There is a particular kind of grief in understanding someone you can no longer be close to in the same way.
Recorded at the EMDRIA Conference 2026 in Anaheim, this conversation from the Notice That podcast's Notes from the Hall series features Jennifer Bohle of Jennifer Ann Counseling (@jenniferanncounseling) on what happens when the therapist half the internet follows walks into a building full of colleagues who recognize her. A few years ago she attended her first EMDRIA conference unnoticed; this year she was approached the moment she walked into the lobby.Jennifer is a trauma therapist and content creator behind Jennifer Ann Counseling, and the creator of Permission to Post, a course helping the
Somebody taught you what to do when a client gets activated, when they dissociate, when the SUD won't move. Nobody taught you what to do when the thing happening is between the two of you.This is the practical one. After two essays arguing that the relational field is where the work lives, "The Two Channels" is what Bridger actually does when a pattern surfaces in the room: offering the client a choice out loud between working it in the world or working it between us — and why saying that menu out loud changed his practice more than picking correctly ever did.Also in here: reciprocal dual atte
Most of us meet EMDRIA as a set of requirements. Consultation hours, credentialing pathways, standards documents that arrive in the inbox already decided. That impression is fair, and it is incomplete. This week Viviana Urdaneta Melo, Deputy Executive Director of the EMDR International Association, joins us to put faces and reasoning behind the acronym.Viviana came to this work by an unusual road. Born in Colombia, she trained as an electronic engineer and kept noticing that she spent her volunteer hours with children and families rather than with circuits. Three degrees later — engineering, a
You prepped the target properly. You ran it clean. The SUD came down — and then stopped at a two, and stayed there. Most of us were taught to call that ecological and move on.This essay offers another possibility, by way of a cave. Using Plato's allegory — and then breaking with it in two specific places — it argues that EMDR has become extraordinarily good at working with what is easiest to point at, and that we have mistaken what is easiest to operationalize for what is most explanatory. The target memory is real and the SUD is real; the question is what's casting them. Along the way: why ev
The eight-phase protocol was built to be learned, practiced, and trusted — and most of us were trained to hold it carefully. This conversation asks what happens when careful hardens into rigid. Bridger and Jen sit down with three voices from the new anthology Queering EMDR Therapy — editor Roshni Chabra, LMFT, alongside contributors Lisa Hayes, LISW-S, and Mish Kumar-Jonson — for a conversation that has been a year in the making, about what it means to queer EMDR: not a technique to add in phases four through seven, but a lens that runs from before phase one to after phase eight.Together they
Most of us were trained with real care to attend to one half of the room. Symptom picture. Presenting circumstances. Developmental history. What happened to this person, what it did to them, and which of it belongs on a target list. That training is good, and this essay does not hand it back. But it asks about the other half — the encounter itself, the histories both people carried in without deciding to, and the ordinary minute-by-minute of what passes between two nervous systems. We have a rich vocabulary for the first half. We have almost none for the second.In the fourth essay of The Relat
EMDR was built to trust the client's system. David Archer asks the question that honors that premise and then extends it: whose system, from whose culture, holding whose history? Before some clinicians of color would even register for an EMDR training, they asked David whether it works for their communities. This episode is his answer — and it reshaped how he trains, consults, and sits with clients.David returns to the podcast (his first visit was 2022) as an anti-racist psychotherapist, EMDR trainer, and author of five books, to walk through rhythm and processing (RAP): his approach to the me
Two sessions. Same protocol, same fidelity, same clinician. One changes the client's life. The other changes nothing. This essay is about that difference — and why it isn't the part we were trained to think it was.Drawing on the memory-reconsolidation research, Bridger reads the third essay in The Relational Thread and makes the claim underneath the first two: your presence isn't the warm support around the real work. It may be the mechanism of the real work — the felt, unfakeable experience that contradicts an old relational prediction while the memory is briefly open to being rewritten. Why
Somewhere in our training, most of us learned to keep our faces still. It arrived in the raised eyebrow of a supervisor, in the word neutral on a competency checklist, in the quiet sense that a good clinician does not flinch. And that discipline had an honorable origin: analytic abstinence, therapeutic neutrality, EMDR's own emphasis on trusting the client's system were all built to protect the client from something real: the therapist's agenda, the therapist's unexamined wounds. This episode honors what that tradition was guarding against, and then asks the harder question it left unanswered:
This is the launch of The Relational Thread, a free weekly essay series from Bridger Falkenstien and Jen Savage that tells the story of their forthcoming Routledge book, EMDR and the Therapeutic Relationship: Reclaiming the Relational Thread, and applies it to the room. Each essay is read aloud by its author — in our voice, not an AI narrator — and lives on Substack for anyone who'd rather read. The regular biweekly episodes of Notice That continue as always; this series is added on top. This first thread, "The Unnamed Thing," is Bridger's, reflecting on chapters one and two.Key themesThe mome
A client comes in with a population you've never worked with, and you feel it... the quiet "I'm not equipped for this." In the finale of our Back to Basics series, Bridger and Jen sit with what that feeling is actually made of. We close Francine Shapiro's foundational EMDR text on its last two chapters, selected populations and research, and land on the thesis humming under the whole show: EMDR is an approach to the entire therapeutic relationship, not a tool you apply to a diagnosis. In this episode: - A conceptualization frame you can bring to any population: four questions for your next ses
In this episode, Bridger welcomes Anastasia Soroka to Notice That for a one-on-one conversation about intersectionality, invisible identities, power, and complexity in the therapy room. Anastasia introduces herself as a trauma therapist specializing in complex trauma, relational dynamics, and interpersonal systems. She is also the host of the Insights with Us podcast and an author whose work explores stigma, sexuality, communication, and the human experience.The conversation begins with Anastasia’s metaphor for intersectionality: each identity as a street or intersection that adds complexity t
In this episode of Notice That: An EMDR Podcast, we sit down with internationally respected clinician, trainer, and author Deb Wesselmann to explore the powerful intersection of EMDR therapy, attachment wounds, childhood trauma, parenting, and relational healing.Deb shares her decades of experience integrating attachment theory with EMDR therapy, including practical ways therapists can work with children, parents, families, and adults carrying unresolved developmental trauma.We discuss:Why attachment trauma often lives beneath symptomsHow EMDR can help heal early relational woundsWorking with
In this return to our Back to Basics series, we’re diving into one of the most misunderstood—and often over-scripted—parts of EMDR therapy: interweaves.If you were trained to think of interweaves as something you “pull out of a list” when a client gets stuck, you’re not alone. But what if interweaves aren’t about saying the right thing… and instead about understanding what the system needs next?In this episode, we explore:What interweaves are actually doing in the brain and nervous systemWhy “cognitive interweaves” are only part of the storyHow stuckness in EMDR often reflects deeper relationa
What happens when one of the most meaningful seasons of life—pregnancy and early parenthood—collides with trauma, grief, and attachment wounds?In this episode of Notice That, we sit down with perinatal mental health specialist Bethany Warren to explore how EMDR therapy can be used safely and effectively with pregnant and postpartum clients—and why so many clinicians have been taught otherwise.Together, we unpack:The most common myths about EMDR in pregnancy (and what the research actually says)Why “just resourcing” may unintentionally limit healingHow attachment wounds, identity shifts, and gr
Becoming a parent is often described as one of life’s most joyful milestones. But what happens psychologically, relationally, and neurologically during the transition into parenthood is far more complex — and far less discussed — than many clinicians realize. In this episode of Notice That: An EMDR Podcast, Bridger and Jen sit down with psychologist and EMDR consultant Dr. Nirit Gordon to explore the profound developmental, attachment-based, and trauma-related shifts that occur during the perinatal period. Drawing from feminist theory, attachment research, evolutionary anthropology, and clinic
What happens when therapy stops being about techniques — and starts becoming about you?In this deeply reflective episode of Notice That, Bridger and Jen are joined by therapist and trainer Jessica Downs for an intimate conversation exploring the inner life of therapists, professional identity, and the personal work that inevitably emerges beneath clinical practice.Together, they explore the hidden motivations that draw people into helping professions, the illusion of the “next training” as a solution to therapeutic stuckness, and the moment many therapists encounter when professional developme
What if resilience isn’t about “bouncing back,” but about the brain’s ongoing ability to adapt—moment by moment, across a lifetime?In this episode of Notice That, Bridger and Jen are joined by Laurel O’Neal Thornton, EMDR clinician, consultant, and educator, for a rich conversation on the neuroscience of resilience and what it actually looks like in EMDR therapy.Drawing from neuroscience, EMDR, and years of clinical experience, Laurel reframes resilience as an innate human capacity—one that exists even in the presence of trauma, depression, neurodivergence, and chronic stress. Together, we exp
In this episode of Notice That, we dive into one of the most avoided—and most essential—topics in mental health: sex, pleasure, and sexual health.We’re joined by Cassie Krajewski, LCSW, AASECT-certified sex therapist, EMDRIA Approved Consultant, and co-founder of Iris Training Collective. Cassie brings a deeply integrative lens to sexuality—one that moves far beyond technique and into conceptualization, embodiment, and healing.Together, we explore how sexual health is not a “specialty concern,” but a core dimension of human wellness—and how EMDR therapy offers a powerful, attuned framework for
EMDR for Couples: Healing Together Through Simultaneous ProcessingA Conversation with Arilda Surridge, LMFTWhat happens when EMDR moves beyond the individual—and into the relationship itself?In this episode of Notice That, Bridger and Jen sit down with Arilda Surridge, LMFT, author and EMDR clinician, to explore how EMDR can be ethically, safely, and powerfully integrated into couples therapy. Arilda shares a clear, grounded framework for working with two nervous systems in the room—without deviating from EMDR fidelity—and offers concrete clinical examples that bring this work to life.This con
In this special “take your learner hat off” episode of Notice That, Bridger and Jen sit down with Jennifer Ann Counseling—EMDR therapist and comedy content creator—for a playful, honest conversation about being a therapist and a human.This episode isn’t about teaching a specific technique. It’s about humor, authenticity, and why laughter belongs alongside depth in trauma work. We talk about how Jennifer’s platform grew, what it’s like navigating social media as a therapist, handling negative comments, and why being real often connects more than being polished.We also explore EMDR in everyday p
In this episode of Notice That: An EMDR Podcast, Jen and Bridger sit down with Dr. Arielle Schwartz—somatic psychologist, EMDR therapist, and author of EMDR Therapy and Somatic Psychology—to explore what really happens when EMDR and body-based work are woven together in the therapy room.Together, they dive into:How Arielle’s early training in somatic psychology shaped the way she learned and practices EMDRWhy the body scan and somatic check-ins are not just “boxes to tick,” but core guides for pacing, target selection, and resolutionPolyvagal theory’s view of how trauma gets “tagged” in the ne
In this episode of Notice That, Bridger and Jen sit down with neurofeedback expert Leigh Povia, LCSW, RPT, BCN, founder of Center for Dynamic Growth, to explore how neurofeedback can strengthen, support, and accelerate trauma therapy.Together, they discuss:What neurofeedback actually is—beyond the buzzwordsHow brainwave training mirrors internal states and supports regulationWhy neurofeedback can open doors when EMDR alone feels “stuck”How clinicians can partner with neurofeedback providersThe developmental trauma connection: attachment, arousal, and brain-based interventionsA powerful case ex
In this episode, we wrap up our series on working memory theory in EMDR by sitting down with Sander, co-founder of WeMind—a digital platform designed to optimize bilateral stimulation, track real-time client engagement, and bring advanced working memory taxation into both virtual and in-person EMDR sessions.We explore:How WeMind adapts working memory load dynamically during setsWhy random-interval taxation may enhance reprocessingThe shift from hardware (light bars, tappers) to integrated platformsCultural differences in EMDR practice across countriesHow tech can support relational, attuned th
