming an EMDRIA Approved Consultant, with Kathleen as your mentor.
For EFT and EFIT work
You’ve taken EFT or EFIT training and you’re excited, and a little wobbly. Case consultation to shore up your new skills and weave EMDR into your attachment work.
How consultation with Kathleen works
Kathleen is a teacher first. She cares about making sure you truly learn what you need to learn. Working with clients who have trauma is hard, and she listens for what you know, what you’re struggling with, and what’s getting in the way.
The goal is simple: that you feel comfortable, competent and confident when a client with trauma is in the chair. Braver, and a little smarter, too.
Path one
Licensed mental health therapists who hold a Certificate of Completion from an EMDRIA-approved Basic Training can advance their professional standing by becoming EMDRIA Certified Therapists. It means you don’t just know EMDR; you’ve demonstrated mastery of it with an Approved Consultant watching.
EMDRIA requires 20 hours of consultation with an Approved Consultant, typically 10 individual and 10 group, along with demonstrated mastery of EMDRIA’s competencies. At Partners, we believe the best way to get there is in dyads: pairs of therapists learning alongside each other, with monthly two-hour teaching consultations over about a year.
EMDRIA’s full, current requirements for Certification, including licensure, experience and continuing education, are on EMDRIA’s website. Kathleen will walk you through them.
Cost: inquire. Kathleen will talk it through with you before you commit to anything.
“I continued on receiving supervision with them to work towards being a certified EMDRIA therapist. I am so happy with that decision! They were always pushing me to be better while also helping me grow my confidence and see I was doing great work. I am so thankful for my time with Kathleen, and the part she has played in my professional growth as an EMDR therapist. I would highly recommend Kathleen if you are thinking of becoming an EMDR therapist.”
Requirements are set by EMDRIA and change from time to time. See the current requirements and ask Kathleen anything that’s unclear.
Path two
EMDRIA Approved Consultant is the highest level of EMDR professional status. It means you’re qualified to provide the consultation other therapists need for Certification, and to help train the next generation. It is also, frankly, a joy: watching a therapist have the aha moment is the best part of this work.
As a Consultant-in-Training with Kathleen, you get consultation on your consultation. You’ll learn to teach EMDR, not just do it: how to listen for what a consultee actually knows, how to run a group so everyone is supported, and how to give feedback that lands. Several of Kathleen’s team started here.
Cost: inquire. Kathleen looks forward to supporting your advancement to this level.
Path three
After an EFT or EFIT course, therapists are excited to have new skills. Thinking about clients’ attachment issues, and addressing them, is a different way of interacting, and most people are grateful for ongoing consultation while they shore up what they learned.
Kathleen offers case consultation for your attachment-based cases, with EMDR woven in where it helps. Bring the couple who won’t de-escalate, the individual whose distress lives in their closest relationships, the session where you lost the thread. The aim is to build your skills in attachment work and apply them to your own clients.
You don’t need to be pursuing Certification, and you don’t need to have trained with Kathleen. You do need to be a licensed or pre-licensed mental health professional.
Cost: inquire.
Your consultant
Kathleen Fitzgerald is an EMDRIA Approved Consultant, Approved Trainer and Certified Therapist, certified in EFT, EFIT, EFFT and IFS. She’s been a therapist since 2001 and a teacher for longer, including more than ten years teaching health care professionals at Duke Medical Center.
She provides a great deal of direct teaching, support and encouragement, and she sets high expectations, for herself and for you. Smart, warm, and a bit of a leprechaun.
Read Kathleen’s storyQuestions
No. Any full EMDRIA-approved Basic Training counts. Kathleen will ask a few questions about where you trained and what you’ve done since, so she can meet you where you are.
Yes. Consultation happens live over video, so you can join from your own office anywhere. In-person arrangements are occasionally possible in North Carolina.
About a year, at two hours a month. It can go a little faster or slower depending on your caseload and how quickly the hours add up. The pace is meant to be one you can actually keep.
Kathleen prefers to talk that through with you, because the right arrangement depends on which path you’re on and whether you’re working individually or in a dyad. Write to her and she’ll lay it out plainly. There’s no pressure and no hard sell.
A case or two, a specific question, and your notes on what you tried. Please leave out anything that could identify a client: no names, no dates of birth, no details that would make someone recognizable. Kathleen will show you how to present a case safely.
That’s fine. Pick “Not sure yet” on the form below, tell Kathleen where you are, and she’ll tell you straight.
Get started
A few questions so Kathleen can point you to the right path. She answers her own email.
The Lavender Letter
An occasional note from Kathleen with one EMDR teaching tip, upcoming training dates, and a little news from the garden. Seats are limited, and subscribers hear first.
Thank you! Watch your inbox for a note from Kathleen.
