EMDR in sexual abuse clients

About the presenter

Iva Bicanic is a clinical psychologist specialized in the field of sexual trauma. She is head of the National Psychotrauma Centre at the University Medical Centre Utrecht, board member of Dutch EMDR society and editor of the EMDR magazine. Iva completed her PhD on psychobiological correlates of rape in female adolescents. Her current research project focuses on the effectiveness of Early EMDR in acute victims of rape. Iva is also head of the Sexual Assault Center located in 16 regions across the Netherlands for acute victims of rape.

About the event:

Sexual abuse can have a serious impact on the mind and body of children and adults. Besides recognizing and emphasizing this fact, Iva Bicanic has an encouraging perspective on the possibilities  to recover from these adverse experiences and overcome its impact with the use of EMDR therapy.

Iva’s one-day presentation for EMDR therapists on September 4th 2020 will consist of two parts. Part one provides an overview of evidence based facts to better understand certain aspects of sexual abuse, such as dilemmas for disclosure, psychological and physical consequences, unacknowledged rape, poly-victimization, intergenerational trauma, gender issues, genital response, tonic immobility, victimization, and the use of threats to maintain silence. An insight will be provided into the different ways that both victims and perpetrators of sexual violence use to cope with feelings of shame and guilt.

Part two presents on the use of evidence based treatments for clients who suffer from the consequences of sexual abuse, with a special focus on how clients can benefit from EMDR therapy. The use of specific cognitive interweaves and other techniques will be explained to initiate trauma processing. Iva will discuss how to use recent research knowledge to optimise treatment outcomes and end up with recent developments suggesting that EMDR therapy could be applied even more effectively in clinical practice.