Ep 58 - Bondi trauma and EMDR
Hello everyone. Welcome to episode 58 of the EMDR Doctor podcast.
It's a really sad week this week in Australia, just following on from the Bondi terrorist attack a couple of days ago. I was planing to do a light and breezy podcast today in the lead up to Christmas, but somehow that feels kind of wrong and mis-atuned to our community here at the moment. I live in a very Jewish area and have Jewish friends, colleagues and clients and I just feel so sad for the whole community here and of course in Sydney, and I want to express my sincere condolences to everyone who lost someone they love. It is the biggest single event loss of life in Australia since the Port Arthur massacre in Tasmania in 1996, so it feels important to pay tribute to. I am not going to make this whole episode about that event, as plenty of people in the media are doing a lot around that at present, also I am a pacifist and just don't believe in generalising a whole race with characteristics or motives that belong to a few individuals, and I am not really a political animal so I don't want to get caught up in the politics of it, but I do want to extend an invitation to those who are suffering from this - I am a little bit involved with a couple of networks who are offering Group EMDR sessions so I wanted to let you all know about some offerings for free online group EMDR coming up. For therapists, I will be running a group on Tuesday 23rd December, from 7-9 pm, which will be online, and for the Jewish community, I will be doing an in person one on 8th January. I will put some details in to the show notes, so if you do feel the need for this kind of help or assistance, please get in contact.
So I thought I would speak a little bit about Group EMDR again today, as it is on my mind at the moment !
The GTEP protocol is the one that I am trained in. GTEP stands for Group Traumatic Event Protocol, and it was originally created by Elan Shapiro in 2013 in order to help large groups of people in the early days after a traumatic event, to help prevent the mental health issues which often follow a disaster. We aim to process the recent event and reduce the distress associated with it, in order to reduce traumatic stress, promote resilience and encourage healing . There are several recent event early intervention protocols in the EMDR world, and they all use the standard bilateral stimulation, mainly self administered. What does that mean? That instead of doing EMDR one on one, with the therapist leading the eye movements, the person is doing their own bilateral stimulation, either tapping, or doing their own eye movements, maybe by following their hand as it moves from side to side, or simply looking between two points on the wall to get the eyes moving from side to side. The process is led by a therapist (usually an EMDR therapist, but it can be a lay person who is trained in the protocol), and the protocol is deliberately a little bit restricted, so the client doesn't open up too many other distressing memories.
One of the important things about group EMDR is that it is unlike any other group therapy you may have attended or seen on TV - there is no talking about the trauma. We do not discuss our experiences, and this is mainly to avoid traumatising other people with the details of our distress. So it is not a debrief, it is not a discussion, there is no advice given or received from other members of the group, and we are not putting people at risk of additional trauma. We don't want them going home feeling worse than they arrived, with details of someone else's loss or pain lodged in their heads! So I as the therapist, actually have no idea what memory or image the participants are working on, there is no need for that disclosure, so long as the client knows, I do not need to know.
So what about results? In general, with my online groups, I find that most memories lose the vast majority of distress. How do we know that? We measure distress with SUDS, which stands for Subjective Units of Distress, so at the beginning we ask, how distressing is that memory out of ten, with ten being the worst, and zero being no pain or distress or disturbance. And often people will start with maybe 7-8 out of ten, and end with a zero or 1-2 out of ten. Much less sad, much less angry, much less fearful, or ashamed, or lonely, or desperate, or whatever the emotion was at the beginning.
And this is backed up by research, with quite a few studies now showing that GTEP can reduce the pain of memories in various groups, like migrants in refugee centres, and health care workers on line, and groups of carers in adolescent housing units, just to name a few. I have used it with staff at Cabrini, with online groups through Mums Matter which is mainly young mums, with my online groups through my private practice, with inpatients at Cabrini, and now I am looking forward to using it with people following this terror attack.(I know that sounds very weird and kind of macabre to say that I'm looking forward to it, but it is a valuable skill and I feel that I have something to offer that will help people, so it is a little bit rewarding to do this kind of work)
So this is not exactly what I thought my last week of work before Christmas would be, but the world changes quickly sometimes, and we pivot!
So for all of you listening to this in the week before Christmas, I hope you have a wonderful, peaceful, connected holiday season, I hope you have a break, and a rest, and a chance to settle after the year that was 2025. Thank you for listening and supporting me and giving me all your beautiful questions and feedback, I do appreciate your time and attention.
All the very best to you and yours, my friends, take good care, and I will talk to you in 2026. Bye for now.
I'd love to hear your experience of xyz please feel free to comment below if you are watching on Youtube, or send me an email at admin @therapynest.com.au if you would like to explore this for yourself and work with me on
I am also about to open up some spots in my week for consultation for EMDR therapists, so if you happen to be an EMDR therapist and you are looking for consultation, perhaps shoot me an email and we can figure out a time to suit.
Alright, I hope that's been helpful. I will talk to you again next week. In the meantime, take good care. Bye for now
