When the Client Goes Away

The session you already know

Four ways someone goes away

1In the roomEyes glaze mid-set. The voice flattens. The SUD stops meaning anything.
2Behind a performanceThe right adaptive cognition, a smile, "I think I'm good on that one."
3Out the doorTwo cancellations. Back tired and guarded, asking for coping skills instead.
4YouInto protocol, into explanation, into caution, into composure.

The session was fast and it went well. She found the target, followed every prompt, moved through the sets without distress, and midway through offered an insight in almost exactly the words you had used the week before. She teared up, smiled, and said she thought she was good on that one. You wrote "successful reprocessing" in the note and walked into your next hour feeling like this is why you do this work.

Then she cancelled twice. When she came back she was tired and guarded, and when you asked about picking the trauma work up again she shrugged and said maybe some coping skills would help more. It had not felt like a rupture. It had felt like success. Underneath it was a strategy: a nervous system that learned early that openness costs connection and performance keeps it.

Thirty years of EMDR have taught us a great deal about the memory. The protocol has very little to say about this. The relationship does.

If you have had a client go quiet, go compliant, or go missing, and wondered what you missed, you have been in this room.

Seconds, not seasons.

From the forthcoming bookEMDR and the Therapeutic Relationship: Reclaiming the Relational Thread · 2027

Across 295 studies and thirty thousand clients, the therapeutic relationship is the most reliable predictor of outcome in any modality. Most of that research was built on therapies that unfold over years. EMDR produces change in weeks of activation, which forces a sharper question: if the relationship matters, what exactly is it doing?

Not accumulating. Working. There is the remembered relationship, the trust that builds across sessions, and there is the initiated relationship, the one that happens in the moment affect rises and the therapist either rushes, retreats, rescues, controls, or remains. When a client goes away, it is the second kind that is failing, and you cannot repair a failure that happens in seconds with more rapport. You repair it in seconds.

Four hours on how to stay.

The center of the afternoon

The moment you went away.

Halfway through, the room goes quiet and everyone writes. One moment, chosen then: a session when a client of yours went away, or when you did. No labels, no taxonomy, your own words. Eight prompts, with silence between them. Jen and Bridger write too, and read one line of theirs. Then, by choice, you read one of yours to one other person.

What came up?The moment, not the diagnosis. What did the room do?
What did you feel?In your body, before you had words for it.
What did you want to do that you didn't?
What did you do instead?
What do you wish you had done?
Who was that for?
What was that for?What was it protecting?
Were you choosing, or reacting?Could you have stayed affected and still responsible?

The phrases the room produces go on the board in your words: "I started explaining." "I moved to grounding." "I got very still." "I checked the clock." "I swallowed it." Only after that do we give the four patterns their names. Nobody is diagnosed. You are read back.

Free essay · read before you decide

What We Were Taught to Hide

Jen cried in a session a few weeks ago. Not the contained tear that can be folded into a professional nod. The essay is about what arrived with the tears, the old voices about professionalism, and the difference between restraint and disappearance. The last question it asks is the one the afternoon is built on. Free, on The Relational Thread.

Read the essay

17 minutes · also read aloud on Notice That · then The Second Mirror

What four hours cover

Four questions, taken in order

Why does the protocol go quiet exactly here?

Why EMDR was built to prize objectivity, what that inheritance cost, and what the alliance research actually shows once you stop measuring relationship in months. The five kinds of work the relationship does, and the two that fail when a client goes away.

What is the going-away doing?

Enactments as relational memory in motion: the intellectualizer, the performer, the one who disappears. The three questions to ask in the moment, and how to join a strategy before asking it to change.

How do you stay?

Sense, slow, source, soften, symbolize, stay: the real-time sequence for the moment someone starts to go. Relational interweaves as a vocabulary, not a script. Titrating being seen for the client for whom presence is the threat.

Which way do you go?

The four patterns therapists reach for when a client goes away, named on your own words from the reflection. Keeping the moment that was different, with bilateral stimulation. And what to say when they come back.

This is not a new protocol and it does not replace the one you have. It is what the eight phases need in order to work: a therapist who can remain when the room changes. You need EMDR Basic Training. You do not need to have read the book; it is not out yet. You do need one session you are still thinking about.

When

Wednesday 9 December 2026
12:30pm to 4:30pm Central

Central (Springfield, Zoom host time)	12:30pm to 4:30pm
Eastern	1:30pm to 5:30pm
Mountain	11:30am to 3:30pm
Pacific	10:30am to 2:30pm

One afternoon, four hours, with a break in the middle. Bring a session you are still thinking about, and something to write with. The reflection is private; what you share is yours to choose.

Prerequisite

Completion of an EMDRIA-approved EMDR Basic Training. This is an advanced workshop and assumes fluency with the eight phases.

In person or online

325 South Avenue, Springfield, MO, 25 seats. Or live on Zoom, 50 seats. Same afternoon, same material, same handout. The reflection works in both rooms.

4 NBCC clock hours. An application for 4 EMDRIA Credits has been submitted and is pending approval; we will update this page when it comes back. Certificate issued after the live session.

Learning objectives

The six objectives submitted with the EMDRIA Credit application. They are what the certificate will state.

Differentiate macro-alliance and micro-alliance processes by describing an example of each within EMDR treatment.
Identify three presentations that warrant assessment of relational disengagement during EMDR: possible dissociative withdrawal, compliant performance, and reduced attendance; and identify an alternative explanation for each.
Apply the sense, slow, source, soften, symbolize, and stay sequence to a case vignette to formulate an attuned response to a change in client engagement.
Analyze a therapist response pattern identified through guided reflection, including its possible protective function and its effect on EMDR pacing or relational availability.
Select and justify two relational interweaves for a case vignette, accounting for client agency, readiness, and the possibility that being seen may itself feel threatening.
Develop a Phase 8 reevaluation plan after apparent disengagement that checks the client's experience of the prior session, revisits readiness and shared treatment goals, and identifies any new adaptive relational experience available for integration.

Bring the session you are still thinking about.

One price, two rooms. Choose Springfield or Zoom in the form. Both are live, both earn the same CE, and both leave with the field card and the reflection sheet.

Seats are capped so the reflection can be shared in pairs: 25 in the room, 50 online. When a room is full it closes. EMDR Basic Training is required.

WorkshopWednesday 9 December · 12:30 to 4:30pm Central

$95

In person · 325 South Avenue, Springfield

25 seats

Live on Zoom

50 seats

4 NBCC hours · field card · reflection sheetEMDRIA Credits applied for, pending approval

Included

Everything happens right here on this page: name, email, your room, then payment. Your confirmation, the calendar invitation and, for Zoom, the link follow by email.

What you take home

Pages from the book, before the book.

EMDR and the Therapeutic Relationship: Reclaiming the Relational Thread is due out in 2027. The handout is built from its working tools, so you leave with the pages you will actually use, months before anyone can buy them.

01 · The card

When the client goes away

One page. The three presentations, the three questions to ask in the moment, the six steps with one line each, and six families of relational interweave with two lines each.

02 · The sheet

The reflection

The eight prompts with room to write, and the essay's discernment questions on the back. For the drive home after a hard session, and for bringing to consultation.

03 · The inventory

Your strategies

The Continuum of Presence, all four steps, and the Therapist Strategy Awareness Inventory excerpt: which pattern you reach for, and whether it is flexible or rigid, chosen or automatic.

04 · The script

Installing the moment that was different

The four tiers of integrating a disconfirming experience and the guided installation with bilateral stimulation, so a client who stays instead of leaving becomes a resource you can build on.

05 · The return

When they come back

The three-step reevaluation frame for the first session after a client cancelled, so the return is itself repair rather than a resumption of the performance.

06 · Us

Your case, in the room

Seats are capped so the pairs work is real and there is time at the end. Bring the session, or the client, you still carry.

The reflection is private. You write for yourself; you share one line, by choice, with one person. Nothing is collected.

The authors of The Relational Thread

Bridger Falkenstien

Co-founder, Beyond Healing Institute. Co-author of The Relational Thread. Co-developer of Somatic Integration and Processing. Co-host of the Notice That podcast.

Jen Savage

Beyond Healing Institute. Co-author of The Relational Thread. Co-host of the Notice That podcast.

We spent two years writing a book that argues the relationship is not the mood of EMDR but its mechanism. It comes out in 2027. This is the first room where that argument meets the session you had last Tuesday. We write the reflection with you, and we read ours out loud first.

Questions clinicians ask before registering

Do I need EMDR training?

Yes. Completion of an EMDRIA-approved EMDR Basic Training is required. The afternoon assumes you know the eight phases and have run them with real clients.

Is this a new protocol?

No. Nothing here replaces standard EMDR. It is about what the protocol needs from the person running it in the moments the protocol does not cover.

How is this different from the Enactment Focused EMDR workshop?

That afternoon teaches enactments as processing targets with their own setup. This one teaches the presence that makes any target workable, and spends its middle hour on you rather than on the client. The two overlap on purpose; attending both gives you a bridge, not a repeat.

Do I have to share something personal?

No. The reflection is written privately. You choose whether to read one line to one other person, and which line. Nothing is collected or discussed by the room without your choosing it.

Is the book out?

Not yet; it is due in 2027. The handout carries the pages you need for this work, and registrants will be the first to hear when it is available. If you want a head start, the free essay above and The Second Mirror are the two shortest ways in.

Does it count for EMDRIA Credits?

We have submitted this workshop to EMDRIA for 4 EMDRIA Credits and are waiting to hear back. We will say so here, plainly, as soon as it is approved, and registrants will be told either way before the workshop. The 4 NBCC clock hours are not in question.

In person or online, which is better?

Same afternoon, same material, same handout. In person at 325 South Avenue has 25 seats and the people in the room for the pairs work. Online has 50 seats and your own desk, and the pairs happen in breakout rooms. Pick the room you will actually show up in.