When the Resource Steps Into the Room: Where EMDR and Psychodrama Meet
Exploring EMDR resourcing through psychodrama
Heidi Landis, LCAT, RDT/BCT, TEP
When I first trained in Attachment-Focused EMDR, I was surprised by how familiar it felt. I found the approach fascinating, and although there was plenty to learn, something about working with it felt more accessible than I had expected. I kept wondering why. Then, at some point, I thought: Oh. This feels like psychodrama in my head.
There were figures to encounter, beliefs to explore, sensations to notice, and experiences that could change as we attended to them. A person could imagine receiving something they had needed, connect with a protective presence, or begin to approach a future situation differently. My psychodramatic imagination recognized these possibilities and immediately wanted to know more.
It also wanted to know what might happen if we gave some of those possibilities a place in the room.
That question has stayed with me through a few years of studying and practicing AT-EMDR and my continuing participation in an ongoing consultation group. My respect for the modality has deepened alongside my curiosity. I believe strongly that integrating approaches requires understanding each on its own terms: its theory, its structure, and the clinical judgment involved in using it. What follows is an exploration of a meeting place between two approaches I value, particularly in the work of resourcing.
What helps support become available?
Resourcing is an important part of preparation in AT-EMDR therapy.
Before approaching potentially painful memories, therapist and client work together to develop the support and capacity needed to engage with difficult material while remaining connected to the present. Preparation is one of EMDR’s eight phases, and the time spent there depends on the individual client and their needs (Shapiro, 2017).
Attachment-focused EMDR places particular emphasis on building a strong therapeutic relationship and developing nurturing, protective, and wise figures that can provide additional support throughout the work (Parnell, 2013)
A resource might be a beloved person, an imagined figure, a place, an animal, or a memory of feeling capable or cared for. It might also be a quality: steadiness, humor, courage, compassion. What matters is the person’s experience of it. Does it help them feel more connected, supported, or able to remain present with what is difficult?
Sometimes the answer is readily felt.
However, in my own practice, I have noticed that sometimes a client can describe a resource beautifully and still have trouble accessing it. “I know she would support me, but I can’t hear what she would say.” “I can picture the place, but I don’t feel any different.” There can be a considerable distance between knowing that support exists and experiencing it as available to you.
That distance interests me. It asks us to consider what this particular person needs in order for support to become believable. More time? A different resource? More attention to the relationship? Perhaps another way of encountering it?
This is where I begin to think about roles and moving into action.
Taking imagination seriously
Imagination is doing important work in both EMDR resourcing and psychodrama.
Yet we sometimes speak about imagined experience as though it were somehow less consequential: It’s only in your imagination. Anyone who has lain awake rehearsing tomorrow’s difficult conversation knows that imagination can be quite busy affecting the present.
The familiar claim that the brain “doesn’t know the difference” between real and imagined experience goes too far. We generally can distinguish an imagined person from someone sitting across from us. Research does, however, describe overlap between neural systems involved in imagery and perception, as well as the capacity of imagery to evoke emotional and physiological responses (Dijkstra et al., 2019; Holmes & Mathews, 2010; Pearson et al., 2015).
An imagined voice can accompany a softening in the body. An anticipated encounter can bring tension before the encounter has happened. The person or event may be absent, while our response is occurring here and now. This gives us a reason to attend closely to the qualities of an imagined resource: its expression, its voice, the way it directs its attention toward the client, and what happens as the client experiences that attention.
Psychodrama offers ways to explore these qualities through action. An image can become a role; a relationship can take shape in space. We can discover how close support needs to be, what it needs to say, and whether the client can receive it. Through role, embodiment, and relationship, the imagined experience becomes available for further exploration (Moreno, 1946; Giacomucci, 2021).
A resource becomes an encounter
Imagine a client who identifies a former teacher as a supportive figure. The teacher was calm and direct, someone who noticed their effort and seemed to understand them. We might begin by exploring those qualities, then place a chair in the room to represent her. The client chooses its location and notices what happens. Perhaps the teacher feels more reassuring being nearby. Perhaps nearby is too close.
If it feels useful, the client can role-reverse and sit in the teacher’s place. From that position, they look toward their own chair. What does the teacher see? What does she understand about this person? What might she want them to know?
“I see how hard you are trying.”
“You are allowed to take your time.”
The client returns to their own seat, and we notice how it feels to receive those words. Role reversal, a foundational psychodramatic technique, offers an opportunity to encounter oneself or a relationship from another position (Blatner, 2000). Here, the client has also briefly taken on the posture, voice, and perspective of someone who can offer care. The resource’s expression emerges from their own experience and imagination.
What interests me is what we can discover within that exchange. Can the client let the words reach them? Do they need different words? Does the figure feel more accessible after they have embodied it? The scene gives us something to work with together.
And the client may have something to say back.
“I want to believe you, but I don’t yet.”
“I’m afraid you’ll leave.”
Support can bring relief and also reveal how unfamiliar relief feels. Care may evoke sadness for what was missing. A protective figure may need to hear anger before its presence can feel trustworthy. An attachment-focused lens helps us attend to these difficulties in receiving support (Parnell, 2013). The encounter has room for the client’s doubt as well as their wish for connection.
The same exploration can begin with a quality rather than a person. What happens if steadiness has a posture? If compassion has a voice? If the client experiments with standing, moving, or speaking from the role of protection? Courage may turn out to look less like fearlessness and more like asking for help. As we explore a wider repertoire of roles and responses, a quality the client thought they lacked may become recognizable in experiences they already know (Garcia et al., 2021; Giacomucci, 2021; Landy, 2009).
There is room to play here. There is also room to discover that the first version does not fit. We can change the posture, find another phrase, or try a different role. The client helps shape an experience that has meaning for them.
Bringing the encounter into everyday life
Building the Resource Team
Sometimes this exploration grows into a resource team. A nurturing figure, a protective figure, and a wise figure may each have a different place and purpose (Parnell, 2013). Humor might join them. So might someone whose contribution is simply to stay.
The client can arrange these roles in the room and begin to play with the team. Who belongs close by? Who needs more distance? Who steps forward when protection is needed? Who is difficult to trust? What kind of support is still missing?
In a therapy group, other members can take these roles under the client’s direction, giving the imagined resources voices, bodies, and a human presence. The client can adjust the distance, change the words, ask one figure to step closer, or tell another to back up. They are not simply receiving a resource imagined for them; they are actively shaping the support they need and experiencing what it is like to ask for it within an actual relationship.
Once the team is present, the next question becomes: Can this support remain available when something difficult happens?
Rehearsing the moment
From there, we can move into an anticipated situation: a family gathering, a difficult conversation, or a moment when setting a boundary feels especially hard.
EMDR includes attention to future situations (Shapiro, 2017). Psychodrama offers future projection and surplus reality, through which experiences beyond ordinary reality, including anticipated futures, can be enacted (Giacomucci, 2021; Garcia et al., 2021).
We set the scene and discover what the resource actually does within it.
Can the protective role help the client speak? Can steadiness remain available when someone disagrees? What happens if compassion stays present after a disappointing response? Does the wise figure need to offer words, or simply remain nearby?
The client can pause the action, request more support, make an adjustment, and try again. They are not practicing a perfect performance or controlling how another person will respond. They are exploring how a resource might remain accessible under the conditions in which it will actually be needed.
What Leaves the Room with the Client?
This is the question I keep returning to: What makes support available beyond the moment in which we first imagine or enact it?
Integration may look different for each client. Someone may leave with a phrase they can hear during a difficult moment, a posture that helps them reconnect with steadiness, or a clearer understanding of what they need from another person. They may become more able to recognize when support is available, or more able to ask for it.
They may also discover that receiving support is still difficult. That is not a failure of the resource. It is important information, and the difficulty deserves attention of its own.
The goal is not necessarily for the client to internalize everything and become entirely self-sufficient. Sometimes integration means discovering an inner capacity. Sometimes it means recognizing the need for an actual relationship. Often, it is some combination of the two.
An ongoing invitation
I am continuing to explore these possibilities with respect for the structure of EMDR, the spontaneity of psychodrama, and, most importantly, the needs and choices of each client.
My initial recognition, this feels like psychodrama in my head, has become an ongoing invitation to be curious. What can we learn when a resource has a voice, a body, and a relationship? What becomes possible when the client can respond to it, question it, and shape it into something that feels true?
For me, this is where the work becomes especially alive: when we move from naming what might help to exploring, in action, how that support feels, what gets in the way, and what might make it more available outside the therapy room.
The resource may begin in the imagination. What becomes real is the client’s experience of support, choice, and relationship.
References
Blatner, A. (2000). Foundations of psychodrama: History, theory, and practice (4th ed.). Springer Publishing Company.
Dijkstra, N., Bosch, S. E., & van Gerven, M. A. (2019). Shared neural mechanisms of visual perception and imagery. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 23(5), 423–434.
Garcia, A., Buchanan, D. R., Landis, H., & DeAngelis, J. (2021). Psychodrama and sociodrama. In D. R. Johnson & R. Emunah (Eds.), Current approaches in drama therapy (3rd ed., pp. 493–539). Charles C Thomas Publisher.
Giacomucci, S. (2021). Social work, sociometry, and psychodrama: Experiential approaches for group work, trauma, and organizations. Springer.
Holmes, E. A., & Mathews, A. (2010). Mental imagery in emotion and emotional disorders. Clinical Psychology Review, 30(3), 349–362.
Landy, R. J. (2009). Role theory and the role method of drama therapy. In D. R. Johnson & S. Emunah (Eds.), Current approaches in drama therapy (2nd ed., pp. 65–88). Charles C Thomas Publisher.
Moreno, J. L. (1946). Psychodrama (Vol. 1). Beacon House.
Moreno, J. L. (1965). Therapeutic vehicles and the concept of surplus reality. Group Psychotherapy, 18(4), 211–216.
Moreno, Z. T., Blomkvist, L. D., & Rützel, T. (2000). Psychodrama, surplus reality and the art of healing. Routledge.
Parnell, L. (2013). Attachment-focused EMDR: Healing relational trauma. W. W. Norton & Company.
Pearson, J., Naselaris, T., Holmes, E. A., & Kosslyn, S. M. (2015). Mental imagery: Functional mechanisms and clinical applications. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 19(10), 590–602.
Shapiro, F. (2017). Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy: Basic principles, protocols, and procedures(3rd ed.). Guilford Press.