You Can Treat Trauma Early Without Reliving It

A call can end, the scene can clear, and your body can still be on the call months later. We sit down with clinical psychologist Dr. Stacy Raymond to talk about what actually works for first responder mental health when the job leaves you with nightmares, intrusive images, a short fuse, and sleep that never fully comes back. We also dig into why the “tough it out” culture quietly pushes people toward avoidance and alcohol instead of recovery.

We get practical about EMDR therapy (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) and how it’s used with police officers, firefighters, EMS, dispatchers, corrections, and veterans. Stacy breaks down bilateral stimulation methods like eye movements, handheld tappers, and alternating tones, and we clear up common misconceptions, including the fear that EMDR is “electroshock” or that you must retell every detail of your worst call. We also talk about the clinical guardrails that matter: a real intake, readiness, and careful screening for alcohol misuse or prescription medication abuse so the work stays safe and the gains stick.

We zoom out to the bigger story: ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) and why higher ACE scores can raise risk for operational stress injuries, plus how peer support and confidentiality shape whether people ever feel safe enough to get help. The takeaway we want you to hold onto is tactical: treat acute stress early, protect your sleep, and keep your brain mission-ready without carrying the call forever. If you’re in a mental health crisis, call 988 for assistance in the United States and Canada.

To reach Stacy, please go to her website: https://www.drstacyraymond.com/

Her Instagram is https://www.instagram.com/stacyshrink1414/

You can buy her book here

Subscribe, share this with someone on your shift, and leave a review so more first responders can find real trauma tools that work.

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Transcript

Welcome And Mission Of The Show

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to Resilience Development in Action with Steve Bisson. This is the podcast dedicated to first responder mental health, helping police, fire, EMS, dispatchers, and paramedics create better growth environments for themselves and their teams. Let's get started.

Meeting Dr. Stacy Raymond

SPEAKER_01 0:29

Well, hi everyone, and welcome. I'm so happy to have you here. I'm hoping that you guys continue to like and subscribe if you think about it and then put in a review. Those reviews are always helpful. But today I have someone that I met through online and I read her book, and it's called one of her books. I didn't read the other one yet, but I'm gonna be reading it, calling Helping the Helpers. But this one is Dump the Bucket. Let's see, Killing Trauma and Police with EMDR. I'm covering her name, that's not fair. I read the book, You Know Me, I Never Lie on my podcast. You can see there's a little crease, there's little notes, there's a whole nine thing. But the good thing is Stacy already sucked up to me. She signed the first page. So haha, I got a signed version. But in all reality, it making EMDR reachable for first responders is so important. And this book does it in droves. So welcome, uh Dr. Stacy Raymond. This is the last time I'm gonna call you, Doctor. Welcome to Resilience Development in Action.

SPEAKER_02 1:24

Thank you for having me. It's great to be here.

SPEAKER_01 1:27

I think that, you know, I introduced a little bit of both books already, but you know, you're much more than two books, I'm assuming. Anyway, I hope. But I really felt like I got to talk to you a few minutes before the interview, and then, you know, we've exchanged a few times. We seem very similar. I think we have a karaoke night that we're gonna do sometimes. Right. How about you introduce yourself to my audience who may not know who you are?

SPEAKER_02 1:47

Sure. All right, so I'm Stacy Raymond. I've been a clinical psychologist in private practice for 27 years. So I work in Ridgefield, Connecticut. I am a peer support clinical supervisor for a local police department. I grew up raised by a Marine and a police officer. He just turned 90 yesterday. So he said, you know, Marines don't die. They just go to hell and regroup. That's what he told me. So I'm gonna follow that. So it it was it was difficult at times, you know, to be raised by someone with that background, especially because he he came from his own issues even before he enlisted in the military. But that was my first understanding of what it was like to be a police officer, at least to live with one and to see the work that he did and how it impacted him, and to live with somebody with post-traumatic stress that never, never addressed it because, you know, he's 90 and that age group, they don't talk about it. Like I've tried to talk to, I've said, I've looked at, I've talked to other veterans, combat vets, I've talked to police officers that have been in some pretty bad calls. And he says, no, we're not talking about it. And that's that.

Early Career And Seeing Trauma Up Close

SPEAKER_02 3:01

So my first job was I was a psychologist in a women's prison, FCI Danbury. And I had to become weapons trained, I had, and also in self-defense. And, you know, it was the population, there were 900 women behind the wall, 150 in the camp. And just learning that most of those women came from an abuse background. And then they picked the people that they hung out with, either gangs or prostitution or engaged in activities that were illegal, and they ended up in prison. So the effect of abuse on the human psyche and how the adult unfolds from there, I found that very interesting. But also very interesting was that the COs, the correctional officers, they themselves had a lot of issues. You know, alcohol, you know, short fews, angry outbursts, inappropriate relationships with the inmates, some sneaking drugs into the into the prison for sexual favors, you know, just a side of officers that I just went in very naive and then, you know, realized that their stress level dealing with inmates, walking into an institution where you can actually feel it. When you come through the Sally port, like there's this heaviness because there's 900 people in there that are not going to leave. They will leave eventually. We had a couple of lifers, but you know, it's it's a very heavy environment. And then starting around 2015, I started getting more and more trauma clients. I started seeing firefighters, police, dispatchers, paramedics, EMTs, just and veterans, combat veterans. And I found, much to my surprise, I was just so comfortable with this population. I knew how to talk to them. They knew how to relate to me, they would open up to me. And so that became like a real intense interest of mine. And then I became involved with the local police department, and then I became schism trained. I do debriefs on a regular basis now. I give presentations locally on post-traumatic stress, how to identify it and what to do about it. And I do that at police departments and fire departments. So that's me. So you don't do much.

SPEAKER_01 5:29

Is that what you're saying?

unknown 5:30

Right.

SPEAKER_02 5:30

And then I then there's my civilian clients who they also have abuse histories, or they have their own traumas, you know, perhaps a spouse that died by suicide, or they lost a child in a car accident, or they have a terminal diagnosis. You know, just it's all trauma. It's just all all trauma that I deal with. And I use EMDR, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy. And I find that to be the most effective, quickest way to alleviate the effects of trauma.

SPEAKER_01 6:04

Yeah, and I mean, there's so many things, all joking aside, that we can go towards here. Because I think that for me, like the the thing that's really help guide my treatment sometimes, because I am EMDR trained just like yourself.

SPEAKER_02 6:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:17

I'm not EMDR IA for my own personal reasons that I shall share maybe offline here. But I I am I've done I've done that for about 12 years, follow trainings, and it's such the most effective tool. You mentioned SISM, the crisis intervention. That's so important too. Peer support, I can go down so many aisles because I think peer support is one of the things that is underused, but sometimes it's underused because people who are put in a peer support place sometimes gab to their own department, and that's the biggest noise.

SPEAKER_02 6:53

Right. There has to be confidentiality. But the other thing I've observed, and I've talked to other clinicians who work with uh police and fire, sometimes the people that need peer support the most or need therapy the most are peer supporters because they come from that background where it's okay for me to be there for you, but I can't ask for help. I don't need me. No, I don't need help, but I'll be there for you. So that's that's my understanding. And not everybody on peer support, it comes from you know, a damaged uh history, but a lot of them do. And then, yeah, if you can't trust your peer support team because they might talk to command staff, well, that's a problem. That that that's not gonna work.

Why First Responders Open Up

SPEAKER_01 7:36

I want to just start off maybe about a little bit about that, because to me, the ACEs is just the most important thing to do as a therapist, particularly working with first responders. Right. I do like working with my civilians, particularly uh people with trauma. And I'm pulling out the book because literally one of my favorite parts is exactly what I share with the first responder world. It's the research stuff that you talked about. ACES is adverse child events, just for everyone to know. And it's only 10, 10 questions, they're pretty yes or no answers, really easy to do. Sorry if I do a little education here, but to me, that's the greatest thing. You know, I'm I'm pulling the book because you know, I didn't know what the numbers were for civilians. So thank you for pulling that in because I never looked those up.

SPEAKER_02 8:18

But you know, yeah, it's the average score is a one, and that's based on 17,500 surveys that were given to civilians. So the average score is a one. So technically, even a two is that's a hundred percent higher, right? That's that's that's considered a high score. Two and up. And then you want to comment on cops?

SPEAKER_01 8:40

Yeah, well, that's what I was thinking is that you just 2.6 is for the cops, and that's a research from 2025. Yeah, but then they have 3.5 and 3.6, which is typically what I hear here about a four personally. I've never done the exact math. Yeah.

ACE Scores And Hidden Risk

SPEAKER_01 8:53

But I think that explaining what a four is to people and also realizing that while it does indicate, and again, I say the whole world post-traumatic stress disorder.

SPEAKER_02 9:04

I know that's a dirty word sometimes in Yeah, we call it an injury because when when we use the word disorder, which is what's in the DS V, people feel like, oh, that's something like attention deficit disorder. I'm gonna have that for the rest of my life. And I've I've sat with so many people, civilians and first responders and veterans, that yes, they show up with they meet the criteria for the disorder according to the DSM V, but they, you know, when we're done, they do not meet the criteria. And so they do not have that issue anymore.

SPEAKER_01 9:39

But, you know, explaining a little bit about what the like for me personally, well, I agree with you, I get that. I tell people, especially the younger guys, I'm like, let's keep it acute stress and then never get to the post-traumatic stress. That's the important part.

SPEAKER_02 9:52

I like to address it in the acute stress, though, technically, right? I'm gonna get clinical here. You can't call it acute stress after a month.

SPEAKER_01 10:00

I know, but that's what I mean. But trying to get people into wellness visits, talking to people.

SPEAKER_02 10:04

Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right.

SPEAKER_01 10:05

Stuff like that.

SPEAKER_02 10:06

Act on it when it is acute stress, right? Because it's all the symptoms of post-traumatic stress, right? Sleep disruption, you know, it could be nightmares, it could be intrusive images, it could be, you know, hyper startle, hyper vigilance. You know, having a short fuse with other people. You don't have to check all of those, but if you check most of them, and you just had an event that happened, right? It could be a suicide in your department, it could be a child death that you attended as a first responder, whatever the case may be. Acting on it before it becomes like locked into your nervous system. Act

Stop Acute Stress From Settling

SPEAKER_02 10:44

on it when it's acute stress, and you it will never be called post-traumatic stress. Right. So that's what I think Steve's saying is right, Steve, like act on it early.

SPEAKER_01 10:56

I think that that's why I talk about that because I tell people like I I just had a gentleman, I'm gonna just say there were three adverse events, significant adverse events, okay, less than 12 hours. Oh wow. And they contacted me within a week. And right, so he's worked intensely, and that was the dumpster fire. But guess what? We put the dumpster fire out. And yeah, does he think about it sometimes? Sure, but it's not distressing anymore to him. Correct. And the younger guy, and he's like, Why don't people do that? I'm like, because you got to be a tough guy and let it really fuck you up over a year.

SPEAKER_02 11:32

Well, here's the problem, right? It's the stigma against getting help. I think younger people are much more open to talking about it, addressing it. Younger people will move past acute trauma faster than older people just because our brains are just a little more entrenched as we get older. So young person coming in, more willing to try, you know, therapy, can move right past those three traumas that happen within a 12-hour period. And it's it feels like a miracle for people when they when they actually do that. But if, you know, the older school people, they're gonna be like, well, yeah, so my sleep is a little disrupted right now. And yeah, I've had a few nightmares and I have some intrusive images or whatever. But I'm just gonna tell you right now, their go-to is gonna be alcohol. And for the most part, and let's see how this goes. But when you see how it goes, it then takes root into your into your brain, and it's harder to disentangle it from your day-to-day experience, right? So then it be it kind of shows its ugly head when you least expect it. You could, you know, two months after the incident, you could be having dinner, and then all of a sudden you're thinking about the dead child incident, and you don't know why. So a lot of them think that they're losing their mind. I must be crazy. And so I don't really want to let anyone in on that because I don't want to lose my my gun and my badge, and I don't want to be judged, and I don't want to be passed over for promotion and all that. But if you look at it as tactical resiliency, go and get help so that you can stay sharp and you can then sleep better. Then you don't have to drink as much in order to deal with the symptoms. And you, you know, that's tactical readiness. It's not just making sure that you've got your, you know, your vest on and your guns clean and loaded and everything, all your gear is ready to go. It's making sure that this is ready to go. So that's really the gist of of my book. And like you going and and doing EMDR, which is not like CBT. It's not, you know, cops don't have to talk about the nitty-gritty details of the dead baby call. I could ask them to go to the worst part of that, and that's where we start, right there. Go to the worst part, get an image in your head of the worst part of that call. You do not have to tell me the details about it. Because a lot of them are afraid of getting emotional too, right? This is alpha males, you know. They're like, damn, last thing I want to do is cry.

SPEAKER_01 14:04

And I think that that's exactly what, you know, one of my my my training with the EMDR, it was with the MDR IA.

SPEAKER_02 14:13

IA meaning just so people know, it's Mvria, which is the International Association. So you can belong to it and you don't have to belong to it, but you can still be certified in EMDR.

SPEAKER_01 14:26

Thank you for I forget sometimes, so I do appreciate that. But what I've what I told people is like my first experience when we had to do it ourselves, I ended up with someone who is not like she didn't want to say what it was.

SPEAKER_02 14:38

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 14:39

So we ended, I ended up doing my first ever experience with EMDR was not talking about what was going on on, uh-huh, seeing her cry, doing the passes. Again, I was brand new, so I was still like buy the book 15 to 20, blah, blah, blah.

SPEAKER_02 14:53

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:54

But what I tell people is that nothing really scares that fright more than someone not talking on your first ever one, and then suddenly everyone's done, and she's still going on. So everyone turns to you with this non-verbal person doing that. And I think that that's how I explain. Like, you don't need to tell me the details. No, you can have those thoughts in your mind. But when you say, Okay, then I'm gonna start. I I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 15:16

It's really a private experience in their head that the healing is happening privately, kind of in their head, and then when you stop either the eye movements or if they're holding the tappers and it's buzzing left, I just do the tappers because I find it less distracting.

SPEAKER_01 15:30

But what I was gonna say is that the other part too is when you don't address the front end, like we said, the younger guys doing that a lot better nowadays than they have your kid. What happens is you're gonna open up whatever the the no trigger here, trigger warning for those who are upset. You see the dead child, but that might open another channel of other stuff that you saw. It opens another channel, and now suddenly you have six, seven, eight, nine, twelve, twenty adverse events that you got to kind of process. They typically you don't do all 20, but I'm not gonna go there too too much detail.

SPEAKER_02 16:01

Right, that's where it's the clinician's call, as far as you know, do we write it down and table it for later, or is it really something that needs to go be gone after in this session? So that that comes with experience as a clinician.

Sponsor Break Deemed Fit

SPEAKER_01 16:14

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EMDR Without Retelling Every Detail

SPEAKER_01 17:19

Well, I think that that's where I wanted to go with that. That's exactly, you know, having a having have this education, I think there's two things types of education. I feel like I do a lot of education with the people who want E MDR.

SPEAKER_02 17:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:32

Who want, you know, as you mentioned in the book, I'm not gonna make the memory disappear. I'm just gonna make it so that it's in the rear view mirror and you know it's there. Right. Number two. I think the other part too is explaining to clinicians in particular. I think sometimes the clinicians are so like, you know, I do believe in some of the structure of it, but sometimes you gotta move a little bit of the structure for XYZ reasons. Correct. I think that for me, there's two things I want to talk about. Is can you tell me more what's your like why are like the entrance of EMDR through clinicians and first responders? I feel a lot of resistance comes from the clinicians as well as the first responders. Can you explain a little bit of what their resistance are, what they go through? I think you talk about it in the book, but I'd love to hear what you have to say about it.

SPEAKER_02 18:13

So, who who are you asking about for resistance?

SPEAKER_01 18:16

Both on the police side and then sometimes the clinicians. I find that clinicians do not understand how to work with first responders.

SPEAKER_02 18:23

Correct. And so, in my experience and and what and talking to clinicians who are very experienced working with first responders, is the the first responders want to just get in and get out. They want to do EMDR. They don't need a whole lot of preparation. Obviously, you know, you need to have them understand what EMDR is. You they have to you have to establish a calm place, you have to make sure that they can handle the, you know, the emotions of of what's gonna come

What Clinicians Miss With First Responders

SPEAKER_02 18:54

up, right? But then once they're ready, it's time, it's go time. It's like, let's, and usually, you know, I let people pick what they want to work on. And so they're gonna, they're gonna pick something from their work experience. But if they are of the group that have come from adverse childhood experiences, eventually we're gonna get to that, you know, if they were hit as a kid and it resulted in bruises or cuts, if they were constantly criticized that they could do better, or if they felt like no one really cared. If you're gonna cry like that, go to your room, or being called a sissy or a baby, you know, for crying. You know, stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about, right? So that's emotional neglect. Okay. And so eventually we end up back at those traumas, and those are childhood traumas. But you don't have to worry about police and fire, especially being too fragile to jump into the first target memory. They're very hardy people, these first responders, and even the, you know, even the combat vets. But what

Alcohol And Meds Screening Before EMDR

SPEAKER_02 20:05

you have to obviously screen for is alcohol abuse, right? Because there's not going to be any progress made. If they're actively abusing alcohol, you know, they may feel relief after doing an EMDR session, but you lose that ground between first session and second session if they're going home and drinking. Because those, you know, whatever neural pathways that were broken and then rewired. And what I mean by broken is that, and I don't mean that in a harsh way, but that that image that just keeps coming up, keeps coming up, keeps coming up, that starts to go away during EMDR. And then other ways of looking at that trauma start to develop. That development will go away if the person is going home and drinking. So the person has to be modifying their alcohol intake and/or they need to go to rehab first, and you know, if they're that bad. Because you EMDR is gonna just stir up more emotion than they're gonna be able to handle, and they're gonna try to handle it with alcohol. So you have to make sure that alcohol is not their go-to. So as long as you've ruled out that they're an active abusing alcoholic or prescription meds, right? Because there are people that I was gonna say that after you were done.

SPEAKER_01 21:22

That's prescription meds are very much the other problem.

SPEAKER_02 21:26

Xanax, you know, clonopin, you know, as long as the person is following it as prescribed and they're not abusing it, you can do EMDR work. But if there's any suspicion that they're getting it on the street or they're, you know, they have a family member that gets it regularly and now they're using it and they're using it to deal with their emotional pain, that person's not ready for EMDR. So, but as clinicians, you don't have to be afraid of doing EMDR with with police and fire and veterans as long As we rule out what I just said. But I don't find that first responders or veterans are afraid of doing it either. They want to feel better. And if you can do a session with them where you bring their distress level from here down to here and it's palpable to them, that is so gratifying for them. And it's gratifying for the clinician because now they have hope. Now they have hope, like, wow, okay. So I don't have to live with all of this haunting me for the rest of my life and having crappy sleep. There's actually some hope that I can feel better. And I didn't even have to drink or I didn't have to take a Percocet. I didn't, you know, I didn't have to take more clonapin in order to, in order to calm my nervous system. So so that's really encouraging.

SPEAKER_01 22:49

But yeah, well, I would also say to you, there's a few things that I want to add to that is a lot of things that can get you know as much as it's I don't want to ever use these words, but I'll use it on the podcast, but I don't use it with my clients. You want to speed up the process, figure out what the touchstone memory or the earliest memory is.

SPEAKER_02 23:07

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:07

And typically adding taking care of those will take care of a lot of other ones. How I explain the process, you say broken, I say a little different. I say, look, your trauma's stuck in your midbrain or your limbic system right there. So every time it kind of shows up similar, you go into fight or flight mode because it's nowhere in your cerebral cortex.

SPEAKER_02 23:26

Right.

SPEAKER_01 23:26

I think EMDR does is that it creates those neural pathways with to bring it to the long term and your cerebral cortex so that it's still there, it's never going to go away, but it's no longer giving you that fight or flight response. So a little bit of what I explained. So I think it's right.

SPEAKER_02 23:41

And I would do the same thing, but I was commenting on resistance because that was your question.

SPEAKER_01 23:45

So yeah, but I think the resist the resistance for me from therapists is there's this, oh, can I can can I handle it? And I'm like, what's different working with Leos or law enforcement officers?

SPEAKER_02 23:59

Yeah, I I don't, I don't that's not really something that uh No, but it comes up for me.

SPEAKER_01 24:03

And I hear that a lot from therapists. How do you do it with them? Same as I do it with civilians, right?

SPEAKER_02 24:08

Right.

SPEAKER_01 24:09

I don't see the difference. No and the the other part too is I I think that what happens a lot with different people is that they they start feeling better, but I always remind them, I said, what I would like to do, uh you say you check for substance use, but for the first particular first sessions, I also go like either we'll go at the end of the day if you're gonna go home and take it easy, or we do it at the beginning of the day if you come off shift and you're gonna go to bed, because it can be exhausting at the time.

SPEAKER_02 24:37

It can. That's that's absolutely true. It does usually wipe people out. So I absolutely agree with that.

SPEAKER_01 24:42

I think it's really the neuropathways just being formed that as much as I believe in neuroplasticity, it takes energy, it takes a lot of energy that you're not aware of.

SPEAKER_02 24:51

It's not a run, it's a it's really a lot of energy that and and it could be someone who says that it was my first worst call. That's what I want to address because that's the one that keeps coming up. Well, now we're going back 10, 15, 20 years. And so I find the further back that you go, the more tired the individual is at the end of the session. That's what I find.

SPEAKER_01 25:10

So Yeah, I think that you have a you do use an example of one of them. I can't remember that it was a long, like it was a memory from years ago, and I can't remember who it was. I know I read Right.

SPEAKER_02 25:20

It might have been

When Time Does Not Heal

SPEAKER_02 25:21

Officer Elstey with the sounds right the dog had a deceased infant in its mouth. And that was, you know, 20 years prior. And it was just as fresh for him. And the reason it stung so much, well, first off, it's an infant in in a dog's mouth in the seven, what is he, 73rd precinct, bad area, you know, very tough area. There's the most homicides for New York, at least at that time, were happening in those in those precincts around there. And he had a baby girl at home himself, his daughter, and it was the same size as that infant. So that really stung for him. And he was just one week on the job, NYPD. So, you know, they say time heals all wounds. It doesn't. It doesn't. Some of that stuff stays on board and and really bothers the person. And so we went back 20 years and we resolved it. And he he doesn't have any breakthrough images about that again. And you know, no issues with like dog, like because if he heard like a dog with a similar growl or saw from behind a similar size dog, his mind would go to that. And it doesn't anymore because we resolved it with EMDR. It's it's now filed in his cortex. And if he wants to think about it, he can. So my concern became well, what about you know, all this money is being dumped into officer wellness, right? I'm gonna focus just on police.

SPEAKER_01 26:52

Well, you know what? I if we're gonna do that, I I I just want to finish off a little bit on EMDR. Maybe for the if you want to stick around, we're gonna do it another half hour. I'd love to address that. Okay, yes. That's a half hour plus conversation.

SPEAKER_02 27:03

Okay, all

EMDR Myths Safety And Wrap Up

SPEAKER_02 27:04

right.

SPEAKER_01 27:04

And just to finish on EMDR, so let's break a little bit of the misconceptions. You talked about paddles. So you're telling me that we're doing electroshock therapy.

SPEAKER_02 27:15

That's what people think initially, right? And so, you know, they're holding buzzers because you know, EMDR is based on bilateral. So whether you swing the eyes left and right, you know, that's bilateral stimulation, or you have someone hold these buzzers and it's buzzing left, right, left, right, left, right. And then for my dispatchers who can't stop hearing the screaming from a particularly bad call, they're wearing a headset, kind of like what Steve's wearing now, and they're hearing a tone, and they can hear me talk over that tone. It's just, and it's happening left, right, left, right, left, right. So the whole idea is bilateral stimulation. It prompts the healing part of the brain that is stuck to get moving again, so that it can be taken out of the mid-brain, the fight or flight part of the brain, and then be filed in a bad call file, if you will, you know.

SPEAKER_01 28:09

And I think that that's why, like for me, EMDR is really helpful. The other part that I want to finish on, and you tell me your thoughts about this too. If you're someone's in a rush and needs to do EMDR in a rush, what do you say?

SPEAKER_02 28:24

No, I think it's clinically sound to do, you still have to do a full intake with the individual. This isn't a party trick. You could put someone into an ab reaction and then they can't go to work the next day. So, no, I don't, uh it's not like, oh yeah, let's have some fun with this. No, I still have to do a full intake in order to, you know, recognize what really is going into the picture. And then if next session they want to get started with the MDR, then we can do that. But you know, you have to make sure that the client is safe and that they're ready to do this very deep work because it's a laser-focused kind of work. We're not dancing around the topic, we are like zeroing in on a target, and it's actually called a target. That's what Francine Shapiro called it.

SPEAKER_01 29:13

So I think I want to finish on this, and I I'm the same way. I would even like we'll go to the we'll talk about the wellness stuff because I want to talk about the future of mental wellness and how we can train people. But I what I do with people who come in with EMDR and wanting the the express version of it. I'm like, well, I do believe that it takes time to trust your therapist and go through some of this stuff. So I like to build a relationship with you prior to doing so. And I think that that's how you can get the comfort level. So you said exactly the same, pretty much, but I want to put it in different words because for me, what's key is you're gonna be talking about hard shit. So let's not pretend that you're gonna be like, Yeah, Steve, I want to be fully open about this. Number two, rushing the process is what also tried to do with the alcohol or burying it as far as you can in your brain, how that worked out for you. Right. So I that's kind of my my bullshit answers to to people who give me bullshit questions. How about you stick around? We're gonna talk a little bit about that stuff at the academy level. Again, just for this one, I would love to talk about dump the bucket, healing trauma in police with EMDR. This is her book. It's amazing. If you want to know more about EMDR, this is the best way to learn from it, for especially for first responders. But then we're gonna talk maybe on the other side, not only about training and the tendencies to avoid therapy, but also about how we can talk to therapists and maybe we can talk more about helping the helpers. So as we complete this episode, please join us on the next episode because Stacy's sticking around.

SPEAKER_00 30:43

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