Books
Books by Robin Shapiro
Doing Psychotherapy, A Trauma and Attachment-Informed Approach
Published by Norton Professional Books
How to start, do, and complete psychotherapy that is trauma-and attachment-based as well as culturally informed.
Most books about doing psychotherapy are tied to particular psychotherapeutic practices. Here, seasoned clinician, trainer and consultant Robin Shapiro teaches readers the ins and outs of a trauma- and attachment- informed approach that is not tied to any one model or method. She says, “This book contains everything I wish I would have learned in graduate school.”
This book teaches assessment, treatment plans, enhancing the therapeutic relationship, and ethics and boundary issues, all within a general framework of attachment theory and trauma. Practical chapters talk about working with attachment problems, grief, depression, cultural differences, affect tolerance, anxiety, addiction, trauma, skill- building, suicidal ideation, psychosis, and the beginning and end of therapy. Filled with examples, suggestions for dialogue, and questions for a variety of therapeutic situation, Shapiro’s conversational tone makes the book very relatable. Early- career therapists will refer to it for years to come, and veteran practitioners looking for a refresher (or introduction) to the latest in trauma and attachment work will find it especially useful.
Easy Ego State Interventions:
Strategies for Working With Parts
Published by Norton Professional Books
CLICK HERE to view the Home Study Program for CEUs based on Easy Ego State Interventions.
Quick, essential techniques to practice ego state therapy, a popular therapeutic approach.
“Parts” (otherwise known as “ego states”) work in therapy refers to helping clients integrate and reconcile different aspects of themselves (silly, serious, depressed, and so on). This book offers a grab bag of ego state interventions―simple, practical techniques for a range of client issues―that any therapist can incorporate.
This book offers a grab bag of ego state interventions―simple, practical techniques for a range of client issues―that any therapist can incorporate in his or her practice. In her characteristic wise, compassionate, and user-friendly writing style, Robin Shapiro explains what ego states are, how to access them in clients, and how to use them for a variety of treatment issues. After covering foundational interventions for accessing positive adult states, creating internal caregivers, and working with infant and child states in Part I: Getting Started With Ego State Work, Shapiro walks readers step-by-step through a variety of specific interventions for specific problems, each ready for immediate application with clients. Part II: Problem-Specific Interventions includes chapters devoted to working with trauma, relationship challenges, personality disorders, suicidal ideation, and more.
Ego state work blends easily, and often seamlessly, with most other modalities. The powerful techniques and interventions in this book can be used alone or combined with other therapies. They are suitable for garden-variety clients with normal developmental issues like self-care challenges, depression, grief, anxiety, and differentiation from families and peer groups. Many of the interventions included in this book are also effective with clients across the dissociation spectrum―dissociation is a condition particularly well suited to ego state work―including clients who suffer trauma and complex trauma. Rich with case examples, this book is both a pragmatic introduction for clinicians who have never before utilized parts work and a trove of proven interventions for experienced hands to add to their therapeutic toolbox. Welcome to a powerful, flexible resource to help even the most difficult clients build a sense of themselves as adult, loveable, worthwhile, and competent.
EMDR Solutions II for Depression, Eating Disorders, Performance, and More.
Published by Norton Professional Books
CLICK HERE to view the Home Study Program for CEUs based on EMDR Solutions II: For Depression, Eating Disorders, Performance, and More.
Robin Shapiro has brought together several experienced EMDR practitioners for this follow-up and complement to her acclaimed EMDR Solutions: Pathways to Healing. In this book, therapists share clinical insights, therapeutic strategies, and user-friendly interventions for a variety of clinical populations and issues, all while drawing on the latest clinical research. Each intervention is enriched with relevant case histories.
The book opens with multiple chapters exploring how to make optimal use of EMDR in the treatment of depression. Subsequent chapters present EMDR as an effective tool for addressing a wide variety of key clinical concerns, including eating disorders, performance anxiety and enhancement, complex trauma, and medically-based trauma. Concluding chapters present innovative and creative EMDR-based solutions for working with two very different populations: sex offenders, and religious or spiritual clients.
As EMDR matures, clinicians are using it to address the trauma at the heart of nearly every emotional or behavioral condition. This book contains a broad sample of creative solutions to many clinical conundrums. Covering a breadth of issues without sacrificing depth, EMDR Solutions II is an invaluable and practical resource for the EMDR practitioner.
CHAPTERS
UNIT I: TREATING DEPRESSION
Introduction to Assessment and Treatment of Depression with EMDR, Robin Shapiro
Trauma-Based Depression, Robin Shapiro
Endogenous Depression and Mood Disorders, Robin Shapiro
“Shame Is My Safe Place”: Adaptive Information Processing Methods of Resolving Chronic Shame-Based Depression, Jim Knipe
Attachment-Based Depression: Healing the “Hunkered-Down,” Robin Shapiro
UNIT II: TREATING EATING DISORDERS
The Why of Eating Disorders, Andrew Seubert
Integrating Eating Disorders Treatment into the Early Phases of the EMDR Protocol, Janie Scholom
The Neurobiology of Eating Disorders, Affect Regulation Skills, and EMDR in the Treatment of Eating Disorders, Linda J. Cooke and Celia Grand
Treating Bulimia Nervosa with EMDR, DaLene Forester
Image Is Everything: The EMDR Protocol in the Treatment of Body Dysmorphia and Poor Body Image, DaLene Forester
Addressing Retraumatization and Relapse When Using EMDR with Eating Disorder Patients, Janet McGee
Desensitizing Desire: Nonverbal Memory and Body Sensations in the EMDR Treatment of Eating Disorders, Catherine Lidov
The Case of Mistaken Identity: Ego States and Eating Disorders, Andrew Seubert and Judy Lightstone
UNIT III: PERFORMANCE, COACHING, AND POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY
EMDR and Performance, David Grand
EMDR and Positive Psychology, Ann Marie McKelvey
EMDR and Coaching, Ann Marie McKelvey
UNIT IV: SOLUTIONS FOR COMPLEX TRAUMA
EMDR Friendly Preparation Methods for Adults and Children, Katie O’Shea
The EMDR Early Trauma Protocol, Katie O’Shea
Toward an Embodied Self: Integrating EMDR with Somatic and Ego State Interventions, Sandra Paulsen and Ulrich Lanius
Direct Targeting of Intrusive Images: A Tale of Three Soldiers, Elizabeth Massiah
Attachment, Affect Tolerance, and Avoidance Targets in Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder, Robin Shapiro
UNIT V: TREATING BODILY AND MEDICALLY BASED TRAUMA
Clearing Medical Trauma, Robin Shapiro
Treating Birth-Related Posttraumatic Stress, Katherine Davis
Treating Multiple Chemical Sensitivities with EMDR, Robin Shapiro
UNIT VI: MORE EMDR SOLUTIONS
EMDR with Sex Offenders in Treatment, Ronald J. Ricci and Cheryl Clayton
Using EMDR with Religious and Spiritually Attuned Clients, Martha S. Jacobi
EMDR Solutions: Pathways to Healing
Robin Shapiro, Editor
Published by Norton Professional Books
CLICK HERE to view the Home Study Program for CEUs based on EMDR Solutions: Pathways to Healing.
EMDR clinicians live for the moments when transformation occurs, when the trauma fades from frightening reality to mere memory, and when the chronic, unbearable pain suddenly disappears. EMDR Solutions: Pathways to Healing contains elegant and easy to learn EMDR-related protocols and procedures that create those moments for specific client populations. Nearly all of the methods have been taught at EMDR conferences, freestanding workshops or Level II trainings. Some have been published, in other forms, in journals and newsletters but none have been collected in a book. As an EMDR therapist, trainer, and consultant, I’ve used and taught many of these techniques. For this book, I asked the inventors of each technique to create a chapter that explains how to, when to, and why to do their procedure. Each chapter gives some background, in, for instance, dissociation, and then describes exactly how EMDR can fit in the course of a complete treatment. Each chapter includes typical case examples.
WHO IS IT FOR?
EMDR Solutions: Pathways to Healing is for the more than 50,000 psychotherapists who practice EMDR. Each chapter alludes to the standard protocol of EMDR. Many of the techniques in the book are already being used by hundreds of clinicians, resource enhancement is used by thousands. The variety of techniques and client populations, the “how-to” focus, as well as the fame and esteem of many of the writers makes this book a must-have for EMDR clinicians. Independent EMDR trainers will use it for a textbook for Level II classes. People who are not EMDR therapists will be interested in the book to for its protocols from their area of specialty; for example phantom limb pain, dissociative clients or Dialectical Behavior Therapy groups.
THE CHAPTERS
Maureen Kitchur’s Strategic Developmental Model is a meta-model for EMDR practice that encompasses all of the phases of the Standard Protocol. Using Ericksonian utilization language and attachment-enhancing practices to motivate and contain her clients, she has created a clear order for EMDR processing, a way to process wordless, implicit experience and the best intake system that I’ve ever used.
Roy Kiessling gives his take on Resource Development, a Preparation Phase procedure useful for externally or internally disorganized clients. His hierarchy of resource installation strategies is easy to learn and very helpful for clients in crisis. I especially like the way he turns resources into Cognitive Interweaves.
EMDR therapists keep finding ways to use this powerful tool with different kinds of clients and clinical issues. Joanne Twombly and Ulrich Lanius teach two very different preparations for doing EMDR with people with dissociative disorders. Many of Twombly’s techniques are derived from hypnosis and ego-state work. Lanius shows how to use medication to allow EMDR to work with dissociated clients. Sandra Wilson and Robert Tinker have continued to develop a very effective treatment for phantom limb pain. Much of their protocol focuses on the History-Taking and Preparation Phases of EMDR. Susan Schulherr takes on the Binge/Starve cycle from History Taking through Installation. Andrew Seubert teaches the language and procedures necessary to use the Protocol in working with mentally retarded clients. I point out useful targets for people with anxiety disorders.
In 1993, when I took the EMDR Level I training from Francine Shapiro, she said that EMDR could be used with any other treatment modality. Many people have taken her at her word. Elizabeth Turner fluidly engages children with art therapy, play therapy and story telling in all phases of EMDR. Carole Lovell unites Dialectical Behavior Therapy, EMDR and EMDR offshoots for effective therapy groups for women with Borderline Personality Disorder. I bring together Narrative Therapy questions and Object Relations theory to target culturally and generationally transmitted issues. Later, I talk about using EMDR with differentiation-based couple’s therapy. Jim Cole uses a reenactment tool from guided imagery for a quick and painless way to remove discreet trauma and pain.
Some of us have created variations on the EMDR theme. A. J. Popky and Jim Knipe turn the SUDS scale on its head by targeting inappropriate positive affect. Popky shares his DeTUR protocol with its Level of Urge to Use (LOUU) for the treatment of addictions and compulsive behavior. Knipe clears love-sickness, procrastination, avoidance and codependence using the Level of Urge to Avoid (LOUA). I write about the Two-Hand Interweave, a simple exercise of discernment, often used in the Preparation Phase.
Trauma Treatments Handbook, Protocols Across the Spectrum
Published by Norton Professional Books
Robin Shapiro’s Trauma Treatments Handbook, Protocols across the Spectrum is a comprehensive, user-friendly look at how current trauma therapies work to heal Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, complex traumatic stress disorders, and the small “t” relational traumas. After describing the phenomena of trauma & dissociation, and presenting assessment and preparation skills that could apply to any therapy, readers are led through the therapy gamut. The book includes chapters on Mindfulness techniques, Psychodynamic, Exposure and Cognitive therapies, EMDR, Hypnotherapy, Ego State, Somatic, medical and “energy”-based therapies, and some newer therapeutic innovations.
The chapters are cumulative, starting with Diagnoses, Assessment and Preparation, and pointing out elements of Mindfulness, Dynamic, and Exposure techniques in the newer therapies. Each modality-based chapter discusses the benefits and drawbacks of the technique, and educational resources (books and websites.) The last section of the book addresses specific trauma populations, including, survivors of sex abuse, military trauma, genocide, disasters, Borderline Personality Disorder and Dissociative Identity Disorder.
Some themes run through many chapters in Trauma Treatment Handbook. Shapiro uses Structural Dissociation’s theory and phases of treatment as a lens through which to see many other therapies. She emphasizes the importance of the therapeutic relationship and adequate preparation, and uses straightforward case examples throughout the book.
Visual Aids for Psychotherapy: Tools You Can Use
UPDATED VERSION 2020
The Visual Aids handbook is a set of ten large print explanations for common responses to trauma, anxiety and grief, among others. They are useful in the clinical setting to explain and normalize clients’ responses. Clients often request photos or copies of the OCD and anxiety-calming pages, as well as the descriptions of poly-vagal states.
Available as a pdf instant download ($8).
Sample Prints


