You’re a few sets in and the movement stops. The client goes quiet, or says it’s blank, or there’s so much coming up they can’t tell you what to follow. You run another set and you’re back to the same belief, the same image, the same loop. And underneath it, the question most EMDR therapists have felt at some point: is this working, or am I doing something wrong?
Megan Salar’s answer turns that moment around. A block is not EMDR failing. It’s the brain showing you something it has never been able to put into words. Reprocessing starts with stuck, fragmented material by definition, so blocks aren’t the exception in EMDR, they’re part of the work. Read properly, a block tells you what’s been reinforced, where the adaptive information is missing, and where to go next.
This course is a short, practical walk through exactly that. Megan covers why blocks happen, how they show up (the blank screen, the flooded client, the cyclical loop), what each kind is telling you, and how to move through them without forcing it.
She brings the work into the room with real case material. There’s the client who floods every session with “it’s blank” or “there’s too much going on,” and how Megan titrates adaptive information back to the target to get processing moving again. She demonstrates a seven-breath bilateral reset for the point where blood flow and brain function drop and the client simply can’t go further. And she works set by set through a client whose anger blocks every single session, including the jump to something positive that looks like progress but is really the brain trying to escape, and the internal rage room and serenity room that client builds for herself.
From there you’ll see how the three-prong approach helps you find the feeder memory and the smaller experiences that quietly reinforced a negative cognition, when reintroducing the negative cognition restarts processing, why bringing in the positive cognition too early can stall a whole session, and a set of creative strategies for blocks that land fast, from zooming in and out to changing the colours, working with the body, and going to the part.
If you’ve ever sat with a client who circles the same wound and wondered whether to push or to pause, this course gives you a way to read what the block is actually asking for, and the confidence to stay with it.
You’ll walk away with
- A way to read blocks as clinical information, not a sign that EMDR is failing
- Confidence that blocks are expected in trauma reprocessing, and a sense of what they reveal about a client’s history
- The four main reasons processing blocks, and how to tell which one you’re looking at
- How to assess for and build adaptive information so you can move a client out of a negative loop
- A seven-breath bilateral reset to bring the brain back online mid-session
- How to read blocks before and after an abreaction, and what each one calls for
- The three-prong (past, present, future) approach for cognitions that keep resurfacing
- How to use interweaves, including reintroducing the negative cognition, without making meaning for the client
- Why the wrong or too-early positive cognition stalls a session, and how to choose a realistic one
- Creative strategies (zoom, colour and intensity shifts, body, parts work) for fast-onset blocks
Watch the course trailer
CPD Information For Mental Health Professionals
Enjoy complete flexibility with 100% self-paced learning you can access anytime, anywhere, and on any device. Pay once for lifetime access.
Course Duration: 1.5 learning hours
Certificate and CPD hours: On completion you’ll receive a Certificate of Completion to support your CPD records.
Assessment: Complete a short quiz at the end (80% pass mark), which you can resit as many times as needed.
Lifetime Access: Your access to the course does not expire, so you can revisit main concepts anytime you want a refresher for practice.
CPD Eligibility: This program may be suitable for CPD for professionals such as:
- Psychologists
- Counsellors and Psychotherapists
- Social Workers
- Community Workers
- Mental Health Nurses
- General Practitioners (GPs)
- Occupational Therapists
CPD requirements vary between professional bodies, so please check with your association or credentialing body to confirm you can claim CPD hours/OPD points for this program and what evidence they require.
