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Notice That

Notice That

By: Jen Savage and Bridger Falkenstien
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An EMDR Podcast Hygiene & Healthy Living
Episodes
  • Stuck: Is My Client Resistant, or Do I Not Know What I'm Doing? | The Relational Thread

    Stuck: Is My Client Resistant, or Do I Not Know What I'm Doing? | The Relational Thread
    Jul 10 2026
    This is the launch of The Relational Thread, a free weekly essay series from Bridger Falkenstien and Jen Savage that tells the story of their forthcoming Routledge book, EMDR and the Therapeutic Relationship: Reclaiming the Relational Thread, and applies it to the room. Each essay is read aloud by its author — in our voice, not an AI narrator — and lives on Substack for anyone who'd rather read. The regular biweekly episodes of Notice That continue as always; this series is added on top. This first thread, "The Unnamed Thing," is Bridger's, reflecting on chapters one and two.Key themesThe moment at the door. The felt sense that something shifted — or refused to — after a session, and why we've been trained to file it under "rapport" and write the protocol note instead.The thing isn't unnamed — in us it is. The literature has named it for decades (intersubjectivity, mutual recognition, the therapeutic alliance, the relational field). What it lacks is standing in the therapist's own internal ledger of what counts as real clinical material.The relationship as the most reliable predictor of outcome. What the research has been saying quietly for half a century, and why "non-specific factors" may be the signal rather than the noise.The space between is not a metaphor. Interpersonal neurobiology and attachment work suggest regulation, safety, and meaning are co-constructed between bodies, beneath language, in real time — held with appropriate humility, since the mechanisms are still contested.The stuck case, reframed. Immovability is rarely a malfunction. Compliance, perfect answers, and warmth that never quite lets you in are adaptations built in relationships where being fully seen wasn't safe. The refusal to shift is relational information, not the absence of it.Practical clinical takeaways — what to bring into your next sessionTrack the field like you track the target. Add one channel to the SUD/affect/body you already monitor: what is happening between us right now — closer or further, softer or more braced? You don't have to do anything with it yet. Tracking it is the skill.Let your own body count as assessment. Treat the heaviness, the impulse to lean in, the sudden distance as hypotheses about the field rather than contaminants of your objectivity — while holding that your body may also be reporting on your own history. Hold both at once.Try naming it out loud. "Feel like something just changed — what's coming up for you?" or "I sense there's something beneath this, but we can't quite see under it right now." Used with care, language like this turns the implicit field into shared, workable material — and it's often the exact experience a client has never had.Concepts, frameworks & names mentioned (with light context)Flückiger et al. (2018) — meta-analysis synthesizing ~295 studies and 30,000+ clients; found the alliance–outcome correlation strong, stable, and consistent across modalities.Norcross & Lambert (2019) — reached a convergent conclusion on the relationship's role in outcomes from another direction.Wampold (2015) — "common factors" (alliance chief among them) account for more outcome variance than any specific technique.Allan Schore — right-hemisphere-to-right-hemisphere communication in the therapeutic dyad.Stephen Porges — co-regulation as a biological imperative (Polyvagal theory).Jessica Benjamin — mutual recognition: the moment two people become subjects to each other rather than objects.Interpersonal neurobiology / attachment literature — the broader case that co-regulation and meaning are built between nervous systems in real time (held provisionally).Read the essay: The Relational Thread on Substack here! Most of us were handed fidelity checklists and taught to call the rest "non-specific." This thread makes the opposite wager: the felt shift at the door is not the soft part of your work — it may be the most important part, and it can be developed with the same rigor as any protocol. If you've ever trusted that sense and then discounted it in the same breath, this is an invitation to stop.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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    23 mins
  • EMDR as an Approach, Not a Tool: Selected Populations & the Limits of the Protocol

    EMDR as an Approach, Not a Tool: Selected Populations & the Limits of the Protocol
    Jul 9 2026

    A client comes in with a population you've never worked with, and you feel it... the quiet "I'm not equipped for this." In the finale of our Back to Basics series, Bridger and Jen sit with what that feeling is actually made of.

    We close Francine Shapiro's foundational EMDR text on its last two chapters, selected populations and research, and land on the thesis humming under the whole show: EMDR is an approach to the entire therapeutic relationship, not a tool you apply to a diagnosis. In this episode:

    - A conceptualization frame you can bring to any population: four questions for your next session

    - Why the person is the expert on their own condition, and what themes and patterns are (and aren't) good for

    - Safety and shame as the through-line across every population

    - The reframe that most "population protocols" (chronic pain, perinatal, OCD, grief) are conceptualization frameworks in disguise

    - Competency culture, imposter syndrome, and when a referral is wisdom rather than failure

    - Populations up close: veterans, OCD, TBI, the perinatal period, chronic pain and illness, and grief

    Plus a season of milestones at Beyond Healing: the EMDR and the Therapeutic Relationship manuscript submitted to the publisher (forthcoming, early 2027, with a foreword by Deb Wesselman), the launch of Beyond Healing Psychiatry, and upcoming EMDR and SIP trainings ahead of EMDRIA this August.

    If you've ever hesitated at a referral, or felt behind on certifications, this one is for you.

    Learn more about our trainings at beyondhealingcenter.com (Trainings tab), or reach us at trainings@beyondhealingcenter.com. Support the show at patreon.com/thinkbeyondhealing. Follow us: Notice That Podcast.

    See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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    51 mins
  • Intersectionality in EMDR: Complexity, Curiosity, and Clinical Humility with Anastasia Soroka

    Intersectionality in EMDR: Complexity, Curiosity, and Clinical Humility with Anastasia Soroka
    May 7 2026
    In this episode, Bridger welcomes Anastasia Soroka to Notice That for a one-on-one conversation about intersectionality, invisible identities, power, and complexity in the therapy room. Anastasia introduces herself as a trauma therapist specializing in complex trauma, relational dynamics, and interpersonal systems. She is also the host of the Insights with Us podcast and an author whose work explores stigma, sexuality, communication, and the human experience.The conversation begins with Anastasia’s metaphor for intersectionality: each identity as a street or intersection that adds complexity to the road of a person’s life. Rather than viewing identity as a single category, Anastasia describes intersectionality as the layered interaction of race, sexuality, socioeconomic status, culture, disability, chronic pain, geography, and lived experience. Bridger and Anastasia explore how this matters clinically because simplified assumptions about identity can prevent therapists from truly meeting the client in front of them.Anastasia shares about growing up across multiple countries, including Indonesia and the United Arab Emirates, and how her early life shaped her understanding of culture, belonging, and difference. Having spent much of her childhood outside the United States, she reflects on the question “Where are you from?” and how difficult it can be to answer when identity is shaped by movement, cultural immersion, and many overlapping homes.The conversation then turns toward invisible identities and the difference between what is chosen, what is given, and what is allowed to be. Anastasia reflects on queerness, sexuality, chronic pain, perfectionism, and the ways some identities become difficult to name when the surrounding environment does not make enough room for them. Bridger and Anastasia discuss how therapy can become a space where clients begin to recognize, name, and reclaim parts of themselves that may have been minimized, hidden, or disallowed.Anastasia also shares the story of becoming a therapist, beginning with her original desire to pursue research and academia, her work in crisis services, and her eventual movement into trauma therapy and EMDR. She describes her crisis work as a place where she learned the power of slowing down, sitting with another human being, and offering safety without rushing toward solutions.A major portion of the episode explores EMDR therapy with complex trauma. Anastasia reflects on her experience of EMDR basic training, the usefulness of the Adaptive Information Processing model, and the realization that standard protocol alone is often insufficient for clients with developmental trauma, dissociation, chronic shame, and complex relational histories. Bridger and Anastasia discuss the importance of extended resourcing, building adaptive networks, and honoring the pace required for complex trauma work.Anastasia describes how she integrates parts work into EMDR, especially by attending to protectors and allowing those parts to help shape the pace and sequence of trauma processing. Rather than forcing the client into a rigid treatment structure, she emphasizes the need to “go with” the client’s system — honoring imagery, sensation, color, thought, dissociation, and the unique ways trauma communicates through the body and imagination.The episode also includes a powerful reflection on chronic pain as an invisible identity. Anastasia shares her experience of living for over a decade with debilitating headaches and migraines before finally being believed by a provider who recognized the source of her pain. She and Bridger discuss how chronic pain shapes identity, self-understanding, relational life, and the ability to show up authentically. This leads into a broader reflection on the clinical importance of believing clients when they describe their own experience.Toward the end of the conversation, Bridger and Anastasia explore how therapists can begin practicing intersectional humility. Anastasia suggests that trauma-informed care means entering the room with awareness that something important may be present even when it has not yet been named. This includes trauma, but it also includes invisible identities, minority identities, shame, pain, and meanings the client may not yet feel safe enough to disclose.The conversation closes with a discussion of meaning-making, assumptions, monogamy, polyamory, relational expectations, diversity education, and the need for therapists to deconstruct their own definitions. Anastasia invites clinicians to ask clients what their words, values, identities, and relationships mean to them rather than assuming shared definitions. Bridger connects this with the therapeutic need to create an authentic meeting place where client and therapist can build meaning together.Key ThemesIntersectionality in therapyIdentity is not singular. Each client and therapist enters the room with overlapping experiences of culture, privilege, ...
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    1 hr and 8 mins
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