Regional event

EMDR West Midlands Regional Support Group – Using EMDR Successfully With Medically Unexplainable Physical Symptoms (MUS). Theory And Practice 01.03.2025

Date and time
9:30 am, 1 Mar 2025

Location

EMDR West Midlands Regional Support Group – Using EMDR successfully with Medically Unexplainable physical Symptoms (MUS). Theory and Practice.

Presenter: David Pike MSc Clinical & Health Psychologist

Hybrid: in-person and online event

Date: Saturday 1st March 2025, 09:30am – 16:30pm, 

Priory Rooms, Central Birmingham & Online.

The session will be recorded and will be available for three months after the event. 

CPD points: 6 

Abstract

This workshop will focus on working with people who have unremitting distressing symptoms located in the body. These can include chronic pain, complex headaches, Ménière’s disease and many others. Their common feature is that the medical profession does not have a physical explanation leading to physical treatments that work. They are ‘Medically Unexplainable Symptoms (MUS). Physical investigations do not throw light on the situation. They can then be labelled as ‘incurable’. Of course, if this is an authoritative label, and believed, then there is little incentive to try to resolve the situation and focus may then turn solely to palliative care in preparation for death. I shall present cases where successful outcomes have been achieved using EMDR.

To think all such conditions will be treatable by EMDR is presumptuous and is not the thesis of this workshop. If, however, some examples of successful treatment in such cases are examined in detail, then common factors emerge that EMDR therapists need to know. They have implications for both theory and practice. It appears that the self-healing properties of the mind, as postulated by the AIP model, parallels physical self-healing (‘Surgery removes the bullet out of the limb, which is an obstruction to cure, but nature heals the wound’ ― Florence Nightingale, Notes on Nursing: What It Is, and What It Is Not). 

If we can dissolve the mental obstruction that is inhibiting progress then the person will, themselves, find the right way forward to heal mentally. It is my belief that anyone working in this area will find the same underlying processes and that this form of validation is, therefore, a scientific process, leading to useful theory. This could lead to us working as equal colleagues with medical practitioners, each having our own area of expertise but collaborating to enhance each other.

This work is not easy. The defences, created to survive in chaos, have now become the problem. They still work to protect the ‘self’ now, but do so by preventing any change, including anything positive. Time will be taken to discuss the kind of preparation therapists need to develop if they wish to work in this area.

The event will consist of presentations, clinical examples, discussion and practice.

Aims 

  1. To help participants to understand the issues around delivering EMDR therapy to clients with unremitting physical symptoms.
    1. Especially when conventional medical treatment has not helped.
  2. To promote the use of the Standard Protocol, the AIP theoretical model and when adaptations may be needed.
  3. To appreciate EEDI issues and how they can contribute to communication breakdown in medical settings.
  4. To practice ways of assessing this client group that accelerate processing.
  5. To reflect on therapist preparation for this client group and the importance of the therapeutic relationship.

Presenter

David Pike is a Clinical Psychologist (Chartered), is an Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society and has been an accredited EMDR Europe Practitioner since 2012. He currently works in independent practice but has previously worked within the NHS in pain clinics, worked as a locum in a burns unit and set up a Medical Psychology Service specialising in head injuries and stroke. He has developed and delivered multidisciplinary Pain Management Programmes (prior to EMDR). He also has extensive experience as an Expert Witness, assessing people after personal injuries who often experience continuing pain and physical damage. His MSc thesis researched a practical way of revealing the mental structures underlying personality.

Time: 9.30am – 4:30 pm

Cost:  Member price: £60.00    Non-member price: £90.00

CPD points: 4

Member price: £60
Non-member price: £90

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