Kim Howard 00:07
Welcome to the Let’s Talk EMDR podcast brought to you by the EMDR International Association or EMDRIA. I am your host, Kim Howard. July is BIPOC Mental Health Month. BIPOC stands for Black, Indigenous People of Color. In this episode, we are discussing how EMDR therapy can help parents. Today’s guest is EMDR therapist, Mercedes Samudio, LCSW, was also the author of “Shame Proof Parenting.” Welcome, Mercedes. Thank you, Mercedes Samudio for being here today. We are so happy that you said yes. EMDR therapy with you today. And parenting, I think is the toughest job in the world, I have to have two of my own. So I appreciate all the work that you do to help parents like me manage their families, and hopefully help their children become healthy, happy adults. So that is always the goal. Thank you for all of the work that you do with that. So I’m gonna start with the first question. Can you tell us about your journey to become an EMDR therapist and your experience using EMDR therapy with parents? Yes.

Mercedes Sumudio 01:19
So as a EMDR therapist, I had been hearing about EMDR for a few years, and had been very curious about it. And I decided over the pandemic really to since I had time, I was like, Well, I would like to get trained and learn more about it and really pay attention to how EMDR really does work with trauma, and supporting clients on their healing journey. And so as I got into basic training, and began to learn about it, I really began to see the benefit that it would have, even for my own healing journey I had been in therapy, obviously on and off for most of my adult life. And so I had done talk therapy, and CBT, you know, I had done different types of therapy, but I hadn’t done EMDR on my own. And so as I was ending basic training, I began to search for my own EMDR therapist. As I began to transition, I thought, well, I’ll do EMDR therapy as a client. So I get both experiences. And I realized as a client, that EMDR therapy is so good at not just helping you to go back, and really reprocess the trauma that you’ve experienced. But it also helps you recreate narratives. It helps you to recreate who you are, and almost recreate your own identity as you begin to understand how the trauma influenced your identity and influenced who you were. And so I really love that as a client and really begin to even see my own trauma and the own my own experiences differently. And then as I began to practice it and use it, seeing the exact same changes in clients made me realize that this modality is just so transformative. Because it’s it’s a great container for helping someone walk out of that darkness walk out of their trauma into a really healthy version of themselves.

Kim Howard 03:07
I manage our social media account. And I would say probably weekly, when I post something, your social media account, somebody will respond with EMDR therapy saved my life. EMDR therapy really helped me. I love EMDR therapy, and I tried to spread the word about it, because it’s been so beneficial to me. And so it’s very rewarding to know that the work that you do helps people. I mean, I can’t I can’t imagine a better calling than that. So it’s great that you recognize that and then you went through it yourself. And then you implemented it as a professional therapist and said, Hey, I think I can help other people like it helped me that’s wonderful, amazing. Yeah, yeah, it’s

Mercedes Sumudio 03:44
a great modality, I really think that it’s one of those modalities that on the surface can feel sometimes like a fan, or like a fly by the seat of your pants kind of thing. And people sometimes are a little apprehensive. But one of the things that I love about the modality is the structure around how to set up that environment. It’s not just saying let’s dive people back into their trauma with no setup and no kind of boundaries for that. It says let’s put some really healthy boundaries around diving into something that can be really deep and really dark to come out of without those boundaries.

Kim Howard 04:17
Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. What is your favorite part of working with parents?

Mercedes Sumudio 04:22
I think one of my favorite parts of working with parents is giving them the sense of understanding that they too can heal while they’re working on developing a healthy space and a healthy family for their child. It’s always a very interesting moment when I work with parents, especially with EMDR and help them to understand that a lot of your responses aren’t just things that you’ve made up. They aren’t just things that you just kind of decided you were going to do. These are things that have come that have kind of accumulated over time from your lived experiences as a child yourself. And as you grow it either process or not process those things they become there. radios they become ways of how we behave. And so now that you’re raising a child, it’s hard sometimes even remember, we did not pick this up that, where do I remember learning this? How did I develop this way of responding. And so one of my favorite things is to watch a parent realize that they come oftentimes to therapy to figure out how to be better parents and how to be better for their children, and they find their own healing, and being able to see them realize that because they’ve sought out their own healing, they’re actually going to be a lot sturdier and a lot more solid as their child goes through whatever emotional kind of ups and downs their child will go through.

Kim Howard 05:33
So what successes have you seen regarding use of EMDR therapy with parents and family? I think you alluded to that in your previous answer. But is there something else that you’d like to add to that?

Mercedes Sumudio 05:43
Yeah, I think one of the things that EMDR therapy does is it reminds people that healing is an internal journey. It’s not about what your parents were right or wrong. It’s not about whether the people who hurt you right or wrong, it’s not even about forgiving those people. It’s really about saying something happened to me. And it changed the way I see myself and the way I show up in the world. And so in EMDR, therapy with parents has been really great, because I get to support them on realizing that you don’t have to go back and hate your parents. And we don’t have to go back and hate all the people who hurt you. All we have to do is go back to that version of you who believed whatever that that event told you about yourself, and reprocess that. And it allows parents to heal without having to go back and really sometimes even talk to old people or deal with those people again, but it still says you have permission to heal, even though you don’t want to interact with those people anymore.

Kim Howard 06:32
It’s a great truth. Are there any myths that you would like to bust about EMDR therapy with generational trauma.

Mercedes Sumudio 06:37
I think that would be really difficult, because that kind of just alluded to it, right? I think oftentimes, when we come to trauma healing, we think but I don’t want to be mean to the people or I don’t want to hate people, and I don’t want to be mad all of a sudden. And what I often share is all of those emotions are part of the healing process. And so you may experience hate, you may experience anger, you may experience grief, around situations you thought were long dead and over. And so that’s part of that kind of journey to realize that maybe you weren’t able to experience it, then because of whatever was going on and you weren’t allowed to be angry, you weren’t allowed to hate, you weren’t allowed to be upset. And so now in the safety of our sessions, you get to feel those, get through them and then decide, Is that who I want to be steel? Or do I want to move forward and heal in a different way? And so I think the biggest myth is when I got back into my trauma, I’m going to now feel all those emotions. And that’s going to be the definitive way I’m going to be from now on. And so I like to share with people that yes, you are going to feel emotions. Yes, you are going back into that space, but we’re doing it safely. And we’re doing it when you ready. And I love letting people in reminding people that during the reprocessing, we can stop it anytime you don’t have to force yourself to keep going if it’s too much, and you don’t want to do it, we can stop. And so I love letting people know that about EMDR therapy that yes, it is tough work. Yes, it asked us to do tough things. But we don’t just throw you in the deep end and say figure it out hope you come out, we really set up a lot of parameters before sometimes I’ll even talk to people about kind of the prep work that you do before the all of the exercises. And sometimes I’ll just start those exercises before I even introduce EMDR therapy because I know those exercises are just helpful in general. And if we decide to do that, and if we decide to move forward, they’ve got these wonderful mental tools that support them in diving back into some of these memories and experiences that for, for good reason, we sometimes will put away and lock away so we can continue moving on. And so I think if I can just sum that up, the biggest myth is diving into your trauma isn’t going to make your current life more stressful, it’s going to allow you to feel freer, I think in your current life. So you’re not spending most of your time holding all of that old stuff back.

Kim Howard 08:41
That’s that’s a very great point to make. I think that is one concern. The client for patients who have come to therapy anyway would have is that they have to regurgitate everything, and they have to, they have to bring themselves literally back to the point whenever that hurt happened. And they already went through it once and they definitely don’t want to revisit it again. They don’t want to feel that way again. And so there’ll be at least the MBRP allows them to kind of stop at that point and not have to continue to feel that way. That’s a great, that’s a great way to plan. Thank you. Are there any myths you would like to bust about EMDR therapy for parents?

Mercedes Sumudio 09:15
To be honest with you, I think is a really, I think is a really good way to also help people understand that you have that power, too, that when you’re in the middle of something and you’re not in there, you’d like time out, I don’t want to be in disarray now. And so I actually loved learning that in EMDR because oftentimes in therapy guess sometimes we will keep clients and stuff because we want them to move through it. But I love that EMDR therapy, reminding the therapist that there’s a lot of autonomy and healing, and that if the clients not ready, it’s okay for them to say time out even in the middle of processing, even in the middle of the steps even in the middle of it. It’s okay because they the client really knows what they can tolerate in that moment. And so I think if we allow our clients to have that moment to say, I don’t want to do this, it helps them to build that autonomy scale to that they get to say I don’t want to instill Don’t hurt them, or that might even be part of the reprocessing that they need to. That’s great.

Kim Howard 10:04
That’s great. Are there any specific complexities of difficulties with EMDR therapy using EMDR therapy with parents?

Mercedes Sumudio 10:12
Oh, yeah, I think a lot. I think one of the main ones I’ve had to learn is our own countertransference comes up. I think oftentimes, as therapists, we hear a lot of stories. And for most of the times, we’ve learned how to manage what it feels like to have those. But I think EMDR is a different experience as a therapist, because the client isn’t really cerebrally talking through their issue, they’re experiencing it again. And so they might cry, they might shake, there might be somatic things happening. And so I think as a therapist, it’s sometimes I’ll speak for myself, it’s sometimes hits against that rescuer that I’ve also had to work on. To stop them, I don’t want them to feel that. And so I think one of the things to be really mindful of in EMDR therapy is that countertransference piece where you feel things because oftentimes, our clients are also re experiencing some of the experiences that we’re having them work on that target about. And so being mindful that EMDR therapy can be really complicated. Because of that, of course, the protocol itself can be complicated. So I definitely wholeheartedly encourage you to keep getting consultation even afterwards. I think even after you get certified, because some cases are just really difficult. Sometimes clients get caught in their memory networks and interjects and all of those aren’t enough to move them through. And so consultation sometimes can be really helpful. But I think the main thing that I would just be honest and say is that MDR therapy, because of the nature of where we bring our clients, it brings us there too. And so really managing that countertransference and making sure that you are taking care of yourself that if you’re doing several EMDR clients back to back, or if you do intensives, I do intensives every now and then that you’re really taking care of yourself, we often tell our clients to drink water after EMDR session and to kind of give themselves a space, I do the same thing. I like really go get some water, go outside play with my dog, like, just let some of that off of me. Because I think that’s where the complications come sometimes getting all of that and holding it for your client and then being able to get it off of you for the next client or for the next rest of your day.

Kim Howard 12:03
Yeah, absolutely. Healers need to heal, you know, something that we talked about amongst ourselves as a staff that that’s really our job is that we’re helping the healer, right also have good help himself. So they’re not going to be any use to either themselves personally or professionally to their clients.

Mercedes Sumudio 12:21
I agree. EMDR is one of those those therapies, though, that like you really do have to experience it as a client to really see that whole space, my therapist, and I’ll give her complete, I’m actually going to name her because she’s an EMDR therapist, and she’s great. Her name is Dr. Mary. And she said to me, one time as we were going through it, and I was realizing in my session, just how important going through old memory networks and rewriting narratives were, she said, How do you feel like this is changing you in the way that you’re connecting. And I said, it’s helping me to really sit better with clients and not feel like I have to rescue them. And so I feel like EMDR therapy and brain spotting, and I’m also trained in brain spotting, but those kinds of therapy modalities really challenge you to really wrestle with your own trauma. And I think it’s one of the few ones that challenge you to do that there are a lot of modalities that you can do that you don’t really have to do it, or you have that, you know, as a client experience to get it. But I think EMDR is a really great one that I think if you’re interested in it, even as you’re getting trained on it, I would definitely do a few sessions, even if you’ve done therapy in the past, do a few EMDR sessions just to get a really good sense of how does it feel to flow through that full process from phase one to phase eight? How does it heal? And I think it helps you to sit with what’s going to happen with your clients, to the body scan to the somatic stuff through you know, all the phases, I think it’s one of those few therapies that really says, hey, you need to be in this work to in order to really be present for your client to be in that work.

Kim Howard 13:50
That’s a great recommendation for other in VREMDE therapists or potential EMDR therapists to keep in mind, how would you apply EMDR therapy with parents to multicultural populations?

Mercedes Sumudio 14:00
I think one of the things that EMDR therapy does is really addressed trauma, and how trauma recreates narratives for who we are. And I think when you’re looking at multicultural identities, there’s so much trauma embedded in that because we often as a society want people to identify who are you, what are you? How do you identify, and if someone is multicultural, there’s multiple ways in which they show up in the world. And asking someone to identify or to pick, I think is really traumatic. And so I think we live in a world where people who live in multicultural identities oftentimes have to either pick or ignore pieces of them. And this is riping EMDR therapy can really be helpful in terms of it doesn’t change society, but it changes our ability to allow society to influence our net our narratives, right? So if we’ve lived most of our life being asked to pick or being asked what are we are being asked how are we showing up in the world that creates a lot of trauma where I have probably changed a lot of my narratives about who I am EMDR AR says, let’s look at those narratives. Let’s look at reprocessing them and changing the way you see yourself, even if we can’t really affect how society is going to behave, which I don’t think we ever will be able to, we can really use that EMDR narrative to say, I don’t want to get rid of this negative right understanding of myself, and I really want to go into this positive understanding of myself. And in a sense, I think EMDR therapy allows us to really dive into that cultural trauma, without the therapists even having to know everything, because we’re really just holding you in a space where you get to go back to those traumas are those memory networks where culture was a traumatizing space for you, where people really did use your culture against you, or it was damaged in some way. And so I think, as an aside, again, of a lot of modalities, it doesn’t require me to inquire or have the client teach me, it requires me to hold space for the client as they reprocess who they are, what their culture means to them, and how maybe past experiences have disconnected them from their identities and who they are. And so I think, again, it won’t eradicate everything, but I definitely think EMDR therapy is a great space for people to explore their racial and racial identities. A caveat to that is this, I think paying attention to your EMDR therapists to and making sure that your EMDR therapist is culturally competent, whatever that looks like, for you. And I often tell clients that in their advocacy, cultural competency looks a lot different depending on how you’re showing up in your culture. And so as you’re talking to client therapists, or as you’re looking for a therapist, you don’t have to make sure they know everything about every culture, but you really want to make sure that they can hold your culture identity, and things that you need to be able to discuss and show up in in your sessions. And I often tell clients, it’s okay to ask, it’s not rude to say, do you understand African American identity? And how that might show up in my trauma? It’s okay to ask that, right? If they say like, No, I’m not sure it’s okay to go. And, and so find someone who does, because that’s an important piece of your identity, even if the childhood abuse may not have been specifically about your cultural identity. Obviously, your cultural identity kind of goes into how you internalize that abuse, how the rest of society internalizes that abuse. And so it might be in your narrative, too. And so I say all that to say that I think, as EMDR therapy is really good at managing trauma narratives and how it’s influenced us. Also realizing that cultural identities are not just about the trauma, there’s other layers. And so I think EMDR does really work for that trauma layer of our cultural identities and where we’ve been traumatized, re traumatized or oppressed. But there are so many other layers that I think other modalities, and maybe even other ways of connecting and healing might do to kind of give that person who has a multicultural identity, a full healing experience, or full healing space.

Kim Howard 17:45
Great point, I have said this before on this podcast that finding the right therapist is like dating, you know, or finding the right job or the right company that you want to work for the organization. And it has to be a good fit. And you know, you would interview if you go on a job interview, you interview the company or the organization and ask them questions and try to find out a little bit more about who they are and how they approach things and what their culture is. And and I write, we need to give ourselves permission to be able to ask, I think, in the medical community in the therapy community, I think we feel inclined to patients coming into somebody who 30 authority figure, we shouldn’t ask them questions, right? But I think it’s okay to say, hey, you know, I’m a woman, you’re a guy, can you understand what my issues are? You know, and so, and if you don’t feel comfortable in that conversation, or they don’t answer the right way, then they may not be the right fit for you. And it’s okay to say, you know, what, let me keep looking, I’m going to, you know, move on to somebody else. And that way that you get, you get the most out of the therapy that that you can possibly get, because the whole goal really is for you to go and heal. And if you’re stuck in a situation where you don’t feel like your therapist really can relate to you, then that’s a huge problem. So give yourself permission to do that.

Mercedes Sumudio 19:03
I agree.

Kim Howard 19:04
Yeah, absolutely. Do you have a favorite free EMDR related resource either for the public or for other EMDR therapists that you’d like to recommend?

Mercedes Sumudio 19:13
I love the Calm App in general. I started a lot of my clients on it, and I use it because I think it’s a really good way to actually practice a lot of the EMDR tools that you use, like container or internet advisor. It’s a great way to begin practicing meditation and getting comfortable in your mental space. They have guided meditations. They have two minute meditations. They have full days, sometimes meditations they have series where you can kind of go through a whole series. I really like their sleep stories where they have like celebrities, you know, read stories, and things of that nature. I think it’s just a really good app to get acquainted with your mental space, because that’s a huge part of EMDR to get reacquainted and re kind of process that mental space I can some ties be overwhelming and really daunting for you. And so I think the combat paired with any EMDR therapy, or just any therapy in general gives you really safe and healthy spaces to be in your mind without it being overwhelming and hard. And so I would say combat for therapists and for clients is a really good EMDR kind of resource that’s not specific EMDR. But I think it helps to support the healing journey of support the EMDR journey.

Kim Howard 20:23
I use the Calm App and I’ve been practicing yoga since 2010. And so I’m used to go into a yoga class for at the end of the class and meditate. And that, you know, as yoga instructors have said, in the last part of class, for a lot of people, that’s the hardest part of the class is to just be still and to meditate and not go through your to do list or not think about what you’re going to do when you get on a class and all those things that you have to do and to quiet your mind. And I’m happy, I think it’s excellent for that asleep stories that you mentioned, the daily meditation or the morning meditation or whatever, your your cup of tea, right. And so it really is a good resource to be able just to use in general and it really is difficult for you to kind of center yourself and and just be still and think about what’s happening within the meditation. So that’s a great suggestion. Thank you. What would you like people outside of the EMDR community to know about working with parents or just parents in general, I like how your website talked about shame through parenting, and how you’re right. Being a parent, you don’t get a manual, they get to, they get you to have the whole you know “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” what to type of have a year and then kind of falls off and you’re on your own, and that are the hardest job in the world. So what do you want people to know about working with parents or parents in general,

Mercedes Sumudio 21:36
It’s something that I’m developing, but I think it’s really important to remind yourselves that parents don’t have all the answers. It’s because they’re human, that parenting is an identity that they grow into. And so as they grow into it, it will make more sense for them and their family. But that’s what it makes more sense for. And so I think oftentimes, we can be too global with parenting, we, they everyone’s supposed to have the same information, everyone’s supposed to know the same thing. Everyone should understand this. And as you just said, there’s no manual, which means there are a lot of things that can impede a parent’s knowledge on how to show up and how to be there, their own trauma, history, their identity, their culture, their religion, a lot of things influence how we show up, or how people show up as parents. And so I think as we work with them, reminding ourselves that their kids and their kids behavior isn’t the only thing that is influencing the family. And that as we look at parents seeing parenting, as an identity, and really allowing yourself to see that under that identity, there’s a full human that is also still developing and still growing as a person as well.

Kim Howard 22:39
That’s a great, that’s a great point. Because I think we are generally as a society pretty judgy about each other in general. But I think especially with parents, I mean, I know I’ve caught myself doing it. But you know, usually said that when you don’t have kids, and usually once you have children, you’re like, Oh, I totally understand why you’re doing that. So, yeah, it’s good. I think it’s okay for us to give each other for making decisions that we may not agree with, or we may not think are the best you know, and not to be so harsh on each other as a as a community. I love this quote on your website, shampoo, parents and.com. From Mother Teresa: “If you want to change the world, go home and love your family.” Beautiful. Is there anything else that you would like to add?

Mercedes Sumudio 23:20
I think it’s a really great space, because oftentimes, we go out looking to change the world. And we forget that there are people in our home that are also part of the world. And so oftentimes, I worked with a lot of mothers. And they’ll say that they felt that they were doing a lot before they became mothers. And then they became moms and things kind of slowed down a little bit. And what I’ve been sharing with a lot of moms and dads and anyone who’s parenting or caregiving, take a minute to kind of think about this idea that when we want to change the world, oftentimes it starts with us and the people that we have some influence over. And so I love my activist parents who go to marches, take your kids, when they’re old enough to write, start talking to them about things. Those are the spaces where I think parenting kind of shifts your energy, where maybe when you were in the world, you were working for a company, and you were working for a cause. I think when you become a parent or a caregiver, your energy shifts now to really helping advocate and usher in the next generation of advocates and changemakers. And so it’s just as significant as when you were working at a corporation or working out in the grassroots organizations. I kind of feel like families are grassroots organizations where we get to teach the next generation of people how to show up in the world and how to be stewards of the next phase of our lives. And so if you feel like you’re at this phase, as a parent, where you’re just stagnant, nothing’s going on. Remind yourself that you’ve got a lot of influence on the people who are in your life right now. And they’re going to be the next changemakers they’re going to be the next people who are over in, you know, EMDRIA.

Kim Howard 24:49
Absolutely. No, you’re absolutely right. I was having a discussion recently with some friends about you know, when you’re a new parent, or you’re a parent of young, either babies or young children you think oh my God, this is so hard. So hard: up all the time they need you, they can’t do anything without you. They have all these accoutrements they have to take with you, when you leave the house, you know, the strollers in the bag from the point of them that this and this is so hard. But then once they get out of that phase, and you start parenting them, I basically around a school age, right, things become a lot harder, because now they’re in a world where they have to learn how to navigate, they have to learn right from wrong, things are not always black and white, sometimes things are gray, they have to deal with people letting them down, I think that’s really where the real parents he begins is when you teach them how to interact with other people, and how to handle things like disappointment, how to handle things like anger, how to handle things like oh, I failed the test, you know, those kinds of I didn’t make the team, whatever the situation is, and it becomes a lot harder to parent and then you realize, I kind of ended a bigger arsenal, because the Arsenal I had before was really more of a caregiver kind of situation, just kind of handling the the things that were happening because they couldn’t do them for themselves. But then it comes on for our personal expense to emotions, and managing all of your lives and thinking about what you want to do and being and how to help them achieve that if Arsenal just needs to be a lot larger at that point. Because you just need to be there more. And so it’s right on the money, like you said, that is the family is the grassroots of the next generation, and you want them to go out into the world and be happy and be healthy and make a difference somehow, whether it’s on a community level or national, international or state or whatever, you just want them to make the world a better place. I know that sounds really trite, but that’s what you want, right? You want your kids to be able to do that.

Mercedes Sumudio 26:34
Kids that quote, right, that idea of if you want to change the world, go home and you know, love your family, I think that really does hit home what you just said, because you think about this idea of how do I teach my children about disappointment? If I’ve never really truly looked at it? How do I teach my children how to be independent, if I’ve never really looked at how my independent shows up in the world? And so I talked to a lot of parents about that, that I often say, What do you want your child to have when they’re 18? And of course, it’s like independence and intelligence and strength. And, and I say how do you define those terms in yourself? And you’d be surprised. I mean, parents, I don’t know. And I don’t think I’m strong. And I don’t know how independent on him like, well, it’s gonna be really difficult, then to instill that in someone else, if you’re still struggling to figure out what that means for you. Or if you don’t even recognize you’ve been doing it for so long, then it’s hard to let someone know that, hey, I’ve been independent for x y years. And now I’m about to teach my child this concept. And so I think that idea of starting at home isn’t just trying like, oh, just love your kids. It’s really about even want someone to be independent and a great steward of the world. Let’s start here. Let’s start honing and talking about how do you become a better person? How do you show up holy, right.

Kim Howard 27:41
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. That’s great. Thank you so much for taking the time today and the talent, treasure. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with us today.

Mercedes Sumudio 27:53
Thank you so much for having me.

Kim Howard 27:54
This has been the Let’s Talk EMDR podcast with our guest Mercedes Salmudio. Visit www.emdria.org for more information about EMDR therapy, or to use our find an EMDR therapist directory with more than 12,000 therapists available. Our award winning blog focal point, offers information on EMDR and is an open resource. Thank you for listening.