I Refuse to be a Nice EMDR Therapist

Recently, I was interviewed on EMDRIA’s “Let’s Talk EMDR” podcast on The Pressure to Be Nice: Women, Boundaries and EMDR Therapy. As I considered how to prepare for this podcast, I started to feel clearer on my clinical stance around supporting all of my clients to differentiate between the potential destructive passivity of being nice versus what it looks like to be kind (to themselves and others). 

I have a lot of “nice” clients.  And that’s their problem.  Hear me out! 

Minimizing – No thank you. 

Marie came in with significant symptoms of depression and anxiety, bordering on paranoia.  She would often sit in my office complaining that she should feel “so lucky” for all that she has, wondering why things are so hard for her.  As she tells me this, she is smiling and giggling at herself with tears streaming down her cheeks.  

Not surprisingly, Marie had an extensive history of complex developmental trauma.  She described a stepparent who was very authoritarian and abusive to her and her siblings. Marie became an expert at pushing her feelings way down so that she could make things easier for herself and everyone else.   

Recently, one of her adult siblings disclosed the enormity of the abuse he experienced by this stepparent.  My client, who was horrified to learn what happened to her sibling, tried to explain it to me as “not as bad as it could have been” (and trust me, it was bad!). Instead, she began focusing on some of the positive aspects of her stepparent.   

Now, I can provide a safe space and be kind and open with my clients, but I am not going to be complicit in minimizing the abuse that happened to my client or her sibling.   

So, Marie and I had a gentle but clear conversation considering that the very ways she learned to cope, by minimizing her own experience and trying to make things better than they were, are getting in the way of her seeing herself and those she loves clearly.   

Marie and I entered a new phase of treatment, in which she considered that she is safe now to approach her full inner experience of what happened (and what is happening) without having to minimize it, defend anyone, or make things better than they are.   

This shift, in naming and understanding the defense but inviting my client to explore holding her experience in a different way, resulted in profound memory reprocessing that was not possible before making the implicit explicit.  It’s quite possible that if I had been “nice”, Marie would still be smiling through her devastation. 

How to be MORE nice – No thank you. 

“I just want to be more present with my kids and feel calm and fulfilled!”, Ella reported to me at our initial session.  She described feeling miserable and was seriously struggling in her daily life, in a manner that went beyond the stressors of being a very busy professional and single mother of two elementary school children.  

When I invited her to tell me more, Ella described hosting play dates after school almost every day for both of her children, as well as hosting numerous PTA functions, plus substitute teaching on a regular basis at her children’s school.  “Wait, let me get this straight, you are a full-time financial advisor at a big firm.  How are you substitute teaching all day?”, I asked, genuinely curious!  She described working all night and fitting meetings in-between child-care responsibilities, because she “just can’t say no and doesn’t want to disappoint anyone,” including her children and their entire school administration. 

Ella arrived in my office with no plans to change how she was engaging the world, but a desperate (and understandable) request to feel better.  In other words, how can she achieve peace, calm, and presence while fully continuing to be everything to everyone …except for herself?   

After more history-taking, Ella and I recognized that she was completely overwhelmed due to her refusal to say no or disappoint anyone. We started to get curious together about where this pattern originated.   

When we completed the Floatback Technique and were curious about the past/present connection, it became immediately clear that Ella had a significant trauma history resulting from domestic violence in her family system.  Her job was to always say “yes”, overachieve, and keep everyone happy.  And she was really good at it.  

After some significant memory reprocessing, Ella recognized that she has a choice now and wants to show up for herself and her children differently.  She started to flex her “no” muscle, which was just plain fun to observe.  She tolerated her children’s disappointment when she said they could only have one playdate a week.  And we had a joyful re-evaluation session when she described that she finally did it…she took herself off that substitute teacher list! 

Perhaps a “nice” EMDR therapist would have worked with Ella on resourcing in some calming exercises, which may have improved her symptoms in the short term.  But the trait change she experienced was only possible because we took on her trauma treatment directly, addressing the why of her current confusion. 

Now What? Future Template 

Future Template is critical for all EMDR therapy work, especially when working with clients who are now clear on the importance of holding their own experience, setting boundaries, creating space for themselves, having choice in their adult lives, tolerating disappointment, saying no, and so on…but have no idea how to achieve this way of showing up in their lives.   

As clinicians, we cannot assume that now that clients have reprocessed their trauma, they will just automatically know how to step into their lives differently.  As Deany says, “The absence of the negative does not translate to the positive!”   

Ella, for example, initially had no idea how to set limits on her involvement or time.  She was routinely being schooled by a 7-year-old and 9-year-old!  Ella and I embarked on numerous scenarios with children and adults in which she could consider the approach that felt genuine to her and then play it through over and over until she literally developed a new memory network that she could access for some difficult situations.  (Have you said no to ice cream night with a 9-year-old?  Terrifying!).   

And as she built these new muscles, we completed a lot of memory strengthening in session, so her entire system could take in when she is showing up just the way she wants to.   

Future Template can feel redundant; starting with the scene, running the movie, pairing the movie with BLS, running the movie again, determining the positive cognition, running the movie again with the positive cognition, introducing a challenging situation, running the movie for that, and so on.   

A “nice” EMDR therapist might pick up on their client’s annoyance, as I did with my client Sarah who was working on setting a limit with her mother and not becoming totally dysregulated when her mother did not respect it.  Sarah and I have a good working relationship, and she is not afraid to “tell it like it is”.   

During our future template work, Sarah played the movie through numerous times, noticing different potential challenges, obstacles or skill deficits. She mildly glared at me throughout the process.  By the end of the session, she laughed with me and communicated how confused she was that we had to go through the future work over and over.   

However, Sarah acknowledged that at the beginning of the session, she had no idea how she was going to have this conversation, but now, she knew exactly how she was going to show up regardless of what her mother said or did.  And she did! 

How to Work with “Nice” Clients 

➡️ Listen to your felt sense:  In my clinical consultation, my mentor, Deany Laliotis, will often point out that everything I needed to know was “right there,” in my felt experience in the room.   

When alarm bells go off that something doesn’t “feel right”, even though it looks okay, it is imperative that we pay attention.  As my Dad would say, “If it looks too good to be true, it is!”  If the client is saying the right thing but it doesn’t feel authentic, or something just feels off, (e.g., smiling and crying at the same time, like Marie), you may have a client who is good at minimizing their experience or rationalizing their situation, rather than allowing their system to recognize or process what feels real and true. 

➡️ Pay attention to countertransference:  I will keep this one simple, as a former indiscriminate people pleaser.  It’s nice to have nice clients.  I have had more than one clinical situation in which I was hoodwinked!  Not because my clients are diabolical, sneaky, or manipulative, but because they learned to be nice, agreeable, even submissive to survive, and that is how they show up everywhere.   

And it is quite pleasant to have a motivated client who says the right things!  I never want to let my comfort in how my client presents in a session get in the way of their willingness or capacity to “go there” with all the feelings that can arise in trauma work (rage, devastation, despair, anger, frustration, loneliness, sadness, etc.).   

➡️ Consultation, Consultation, Consultation:  As I want to lovingly and loudly scream at the end of every Basic Training to our newly trained participants, “Get thee to a Consultant!”   

It is not only the best way to learn EMDR Psychotherapy, but it is the really one of the only ways to learn about yourself and how you are showing up with your clients (see point #2 on countertransference).   

Mentorship is a huge part of how we work at The Center for Excellence in EMDR Therapy, because it allows clinicians to do our best work, stretch into the inherent uncertainty of territory that we are embarking on with our client and be as brave as we are asking our client to be. 

If you’re a therapist who can relate with the challenges of working with “nice” clients or if you’ve ever wondered how to navigate the complex dynamics of trauma, boundaries, and emotional honesty in therapy, I invite you to dig deeper.   

Are you letting your “niceness”  get in the way of your client's full emotional experience? We are all in this work together—let’s continue to push ourselves to show up authentically for our clients and guide them towards true transformation. 

**Note that some excerpts from this blog were taken from my interview on EMDRIA’s “Let’s Talk EMDR” podcast on The Pressure to Be Nice: Women, Boundaries and EMDR Therapy.