(Live Course) Somatic and Attachment-Focused EMDR: Applying SAFE Principles and Concepts to Your Own Growth (12 Hours)

Instructor: Deborah Kennard

Live Course Dates and Time: March 25, April 29 & May 27, 2026 from 12:00 to 4:00 PM EASTERN TIME

Course Description:

Somatic and Attachment-Focused EMDR: Applying SAFE Principles and Concepts to Clinician Self-Awareness and Growth is an advanced, experiential training designed to help clinicians understand how their own nervous system, emotional responses, and attachment patterns influence the EMDR therapy process.

Grounded in the SAFE EMDR approach, participants explore The Answer as an adaptive framework for understanding personal emotional and somatic responses that arise in clinical work. Rather than viewing moments of feeling stuck or overwhelmed as problems, the course reframes these experiences as meaningful indicators of how past experiences may be showing up in the present.

Through a balance of didactic instruction and guided experiential practice using participants' own material (not role-play), clinicians examine how unresolved experiences and attachment needs can affect attunement, case conceptualization, pacing, and readiness for reprocessing. SAFE principles—Nonviolence, Mindful Awareness, Compassionate Assumption, and Healthy Boundaries—are woven throughout to support safety, regulation, and ethical clinical decision-making.

Eligibility & Prerequisites

This course is designed for licensed clinicians who have completed at least one of the following through Personal Transformation Institute (PTI):

• EMDR 6-Day Basic Training
• EMDR Refresher (live attendance via PTI 6-Day Training)
• On-Demand EMDR Refresher (PTI)

Participants must have a foundational understanding of EMDR therapy and familiarity with attachment- and somatically-informed EMDR concepts.

Completed your EMDR Basic Training through another program? You're welcome to join — you'll just need to complete our on-demand EMDR Refresher course first to get grounded in the SAFE EMDR approach before the live sessions. We offer a bundled package that includes both the Refresher and this Live Course at a discounted rate:

👉 Get the SAFE EMDR Complete Experience Bundle (20 Hours) — Save up to $200

Learning Objectives After completing this course, participants will be able to:

1. Describe the Adaptive Information Processing (AIP) model as understood through the SAFE EMDR approach, including the role of The Answer and the SAFE principles.
2. Identify how their own Answer reflects adaptive interoceptive and attachment-based survival strategies shaped by past experiences.
3. Recognize personal triggers and client presentations that activate the clinician's Answer and influence presence, curiosity, and clinical decision-making.
4. Apply the SAFE principles (Nonviolence, Mindful Awareness, Compassionate Assumption, and Healthy Boundaries) to the clinician's own nervous system during EMDR preparation and reprocessing.
5. Demonstrate the ability to make predictions about how their Answer may show up in learning, consultation, or clinical settings.
6. Utilize somatic and relational resourcing strategies to support regulation, grounding, and flexibility when working with their own material.
7. Explain how "past is present" dynamics contribute to feeling stuck or stressed in response to specific client presentations.
8. Apply the SAFE EMDR process of "finding the root under the Answer" to identify touchstone memories connected to current clinical blocks.
9. Demonstrate the use of EMDR Phases 3–8 with their own material to process clinician-based triggers that interfere with effective therapy.
10. Identify relational longings underlying the clinician's Answer and describe how these longings influence therapeutic interactions.
11. Integrate Phase 8 reevaluation by noticing changes in internal responses to previously triggering client presentations.
12. Apply future-oriented strategies, including future template protocols, to support ongoing regulation, professional growth, and ethical EMDR practice.

Course Delivery Format: Recorded live synchronous learning course/training.

1 year of course recording access is included in purchase! Must attend live to receive credit.

Audience: EMDR Basic Trained professionals (completed a 6-day EMDRIA approved training program)

Conflict of Interest: There are no known conflicts of interests for this workshop.

Course Content Level: Intermediate

Target Audience (only applicable to CEs): Psychologists, Social Workers, MFTs, graduate-level counselors, Psychotherapists

12 APA, EMDRIA and NBCC credits provided upon completion of course, quiz and evaluation. No partial credit provided. Please see participation agreement for cancellation policy.

Personal Transformation Institute, 1924, is approved as an ACE provider to offer social work continuing education by the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) Approved Continuing Education (ACE) program. Regulatory boards are the final authority on courses accepted for continuing education credit. ACE provider approval period: 4/21/2025–4/21/2026. Social workers completing this course receive 12 general continuing education credits.