Date and time
9:00 am, 31 May 2025
Location
The Mechanics Institute, 103 Princess Street Manchester, M1 6DD
Dr Susannah Colbert Presents an in-person one day Workshop
On behalf of the North West EMDR Regional Committee
Saturday 31st May 2025
9am arrival for 9.30am start to 5.00pm finish – lunch included
We know that adverse life experiences are one of the main risk factors for the development of psychosis. This workshop will consider the trauma model of psychosis and it’s relationship with Adaptive Information Processing (AIP) and the Power, Threat, Meaning Framework.
This event will encourage EMDR practitioners to work with psychosis and expand the field of EMDR practice to address the unmet trauma need in psychosis.
By the end of the day, it is hoped that participants will be able to:
- Describe the trauma model of psychosis, and the relationship with AIP and the Power, Threat, Meaning Framework
- Explain the current state of the evidence-base for EMDR for psychosis
- Practice several methods for identifying the underlying trauma in psychosis
- Map out the relevant trauma memory networks underlying psychosis for a particular client (formulation)
- Describe adaptations to the structural model of dissociation relevant for psychosis
- Practice several techniques for working with dissociation and avoidance

Bio
Dr Colbert is a clinical psychologist working with psychosis in a variety of NHS settings for over 15 years. She trained in EMDR in 2017 and this approach immediately fit with her understanding of what it is to be human and the experiences of those labelled ‘psychotic’. She made contact with Professor Paul Miller, author of EMDR Therapy for Schizophrenia and Other Psychoses, and started to use EMDR with clients from an NHS community psychosis team. Now Dr Colbert has an academic post at the Solomons Institute of Applied Psychology, where she supervises research into aspects of EMDR for psychosis. This training arose out of all the things she wishes she’d known when first starting using EMDR for psychosis, and draws on the latest research in the area.