Attachment and EMDR: What Happens When the Processing Gets Stuck?

How do attachment theory, attachment styles and relationships influence EMDR and trauma therapy? In this episode, Jo Oxley and attachment and relationship therapist Jo Bealey explore EMDR and attachment therapy through the lens of relational safety — particularly what may be happening when trauma processing becomes “stuck”.

EMDR and attachment therapy can be understood as the integration of trauma processing with attention to the attachment strategies, internal working models and relational expectations that a client brings into the therapeutic relationship.

Jo Bealey is an attachment and relationship therapist, clinical supervisor and tutor in attachment-based psychotherapy. Drawing on her experience of attachment-informed practice and EMDR, she explores how the same attachment strategies we encounter in talking therapy can also emerge during EMDR.

A client with more preoccupied attachment strategies, for example, may experience a need to tell, explain and remain relationally connected while processing. A client with more avoidant tendencies may be drawn towards the possibility of processing without extensive disclosure — but this can raise important questions about relational safety, self-reliance and whether therapist and client inadvertently collude in “just getting it done”.

Jo and Jo also consider the therapist.

What happens when processing stops and the therapist begins to wonder: Have I done something wrong? Have I chosen the wrong target? Should I rescue the process?

Rather than seeing stuckness simply as a problem to overcome, an attachment-informed approach invites curiosity about what it may be communicating.

In this episode:
How attachment styles can shape the experience of EMDR
Core beliefs as possible expressions of internal working models
Why relational safety may be important before trauma processing
Anxious/preoccupied and avoidant strategies during EMDR
What “stuck” processing might communicate
Therapist attachment responses, shame and the impulse to rescue
Grief, loss and developing a more coherent story
Using supervision to explore what is being co-created
Building a secure relational base when safety has rarely been experienced

Questions practitioners may be asking

How can attachment affect EMDR?
Attachment strategies may influence how safe a client feels processing difficult material alongside another person, how much they need to talk, and how they experience closeness, dependence and vulnerability.

Why might EMDR processing become stuck?
Jo invites practitioners to consider stuckness as communication: might the client feel unsafe, overwhelmed or uncomfortable? What is happening relationally as well as within the processing?

Why does the therapist’s attachment matter?
A therapist’s own attachment strategies may influence how they respond to uncertainty — including impulses to rescue, withdraw, blame themselves or move the work forwards.

CPD & Further Learning

A CPD certificate is available for time spent listening to the episode. Visit the Optima Attachment website or follow the link in the Spotify show notes.

For practitioners interested in developing their attachment-informed practice further, Optima delivers Level 5 and Level 7 Diplomas in Attachment-Based Psychotherapy.

Resources mentioned: EMDR, Flash, Bowlby’s internal working models and storied self, rupture and repair, Circle of Security and “shark music”.