Authors
Manuela Spadoni

Background:
Love addictions are an important area of focus in clinical work. The internal and relational conflicts, as well as the suffering associated with these addictions, are often some of the reasons why people seek therapeutic help. Resolving and pacifying these conflicts often becomes a key task for therapists.

Aims:
In this workshop, participants will have the opportunity to explore the high therapeutic effectiveness of EMDR treatment applied to love addictions. In particular, some possible paths for working on dysfunctional relationships will be presented in relation to co-dependent, counter-dependent, and also narcissistic clients.
Participants will learn more about how to overcome some challenges of EMDR treatment with these types of clients. These challenges often arise because the underlying traumatization may not always be as visible and accessible in clinical work due to defenses and dissociative processes. These factors can make the therapy targets less evident to therapists and lead to instability in processing for clients. Participants will gain an overview of how to apply EMDR to address both the underlying traumatization and the defenses and dissociation frequently encountered in complex clients.

Learning objectives:
By attending this workshop, participants will:
• Enhance their foundational understanding of clients seeking therapy for a love addiction issue by reviewing some theoretical concepts. This will help participants better orient themselves and comprehend these clients from an EMDR perspective.
• Gain an overview of some valuable additional EMDR tools, such as LOPA, LOUA, CIPOS, HID that can be added to Standard EMDR Procedures when necessary.
• Observe examples of clinical work directions in session transcripts with co-dependent, counter-dependent, and also narcissistic clients, where some additional EMDR tools were applied .