Welcome to your EMDR Certification Journey!

If you’re here, there’s a good chance you already know that EMDR is not the sort of therapy you learn once and then feel completely confident using forever after. It has a way of stretching people—in a good way, mostly.

Many clinicians leave their basic training feeling excited, inspired, and also quietly aware that there is still a great deal they do not fully understand yet. That is part of why consultation (and this certification course/group) exists.

This process is not about becoming a perfect EMDR therapist, thankfully. It is much more about becoming steadier, more thoughtful, and more grounded in the model so that when sessions become emotionally intense or clinically complicated, you are able to stay oriented rather than scrambling for the “right” answer.

Over the next several months, my hope is that this course and consultation group will help you deepen your understanding of the standard protocol, strengthen your case conceptualization skills, and become more confident working with the real-world complexities we often face as EMDR clinicians. You will likely discover that learning EMDR is not only about techniques. It is also about learning how to think differently about symptoms, trauma, nervous systems, pacing, attachment, and therapeutic presence.

And occasionally, it may even be about realizing how you might have been overcomplicating Phase 2 for three straight weeks while your client quietly needed more sleep and less caffeine. Just kidding. But hey, that happens too.

Welcome aboard! I hope this course provides some reassurance—and food for thought, or better yet, sustenance—for this journey. And maybe even a few chuckles along the way. After all, even though we are EMDR clinicians, we are also human beings.

Who am I (your CIT facilitator) and why take your journey with me?

Hi, I’m Shalene Takara — EMDR therapist, clinical supervisor, EMDRIA Consultant-in-Training (CIT), admirer of attachment theory, and someone who finds nervous systems genuinely fascinating. I’ve worked in mental health since 2009, primarily with trauma, culture, attachment wounds, dissociation, intergenerational complexity, and the nuanced, complex ways humans learn to survive difficult experiences in a culturally rich and tense world. Somewhere along the way, I discovered that EMDR was an approach that consistently helped things actually shift for people in deep and lasting ways, and I’ve been enthusiastically nerding out about it ever since.

I completed EMDR certification training with Nancy Lasater and Barbara Sheehan-Zeidler and continue receiving consultation as I work toward becoming an EMDRIA Approved Consultant. What I appreciate most about consultation is that it gives clinicians a place to stop pretending they fully understand every single thing happening in the room at all times. Because if you’ve done EMDR for more than about five minutes, you already know that sessions can become unexpectedly emotional, nonlinear, humbling, moving, confusing, and occasionally held together by coffee and careful grounding skills.

My hope for this consultation journey is not that you become a perfectly polished EMDR therapist who never gets stuck or uncertain. That would be both unrealistic and honestly a little suspicious. Instead, I hope you become more grounded, more confident, more flexible, and more able to stay oriented when therapy gets messy or complicated. I believe people learn best in spaces where they can ask honest questions, laugh a little, think deeply, and occasionally admit things like, “I may have overcomplicated Phase 2 again.” If that sounds like your kind of learning environment, you are very welcome here.

Understanding the Certification Journey

EMDRIA certification is separate from basic training. Basic training introduces the model and teaches the foundational protocol. Certification is meant to support deeper integration over time through consultation, clinical practice, reflection, and ongoing learning.

At the time of writing, EMDRIA certification generally includes completion of an EMDRIA-approved training, independent licensure, consultation hours with an Approved Consultant, clinical experience using EMDR therapy, letters of recommendation, and continuing education requirements.

More importantly though, certification is really about competency. It is about developing enough clinical understanding and steadiness that you can adapt thoughtfully while still remaining grounded in the standard model.

That balance takes time.

One of the reassuring things about Nancy Lasater’s consultation structure is that it brings shape and organization to a process that can otherwise feel vague or overwhelming. The handbook breaks learning into progressive areas of competency rather than assuming clinicians simply absorb everything through experience alone.

That structure matters because EMDR can feel deceptively simple at first glance. Then a client dissociates halfway through desensitization, another cannot access a calm place without panic, and someone else insists they feel “fine” while their nervous system visibly disagrees.

This is why consultation matters. It gives you a place to slow down, think carefully, ask questions, and develop clinical judgment with support rather than isolation.

You may also notice emotional reactions arising in yourself throughout the certification process. Many clinicians experience moments of self-doubt, comparison, uncertainty, or fear that they are somehow “behind.” Most of the time, this simply means you are becoming more aware of the complexity of the work. That awareness is uncomfortable sometimes. It is also part of growth.