12/07/2025
I closed the book.
"She could be my client," I thought. Then immediately: "She IS my client."
I'd just finished Stephanie Foo's What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma. She described herself as a six-year-old, standing at attention, hands folded, while her mother dotted her homework with fierce X's. "Each progressive pen mark was a punch to the chest until I was barely breathing. Oh no, I'm so dumb. Oh no," she thought. Then her mother raised the plastic ruler and brought it down on her open palm: thwack.
She didn't cry. If her mother saw tears, she'd call her pathetic and do it again.
Her father wasn't any better. When overcome with personal demons, he'd drive them both into oncoming traffic, swerving away at the last moment.
Multiply these scenes by hundreds of others. That's how complex PTSD forms. That's what creates panic attacks, dissociation, and profound relationship struggles.
As a trauma therapist, confidentiality means I can't share the reality of a client's life.
But Stephanie Foo wrote it. The work after basic training? Learning how to actually implement trauma processing with the Stephanies who walk into your office weekly. Clients with dissociation. Attachment wounds. Developmental trauma requires you to modify and sequence EMDR.
Make the positive impact you want with the Stephanies on your caseload.
If you're a newly trained EMDR therapist ready to implement EMDR therapy for the real world, our January 2026 EMDR Certification consultation group starts soon.
Learn to implement EMDR with the clients who need it most.
Comment CONSULTATION or message me, and I'll send you info.
