Choosing a therapist can feel quite personal. You may be looking for someone who understands the difficulty you are facing, but also someone you feel you could talk to openly and trust. Alongside that personal fit, it is also worth looking at a therapist’s training, experience and professional accreditation, as these give you some reassurance about the standards they work to.

I am accredited with the British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies (BABCP), the main professional body for CBT in the UK, and I am also a Senior Accredited Registered Member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP). These professional memberships and accreditations involve recognised standards of training, practice, supervision, ongoing professional development and ethical conduct. I also have more than 25 years of clinical experience and work with approaches including CBT, Metacognitive Therapy, ACT, EMDR and Deep Brain Reorienting.

For me, good therapy is not simply about applying a particular technique. It is about understanding the individual person, working collaboratively and using the right approach at the right time. Feeling comfortable with your therapist matters, but so does knowing that the person you are working with has the training, experience and professional framework needed to offer safe and effective psychological therapy.

On 3rd July Sarah attended an online webinar. It was an introduction to the techniques of “Dream Completion“ and “Flash“ and how to integrate them into EMDR therapy. It was presented by Dr Justin Havens PhD.

Dream Completion is a technique to deal with unresolved nightmares and disturbing dreams.

The Flash Technique (FT) is a recently developed therapeutic intervention for reducing the disturbance associated with traumatic or other distressing memories. Unlike many conventional trauma therapy interventions, FT is a minimally intrusive option that does not require the client to consciously engage with the traumatic memory. This allows the client to process traumatic memories without feeling distress.

Justin is a psychological therapist accredited by BACP and EMDR Europe. He has worked within the NHS, the charitable sector and in private practice, and has a special interest in treating combat trauma and veterans. He completed his PhD in 2019, which was about developing and evaluating the Dream Completion Technique at the Veterans and Families Institute (Anglia Ruskin University).

Sarah found the webinar most inspiring and Justin is an excellent presenter. She is looking forward to further training in these areas. She can imagine the benefits of helping people who are affected by bad dreams and nightmares to practice the Dream Completion technique.