Where to Start with EMDR Training, Tools, and Resources
If you're exploring EMDR training or looking for practical tools to support your clinical work, it can be hard to know where to begin. Many clinicians find themselves piecing together information across trainings, consultations, and online resources without a clear sense of how it all fits together. This page is designed to give you a more structured starting point.
Whether you're feeling stuck with treatment planning, navigating client readiness, or working with complex cases like addiction, you’ll find a clear direction here. Instead of trying to sort through everything at once, you can choose a path based on what you need most right now. From there, you can move into more focused resources, tools, and continuing education.
Choose the Right EMDR Focus for Your Clinical Work
The resources below are organized around common clinical needs that come up in EMDR practice. Each path includes a combination of educational content, practical tools, and more in-depth training options. You don’t need to do everything at once—just start with the area that feels most relevant to your current work.
These sections reflect the most common places clinicians tend to get stuck in EMDR, giving you a clearer starting point based on what’s happening in your cases right now.
EMDR Preparation and Stabilization
If your clients are becoming overwhelmed, dissociating, or not quite ready for reprocessing, the issue is often in Phase 2. Preparation and stabilization are essential for safe and effective EMDR, but they can be difficult to assess and implement consistently. Many clinicians find themselves wondering whether a client is truly ready or how much preparation is enough.
These resources focus on strengthening your Phase 2 work, including assessing readiness, managing dissociation, and building regulation skills that support trauma processing. You’ll find guidance on how to pace this phase and how to adjust your approach for more complex presentations.
→ Explore EMDR Preparation and Stabilization Resources
EMDR Treatment Planning
If you’re feeling unsure how to organize targets, sequence treatment, or build a clear EMDR roadmap, you’re not alone. Treatment planning is often where things start to feel overwhelming, especially with complex trauma or when multiple targets are involved. Without a clear structure, it can be difficult to know what to prioritize or how to move forward.
These resources focus on EMDR treatment planning, including target selection, sequencing strategies, and building flexible treatment plans that can adapt over time. The goal is to help you move from feeling uncertain to having a more organized, clinically grounded approach to your cases.
→ Explore EMDR Treatment Planning Resources
EMDR for Addiction and Problematic Behaviors
Working with addiction or compulsive behaviors often adds another layer of complexity to EMDR treatment. Relapse patterns, avoidance, and competing targets can make it harder to know how EMDR fits into the overall treatment plan. Many clinicians are trained in EMDR but have not been shown how to fully integrate it into addiction work.
These resources focus on applying EMDR to substance use and behavioral addictions, including treatment planning considerations, protocol adaptations, and recovery-oriented strategies. The aim is to help you use EMDR more effectively within the context of ongoing risk, relapse, and long-term change.
→ Explore EMDR Addiction Resources
Not Sure Where to Start with EMDR?
If you're not sure which path fits, you can think about where you’re getting stuck in your current clinical work. Sometimes the question isn’t what you should learn next, but what is currently slowing you down or creating uncertainty in your cases. Starting there tends to be the most useful.
If you’re newer to EMDR or still building confidence, beginning with preparation and stabilization often provides a strong foundation. If you’re feeling stuck in how to organize cases or move forward, treatment planning is usually the right place to focus. And if you’re working with more complex or high-risk behaviors, addiction-focused resources can help you integrate EMDR more effectively into that work.
How EMDR Training, Tools, and Resources Work Together
Each of these paths includes a combination of free educational resources, practical tools, and more in-depth continuing education courses. You might start by reading a blog to clarify a concept, then move into a tool you can use in session, and eventually take a course to deepen your understanding. These pieces are designed to build on each other over time rather than function as isolated resources.
The goal is not just to learn more about EMDR, but to strengthen your clinical decision-making and confidence in real-world practice. As you move through these resources, you’ll begin to develop a more cohesive framework for how you approach EMDR across different clients and presentations.
About These EMDR Resources
All resources are created by Cassandra Cannon, Ph.D., licensed psychologist and EMDRIA-approved consultant, and offered through Cannon Psychology Continuing Education, an APA-approved sponsor of continuing education. These materials are designed for licensed mental health providers who want practical, clinically grounded guidance you can apply directly in your work.
The goal is to help you build clarity, structure, and confidence in your EMDR practice while staying grounded in ethical and evidence-informed care.