EMDR Healing within the Path of the Wounded Healer: Education and Training Manual Announcements and Updates
Announcing that Dr. Adam O’Brien and Wounded Healers Institute are leaving EMDRIA and Institute for Creative Mindfulness (ICM).
Having achieved certified, approved consultant, advanced special topics trainer status with EMDRIA and with Institute for Creative Mindfulness (ICM) under Dr. Marich mentorship), I am leaving to continue the Path of the Wounded Healer with Wounded Healers Institute: EMDR Healing Education and Training Program.
Dr. Adam is also leaving ICM and Dr. Jamie’s tutelage. I am eternally grateful to all at ICM and grateful for Jamie and her shared lived experience; and to all of those at ICM, thank you! To those at EMDRIA who have walked before and have left us the fruits of their labor, thank yous!
Now, it is our turn to present what we have learned…
Wounded Healers Institute’s EMDR Healing citations:
O’Brien, A. (2025). Path of the Wounded Healer’s Education and Training Manual for EMDR Therapy, Brainspotting, and Psychedelic Care. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/ ISBN: 979-8-9923080-6-8
O’Brien, A. (2025). EMDR Healing within the Path of the Wounded Healer: Wounded Healers Institute Education and Training Manual. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/ ISBN: 978-1-969148-99-6
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Reasoning
The observations that led to the creation of our curriculum (and our WHI business model) are briefly outlined here (See our blogs for more details (HERE)).
Main reasons: Due to increasing APA corporate compliance, identifying of “pseudoscience”, and ethical-legal demands from governing bodies that clearly do not understand clinical practice, presentations, and manifestations of dissociation, addiction, and unconscious systems, WHI sets to show how Moral-Ethical Healers would disseminate the innate healing knowledge base that EMDR activates (otherwise known as memory reconsolidation (MR)). MR offers an intrinsic and authentic way to heal from the deepest wounds. As a part of completing our dissertation in 2023 (foundation of Addiction as Dissociation Model and Path of the Wounded Healer) and WHI programming launching in 2025, we recognize what cannot be taught comes from true lived experience. Our experience with systems (family/community), institutes, associations, organizations, jobs, systems of parental authority, publishing, peer-review, and academia is that it is professional gatekeeping from professions who either don’t know any better or are paid to only care about their profession maintaining its power, control, and prestige. These institutions are not the filter or safeguards of science, they prevent the research citizens would need to dismantle their dependence, reasoning, logic, and professional stronghold. Which is why WHI is remaining independent and publishing our findings through our own internal process. With the APA’s requirements for training to have peer-reviewed literature from the last 5 years is yet another example of how the “good ideas” of those in power don’t understand clinical practice, frontlines of health, and the citizenry needs. If peer-review meant anything then non-addictive opiates, chemical imbalance, and safe vaccines for children and pregnant women; and as if “the system” was not complacent, then indemnity would never have been given to Big Pharma for opiates, false advertising, and intergenerational poisoning. Furthermore, the DSM and the APA would have operationalized a definition of addiction, dissociation, and the unconscious before they allowed the law to put people in prison for ingesting what now amounts to superfood, supplements, and our innate healing system (e.g., classic psychedelics).
Also, EMDRIA would not approve of our Cannabis-Based EMDR, so denying the existence of federal and state law and the evidence of established science demonstrates their level of moral character, proactive stance against a marginalized population, continues to support policies that go against healing and are traumatizing, dedication to corportized systems, and their degree of awareness on dissociation-informed care. Thus, we divide to separate, so we can remain equal in our integrity.
While studying EMDR (in training and in practice), we found inconsistencies in the foundational logic of the floatback, safe/calm place, target sequencing, standard protocol (with dissociative addictions), over-protocolization, differential pathology in diagnostics, and case conceptual models and approaches. We also found how common eye movements are native to Daoism, Buddhism, and Eastern traditions. How dual attention is promoted by meditation and psychedelic use since the dawn of time and how EMDR is meditation-based. As dual attention is the mechanism of action that sequences memory reconsolidation (MR), both philosophically and practically in both, the science of EMDR seems simple and commonsensical. The foundational aspects of EMDR are for everyone, parents and citizens alike, which is why we are offering our learning to anyone. Due to the field’s lack of definitions on addiction, dissociation, and the unconscious, at this point, we feel that it is better to lead than to follow the herd off the cliff.
EMDR is meditation-based and meditation is already evidence-based; therefore, best practices would be for people to regulate their life before they decide to do an invasive procedure, with a protocol that amounts to activating meditation through the endogenous psychedelic healing system. Again, dual attention is the active mechanism of action that performs memory reconsolidation (memory healing), which everyone in healthcare, even parents and every adult should know (like how to administer the Heimlich maneuver, Naltrexone, or CPR). And as Shapiro theorized, what stimulating this response, is what would activate the adaptive information process (AIP). Our programming experientially educates and trains in all of this and educates everyone in them.
We observed different shortcomings in the field’s conceptualization of mental health, diagnostics, and compliance-driven business practices. We particularly challenge EMDRIA’s stance on not allowing us to educate on cannabis and EMDR when CBD is federally legal and THC is legal in selective states. We also observe that EMDRIA’s use of “adult learning” learning models and priority of addressing symptoms over care reflects our bigger concern about the field of mental health. The encroachment of perfectionism, altruism, and ambition addictions into education and training organizations and associations, particularly with CE’s, peer-reviewed literature, overregulation, overinsurancing, overcredentiallying, overdiagnosing, and enabling the pathologization of normal are also concerns.
We also observe that APA “pseudoscience” stems from a psychological encroachment of civil liberties and freedom of consciousness. We find these quantitatively demanding claims often dismiss qualitative practices and create the stigma that governs dynamics of power and control that have turned abusive. We also challenge Continuing Education (CE’s) tied to APA and Boards of Education legal-ethics dominant logic and conditioned financial models, and how underdeveloped the profession is in the absence of psychedelic care due to the lack of research for the last 70 years; due to a war on drugs, that promoted behavioral manipulation over honest incentivizing, we find the generational gap the intergenerational seeds of slavery flourishing in native lands. The necessity development of our training model with the Addiction as Dissociation Model, Meeting Area Screening and Assessment (MASA), Toxic Shame Shape and Color, Bulk Blink, Imaginal Exposure Experiences, Principles of Condition (with calm place), unconscious as the body, Phase 9 (memory integration and posttraumatic growth) and Mindful Dissociation speaks to the fields current level of recovery, degree of dissociative-informed care, and level of moral character.
What you do with this knowledge is up to the reader, but the participants who are looking to attend our training and (re)educational programming need to understand how our approach and philosophy is fundamentally different from the industrialized professions, corportized associations, and compliant nationalism. How they apply the knowledge will affect how their life will turn out.
Our training is also offered to those who need individual learning and (re)education of meditation and healing. Our experience is that people who have attended other trainings but have come to value our approach and solutions. We offer individual education to those who are dissociative learners, which may need some explaining so we recommend reading our blogs (HERE). WHI EMDR program is the direct result of our having earned our EMDR training, certification, consultant, and trainer status; and the renouncing of these titles due to our growing body of research on Addiction as Dissociation Model, Applied Recovery, and Moral-Ethical framework.
Here are some ways that this program is different:
1) Healing is different from Therapy; Although they can play well together… See our blogs for more details. To be a Healer, you have to know what one is.
Our programming is also for emerging Healers and those who consider themselves Healers. If you don’t know or want to become one, our professional Healer Program is available. If you are a licensed or credentialed professional who is thinking about applying to our programming and know why you would choose our approach over others, then you are probably already a Healer who knows that the lived experience is more valuable than approved credentials.
2) We are not an EMDRIA-approved training program. Nor will we seek it. Increasing bureaucratic compliance standards, legal insurance-based needs over client care, avoiding civil liberties, invasion of privacy, and the need to necessitate enforcement policies implies a lot to the educated – and should suggest a lot more to those who may not be (as to who and what associations like EMDRIA are really for).
We created our curriculum to meet EMDRIA’s educational standards, but with the encroaching power dynamics and professional dependence on CE requirements from Educational Boards (enforcement agencies for upholding immature laws) and the corrupted influence of the legal/insurance-based professions in medical and psychological science (e.g., APA), we object to this need. EMDRIA (and national associations that should be behaving like unions to fight for civil liberties in healthcare) adherence to increasing unnecessary professional standards by other professions, WHI has decided not to pursue their approval.
Along with CE compliance increasing to perfectionistic levels by governmental enforcement agencies (e.g., Boards of Education) and the APA “pseudoscience” standards, even being published as standards in medical journals, we see that these professional systems are gatekeeping citizens from healing. Gatekeeping more than the trauma that they have endured, professions creating more barriers for clients is increasingly becoming traumatizing. We seek to bring healing to everyone through educational efforts and mass dissemination. Inaction is also retraumatizing. Also, CE programs are conditioning professionals to not know the difference between what is professionally ethical and what is legal, hence our Moral-Ethical stance. We will not be seeking permission from systems that do not understand that their level of professionalism displayed on the national level is beneath the Moral-Ethical Healer. Moral character and level of recovery is measurable, thus our training and (re)educational model offers participants the opportunity to know if they have learned what they need to learn and we can know if they have done their work to be considered ethically-moral. Read our blogs. We are bringing Healing and recovery principles to the world (again).
Our training and educational experience in EMDR lead us to develop our WHI programming, Addiction as Dissociation Model, Path of the Wounded Healer, Phase 9 (Memory Integration and Posttraumatic Growth), Shame Shape and Color, Bulk Blink, Mindful Dissociation, Imaginal Exposure Experiences, and Meeting Area Screening and Assessment (MASA). These take time to learn so our programming is different. It can be done individually.
3) Our EMDR Healing Educational Program is donation-based. With donation-based services, donations can be made in the future, based on what value you get from it when you get it. Our training-based programs and our EMDR Healing consultations are not donation-based.
WHI is also offering our EMDR Refresher and Re-educational Program, based on our lived experience with our EMDR journey.
The Process
Not only will you take the ride, you will become it. You will learn more about mindfulness and healing then you will about EMDR, but you will learn EMDR within a dissociation and recovery-informed phase model of care (e.g., Path of the Wounded Healer). You will also learn our MASA approach to better be able to screen and assess for common societal and clinical misunderstandings on dissociation, based on our findings and research on the Addiction as Dissociation Model (ADM).
Here is our process… To gain admission to our WHI programming and psychedelic care,
1) become a Honorary WHI member by signing up for our newsletter HERE.
2) Explore our Orientation and Admissions process by signing up with an account.
3) For admissions into WHI, our MASA (Interview/Application Review) is accessible through our Admissions. Contact us to schedule your MASA at: [email protected]
We use an experiential model of educating, so once you have signed up, then you start your journey on the Path of the Wounded Healer by starting the Orientation Class.
*For in-person, as a part of our application process (MASA) and training program, you can obtain qEEG results.
For more on our work and cause, consider following or signing up for newsletter or our work at woundedhealersinstitute.org or donating to our cause: HERE.
References
O’Brien, A. (2023a). Addiction as Trauma-Related Dissociation: A Phenomenological Investigation of the Addictive State. International University of Graduate Studies. (Dissertation). Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/courses/addiction-as-dissociation-model-course/
O’Brien, A. (2023b). Memory Reconsolidation in Psychedelics Therapy. In Path of the Wounded Healer: A Dissociative-Focused Phase Model for Normative and Pathological States of Consciousness: Training Manual and Guide. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/courses/addiction-as-dissociation-model-course/
O’Brien, A. (2023c). Path of the Wounded Healer: A Dissociative-Focused Phase Model for Normative and Pathological States of Consciousness: Training Manual and Guide. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/
O’Brien, A. (2024a). Healer and Healing: The re-education of the healer and healing professions as an advocation. Re-educational and Training Manual and Guide. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/
O’Brien, A. (2024e). Path of the Wounded Healers for Thrivers: Perfectionism, Altruism, and Ambition Addictions; Re-education and training manual for Abusers, Activists, Batterers, Bullies, Enablers, Killers, Narcissists, Offenders, Parents, Perpetrators, and Warriors. Re-Education and Training Manual and Guide. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/
O’Brien, A. (2025). American Made Addiction Recovery: a healer’s journey through professional recovery. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/
*This is for informational and educational purposes only. For medical advice or diagnosis, consult a professional.
