Expanding Resourcing in EMDR: Creative Phase 2 Strategies for Complex Clients
If you’ve been doing EMDR for a while, you know the moment. You’ve taken a thorough history, built a calm place, set up a container and a restoration team, and moved into reprocessing. Then you hit a client where the standard resources just won’t hold. The calm place gets intruded on. The container leaks. And you’re left wondering whether you’re doing something wrong.
You’re not. Some clients arrive with so little lived experience of safety, mastery or comfort that the three resources most of us were trained on simply aren’t enough.
This is where Phase 2 stops being a box you tick before the “real” work and becomes the work. Megan Salar makes the case that resource development isn’t a one-off setup stage. It’s an ongoing process, and for complex clients it’s often where the lasting change actually happens, in the building of new positive states and brain pathways, not just in the desensitising.
Across this course Megan walks through how she develops resources with hard-to-resource clients: treating resourcing as safety, working through the lens of adaptation and strengths, and using frameworks like the four E’s and modified RDI to expand what a client can access. She’s candid about what to do when it goes sideways, including a real example of a calm place that turned dark mid-set when the client’s father appeared in the image, and how she stayed creative rather than abandoning the resource. She shares the practical toolkit she reaches for: positive cognition lists, the five senses and the body, AI-generated images of a client’s resources, asking trusted people to contribute positive memories, and simply focusing a resistant client on the next right thing.
The back half is all case material. You’ll sit with several complex cases, including a 15-year-old who’d cut contact with a problematic father and was struggling with how she saw herself, and watch how Megan thinks through where to even begin resourcing when calm place and container haven’t worked.
If you’ve ever felt stuck at the resourcing stage with a client who needed it most, this course gives you more places to go.
You’ll walk away with
- A clearer view of why Phase 2 resource development is ongoing work, not a one-time setup before reprocessing
- A way to treat resourcing as building felt safety in the nervous system, drawing on the SAFE (somatic attachment-focused EMDR) lens
- The four E’s framework for exploring, expanding and experiencing a client’s existing and missing resources
- How to use the modified RDI approach to develop and install resources with clients who have few positive experiences to draw on
- Practical adjustments for when resourcing is challenging: slowing and shortening the sets, changing the mechanics, and shifting the image
- A reframe of intrusions as useful information rather than failure, and steps to work with them creatively
- A toolkit for setting up resources from strengths, positive cognitions, the five senses, the body, AI imagery and the people in a client’s life
- Worked case examples with complex, hard-to-resource clients, including how to choose a starting point when the usual resources fall flat
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 learning hour
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.
Course Content
Meet Your Instructor
Individuals struggling with complex trauma and addiction - and the practitioners trying to help them - can find that traditional approaches sometimes fall short when addressing the deep, intertwined wounds that drive both conditions. Megan Salar has built her career around this challenging intersection, becoming an internationally recognised expert who combines evidence-based EMDR therapy with raw authenticity to create breakthrough healing experiences for both clients and the clinicians who serve them.
As an EMDR Trainer, Practitioner and published author of EMDR for Dummies (2023) and The EMDR Workbook for Trauma and PTSD (2023), and The EMDR Flip Chart (2023), Salar brings unique expertise that bridges clinical excellence with lived experience. Her previous ownership of an award-winning intensive outpatient treatment center (Best in Practice, 2019) demonstrates her ability to create effective treatment programs, while her current role as Owner/Founder of The Mental Survivalist reflects her commitment to revolutionising how we approach trauma and addiction recovery. Her training of thousands of clinicians across the United States and internationally positions her as a leading voice in trauma-informed care.
Salar's expertise spans EMDR therapy, trauma treatment, addiction counseling, PTSD treatment, anxiety disorders, clinical supervision, and what she calls "authentic healing." Her approach recognises that lasting recovery requires more than technique - it demands courage to face one's authentic self and work through the "messiness" of trauma and addiction simultaneously. She specialises in treatment-resistant cases, dual diagnosis presentations, and training clinicians who want to move beyond more surface-level interventions to create genuine transformation.
What sets her training apart is authentic vulnerability combined with clinical expertise. Salar doesn't just teach EMDR protocols - she shows practitioners how to create the authentic therapeutic relationships necessary for deep healing while managing their own emotional responses to intense trauma work. Her integration of personal recovery experience with advanced clinical training gives her unique insight into what actually creates lasting change.
For your practice, expect to gain specific EMDR techniques for addiction and trauma, tools for managing blocked processing and treatment resistance, and frameworks for building genuine therapeutic relationships with challenging clients. Her approach particularly benefits clinicians working with dual diagnosis cases, those wanting EMDR training outside traditional EMDRIA structures, or practitioners seeking to integrate authenticity and clinical excellence.
Quick Win: Salar's "authentic check-in" technique helps practitioners quickly assess their own emotional state before sessions - helping to prevent burnout while creating the genuine presence that facilitates deeper client healing and therapeutic breakthroughs.
Qualifications
- MSW, Clinical Social Work, Northwest Nazarene University 2011
- Advanced Certified Alcohol and Drug Counselor (ACADC) 2018-2022
- Certified Clinical Trauma Professional - Level II (CCTP-II) 2017-2023
- Certified EMDR Practitioner 2018
- Licensed Clinical Social Worker 2011-2023
- Registered Clinical Supervisor 2018-2023
Authored Books
- EMDR for Dummies: The Breakthrough Therapy for Overcoming Anxiety, Stress, and Trauma (2024)
- The EMDR Workbook for Trauma and PTSD: Skills to Manage Triggers, Move Beyond Traumatic Memories, and Take Back Your Life (2023)
- The EMDR Workbook for Addiction (forthcoming 2026)
- The EMDR Flip Chart (2023)
Professional Experience & Leadership
- Owner & Founder, The Mental Survivalist, 2023–present
- Owner, Recoverhe Counseling & Consulting, 2016-2023
- Certified EMDR Trainer, Independent Practice, current
- Clinical Trainer & Consultant, International
Clinical Experience
- Owner and Clinical Director, Addiction and Trauma Recovery Services, 2015–2020
- Various clinical positions in addiction prevention, intervention, treatment, and continuing care services
- Clinical supervision and training of other clinicians
Clinical Specialties
- EMDR therapy for complex trauma and addiction
- Integration of trauma and addiction treatment
- Treatment-resistant trauma presentations
- Clinical supervision and consultation
- Authentic therapeutic relationship building
- PTSD treatment and anxiety disorders
- Evidence-based trauma treatment modalities
Ready to develop authentic therapeutic relationships that create breakthrough results with complex trauma and addiction cases? Discover how Megan Salar's evidence-based yet deeply personal methods can help you integrate clinical excellence with the genuine presence that facilitates lasting healing.
Feedback & Reviews
This course includes:
- Lessons 8
- Topics 0
- Duration 1 hour
- Quizzes 1
- Language English