4 min read | March 15, 2026

“Is that a rat?”

I stood in the office doorway, confused.

The Science Building housed the rats across campus, but from the office doorway, I stared across to the student lounge.

A student gleefully placed a rat on his shoulder and smiled in delight as it picked its way across to the other side.

The rat was in a harness. The harness was attached to a leash.

Clearly, they had a special relationship. I was both nauseous and curious. But the rat trend continued in the following weeks.

A colleague at a nearby campus described a couple who wanted a clinician to mediate who would get their pet rat — they both loved it and couldn’t reach a custody agreement. They wanted help with a visitation schedule.

Still another colleague leaped onto her desk when a client pulled a rat from their bag without warning. From her perch, she yelled: “Put it away! Take it home!”

The confused client tried to explain that rats were socially intelligent and harmless. It didn’t matter.

A different social signal arrived when students began showing up for sessions in full costume. They were members of the Furry Fandom movement — fans of anthropomorphic animals, characters that straddle the human and non-human realms — and it had grown by more than 1,800% in less than a decade. (Plante et al., 2023) There were annual conventions, but it wasn’t convention weekend.

I cringed since, truth be told, I hate certain costumes. Goofy at Disneyland, sports mascots, and anyone whose eyes I can’t see, I find unsettling. As a woman, I scan faces and body language constantly for safety cues, and certain costumes remove the very information I depend on.

Meanwhile, Pittsburgh had embraced Anthrocon, the fandom’s annual convention — citizens lined the streets for the furry parade, posed for photos, and the local media celebrated rather than stigmatized it.

To be fair to myself, their goals and roles were different.

But research would confirm what Pittsburgh seemed to understand: belongingness was the primary motivator for fandom participation — the need to find a community where non-normative identities were accepted rather than judged. (Plante et al., 2023) My younger colleagues embraced Furry clients intuitively. I struggled since the human signals I relied on disappeared entirely. The suit that made the student feel safe enough to show up authentically, which announced “I belong to a community,” made it hard for me to connect and do my job — I couldn’t track the nervous system.

When People Build What the System Fails to Provide

When I think back on it, the rats on leashes, custody disputes over rodent companions, and students navigating campus in costume were all clues that mainstream solutions were failing people, so they built what they needed. At every turn, people were self-organizing to fill unmet needs—a pattern the AI revolution may echo. For example, a prospective client opened a discussion this week with: “I asked AI about CPTSD, and I’ve got the symptoms.”

What strikes me is that this isn’t new. People have been gravitating toward whatever was available to fill relational gaps for decades — and technology’s offerings have gotten better. The question isn’t whether people will turn to AI for connection, since they already are. The harder question is what that tells us about everything relational that was missing before AI arrived.

Next issue, we’ll go there.

* * *

What signs do you see of AI changing the therapeutic experience? Reply — I read every response.

Reference

Plante, C.N., Reysen, S., Adams, C., Roberts, S.E., & Gerbasi, K.C. (Eds.). (2023). FurScience: A Decade of Psychological Research on the Furry Fandom. International Anthropomorphic Research Project.

12 min read | March 1, 2026

Andy gave a thumbs up and rolled off the side of the boat.

I watched him go, rocking with the swells off the coast of Maui.

Popping up from the water, Andy shouted, “There are sharks down here!”

“That’s where they live,” said the divemaster, not looking up from the air gauge.

We knew it from the travel guides. But now we knew it.

That’s how I felt the first time the EMDR research on child-onset versus adult-onset trauma actually landed. I wasn’t deliberately skipping attachment questions — I was focused on the protocol and expected processes to work as they had in basic training. Like Andy, the reality of my client’s history and their coping would soon come into focus.

A Brutal — and Valuable — Lesson

Years ago, prepping a middle-aged client who wanted to reduce anger outbursts in the classroom, I checked all the boxes on my EMDR worksheet.

• Thirty-plus trauma experiences in adolescence
• Unremarkable DES score (I now use a more accurate assessment)
• All thirty-plus experiences between the ages of nine and ten? — noted

I saw a straightforward candidate, not a fragile one, and I was excited to offer relief after years of suffering. Then, during Phase 4 Desensitization, their face went red, and their body began to shake.

Too much was erupting.

They didn’t have the capacity to hold it — an abreaction.

I helped reorient them by having them notice objects in the office and by guiding breathwork. I had been so locked into the protocol that I’d missed clues in plain sight, such as the clustering of adversity between the ages of nine and ten.

I wouldn’t have blamed them if they ran out. Instead, between sips of water, they said, simply: “Let’s not do that again.”

Learning the extent to which history matters was a brutal lesson for me that day. But it did teach me to listen differently to clients who grew up alongside untreated mental illness, domestic violence, intergenerational trauma, or who were the sole gender queer person in their world. History wasn’t just history for history’s sake — just like France isn’t just croissants and the Eiffel Tower. It was a living system I had barely learned to read.

The Narrative Tells the Story: What Early Relationships Reveal — and How to Use It

Which brings me to the question posed last issue:

When you were growing up, and you got upset about something, what typically happened?

It was a way to reveal how a client copes and whether they use others to manage stress and regulate their emotions.

The question was a variation of one from the Adult Attachment Interview, or AAI. Developed by Mary Main, the AAI is a semi-structured interview of 18–20 questions that identifies four adult attachment classifications — Autonomous, Dismissing, Preoccupied, and Unresolved. When used as a clinical tool, it reflects the nature of a client’s early experiences with caregivers, the client’s mental representation of those caregivers, their emotional stance towards each caregiver, and the extent to which loss, trauma, or other circumstances impacted a client’s personality structure. (Steele & Baradon, 2004)

What they say about their childhood will tell you something, but how they say it will tell you more. Wherever you’re starting from — whether attachment is new territory or familiar ground — knowing it and feeling it land in the room are two different things.

Coherence is a major tell. The way a client’s language holds (or doesn’t hold) their memories can reflect how their brain learned to manage emotion in their earliest relationships. And a few questions borrowed from the AAI help form a working hypothesis about two things that matter enormously: how a client organizes their experience of early relationships, and how they’re likely to show up in the therapeutic relationship itself. If I had known to ask them that day, I might have had an easier afternoon.

That working hypothesis identifies something specific — the memory networks that shaped how this person learned to be in relationship, and what that means for how they’ll use you and the therapy process itself. Consider what it feels like in practice. Will they join you in a genuine alliance, leaning into the safe and supportive relationship you offer? Or because of their history, will it feel like too much?

* * *

And how will we feel? We’re human, and it can hurt when a client can’t fully lean in, especially when being a safe person is part of our professional identity.

Take a client with a Dismissing attachment classification. They’ve learned to minimize attachment needs and go it alone — and they’re expert at it. They may appear calm or unruffled while internally underreporting how much they’re actually struggling.

Early in treatment, gently naming the pattern — operating alone as a response to early adversity makes perfect sense — can open something in a client who has never had it reflected back to them. From there, you might introduce the option of using the therapeutic relationship itself as part of the work, not just as the backdrop. In practice, one way that might look is being mindful of sharing the space together — occasional eye contact, taking in one another’s presence — rather than being in the room but talking to the window.

With that opportunity, a client’s nervous system may be open to using another person’s authentic connection to tackle trauma symptoms. For EMDR specifically, that matters enormously — because the therapeutic relationship is the foundation that makes processing the energy of adversity possible. That kind of understanding has an additional benefit. It helps the client combat the urge to quietly drop out after three sessions.

Listening for What’s Alive in Memory Networks: A Focus on EMDR Preparation

To clarify, I am not suggesting you administer the AAI.

That would be untenable as full administration and coding requires specialized training — we’re talking 40 hours of training and years of supervised practice to classify transcripts with confidence. That is not what this is about.

What I am suggesting is to borrow from its spirit, a recommendation from seasoned trainers such as Dr. Andrew Leeds. A handful of questions, asked with genuine curiosity, can offer you a qualitative sense of which experiences remain emotionally alive in a client’s memory networks. One question opens this door particularly well.

“Why do you think your parents behaved the way they did?”

This is one of the most revealing questions in the AAI — a client’s answer tells you not only about their parents, but about the state of the memory networks those relationships left behind. The table below highlights possible responses you may recognize from your work.

The classifications are useful for starting to see patterns, and advanced training delves deeper into the clinical applications of attachment theory.

A published case illustrates what this looks like in practice. Steele and Baradon (2004) describe a father whose AAI illustrates the gap between rich content and restricted access. His responses were emotionally vivid — specific memories, affect-laden language, even genuine remorse over lost relationships. And yet, in the same breath, he consistently minimized the meaning of what he was describing, as if the memory and its emotional weight occupied two independent rooms. In AAI terms, that pattern — and specifically that gap between what is remembered and what is felt — suggests the internal architecture is there, but access seems to be restricted. In EMDR terms, an opportunity for ‘+’ signs to link up.

Did the examples prompt you to recognize someone from your caseload?

What It Sounds Like in the Room

Here’s what listening for narrative quality might look like in practice. Consider two clients responding to the same question.

Therapist: “Why do you think your mother behaved the way she did when you were growing up?”

Client A: “I mean… she had a hard life, I guess. Her own mother was pretty cold. I used to think she just didn’t love me, but I think now she just didn’t know how. It wasn’t really about me.”

This client can hold two things at once — their childhood pain and a contextualized understanding of their mother. The affect is present but not overwhelming. The memory network has some integration.

Now consider a different response to the same question:

Client B: “Why did she behave like that? I have no idea. She just… she was fine, honestly. She worked hard. I didn’t have any complaints.”

The question asked for reflection. The response offered was clipped. That gap — between what the question invites and what the client can give — is telling, suggesting that the memory network is there but access is blocked; it doesn’t have the same level of integration. That gap is worth sitting with. What a client can’t reach may carry more emotional weight than they can articulate or show.

A Related Instrument Worth Knowing

The Adult Attachment Projective Picture System

The Adult Attachment Projective Picture System, or AAP, was developed by Carol George — one of the original co-developers of the AAI — and the late Malcolm West.

Where the AAI works through language and life narrative, the AAP takes a projective approach. The clinician presents a series of eight drawings depicting attachment-relevant scenes — a child alone, figures in distress, moments of separation and reunion — and asks the client to describe what is happening. There are no right answers and no structured questions to navigate. The client simply responds to what they see, and in doing so, reveals how their attachment system organizes under pressure. What gets told, what gets avoided, and where the narrative breaks down are rich sources of clinical information.

The AAP yields the same four adult attachment classifications as the AAI and goes a step further by assessing defensive processes that other attachment measures don’t capture — specifically, the ways clients unconsciously exclude threatening attachment-related material from awareness. For therapists interested in understanding defensive structure before processing begins, consider it as an alternative. The added value comes from being ready for psychological defenses that can interfere with accessing the maladaptive memory network and processing associated memories. (Leeds, A.M. (2009). A Guide to the Standard EMDR Therapy Protocols for Clinicians, Supervisors, and Consultants. Springer Publishing Company.)

Like the AAI, the AAP requires training and certification to administer and code reliably. Carol George continues to offer training periodically throughout the year. If this is a direction you want to explore, her website, attachmentprojective.com, is the place to start.

(Reference: George, C., & West, M. (2012). The Adult Attachment Projective Picture System: Attachment Theory and Assessment in Adults. Guilford Press.)

Final Thoughts

Clients don’t always know what information matters and how it informs treatment — and even when they do, they don’t always have access to it. When a client describes, “I had a good childhood. My parents were good people, and we got along well,” they are telling you the truth as they understand it. It’s also how they answered in talk therapy. EMDR preparation can help socialize them to a different process.

Attachment assessments like the AAI and the AAP function as X-rays. Where standard intake questions capture what the client can consciously report, these tools reveal the underlying structure — what has been integrated and what is still very much alive in the memory networks. Knowledge that can inform treatment planning.

The data shapes which resources you build in Phase 2, which RDIs you reach for to construct a stable platform for processing, and how you orient the client to the therapeutic relationship itself. A client whose Dismissing organization has taught them to always go it alone will require a different relational foundation than one whose Preoccupied system taught them the opposite.

The tools give you an internal map, so it’s less likely you’ll find yourself sitting across from a trembling, red-faced client and hoping they’ll stay.

* * *

If you use attachment questions, I’d love to know your go-tos. What’s your top question — and what do you like about what it reveals? I’d love to hear your response.

References

Steele, M., & Baradon, T. (2004). Clinical use of the Adult Attachment Interview in parent–infant psychotherapy. Infant Mental Health Journal, 25(4), 284–299.

George, C., & West, M. (2012). The Adult Attachment Projective Picture System: Attachment Theory and Assessment in Adults. Guilford Press.

Leeds, A.M. (2009). A Guide to the Standard EMDR Therapy Protocols for Clinicians, Supervisors and Consultants. Springer Publishing Company.

Welcome to The 51st Minute – a newsletter for EMDR therapists navigating complex trauma in their daily work. We get to reflect together on the impact of sessions, clinical patterns, and stuck points we wrestle with after the session ends.

I’ve been working with trauma for over 25 years—EMDR, attachment, neglect, dissociation, all of it. I’m a gardener at heart and curious about structuring and sequencing therapy to nurture growth. I’m awed by how growth emerges from reservoirs of pain.  In each issue, I’ll dig into something worth thinking about—clinical patterns, research, and industry forces impacting our work…or frameworks that help make sense of what we’re seeing. I consider this a conversation and welcome your response.

A note: This newsletter is a thinking space to discuss clinical patterns and emerging concepts in trauma treatment. Its role is not to replace or function as consultation – still the best place to unpack cases.

The pattern you keep seeing

Maybe this scenario sounds familiar.

You’re an EMDR therapist working with a client with attachment wounds whose mother abandoned them as a toddler.

She left for the store and never returned home to your client and his two older siblings.

Therapy has progressed more slowly than expected, but after eight months, you’ve established resources. Since they can’t tolerate imagining people as relational resources, they chose a bear from a video game they often play.  They liked how, in the game, it was soft, strong, but protective. It was ‘nice’ having it there.

“How do you feel?” you ask.

Their eyes dart around.  (ever misplace keys?…” they SHOULD be here…where are THEY?!”)

“Did anything come up this week where you had the chance to use your Calm Place?”, you ask.

 “No, I don’t get upset, so I haven’t used it.”, your client replies.

Later in the session, you summon your courage to begin Phase 4 Desensitization, but after several passes on a memory of their brother burning their hand on purpose, you repeatedly hear:

 “Nothing’s coming up.”

 “I don’t feel anything.”

Their face remains expressionless.

 “On this next set, consider bringing your bear in to help the boy.” , you offer.

They fidget with a hangnail while glancing at your diplomas on the wall.

Are they dissociating or questioning if I’m a good therapist?, you think. 

Squirming in your office chair, you take a deep breath to resist going down the rabbit hole.

You feel stuck and start to wonder: Am I doing something wrong? 

What the research shows about child-onset trauma and EMDR outcomes

As a new college graduate, I bought my first car with a $1,200 budget and my dad’s help. We kicked the tires and test-drove this cool number, decked out with gloss fake wood trim. As a 22-year-old, it wasn’t my first choice, but I deferred to experience.

Back at home, dad’s eyes surveyed the car.

Then stopped.

“Huh, it looks like the side panel is a shade lighter. It looks like it’s been in an accident, and the front panel was replaced.”

‘WWWHHHAAAAT’?

A horror film filled my head—

The car engine sputtering,

Sounds of sharp metallic knocks from under the hood,

The dashboard lighting up in red and amber.

Scowls from angry drivers late to work.

Up until now, I assumed the car was roadworthy, but with his observation, I needed to verify with a master mechanic that all internal systems were operating as they should. I feared the car lurching and dying in the middle of a traffic lane.

But, truth be told, the other part of me said I could ignore dad’s observation.

Do I really need to be worried?

After all, I drove the thirty miles home without incident.

In fact, knowing about potential accident damage changed everything. At the first sign of trouble, I’d criticize myself for not being proactive, 

for taking unnecessary risks, 

and jeopardizing my time and sanity. 

I needed expert eyes to check which systems were vulnerable and needed repair, and which could handle the commute.

When we work with clients who have early-life trauma, we need the same approach. Just like I needed to assess which car systems were damaged before driving it daily, we need complex trauma assessments to gauge healthy vs. compromised domains as it impacts treatment planning.

Car-shopping with dad taught me that knowing about prior damage changes what you do next

The same is true with trauma clients. Here’s what the research shows about therapy outcomes when we don’t account for when relational damage occurred:

In 2007, Bessel van der Kolk and colleagues published the largest randomized controlled trial comparing EMDR, fluoxetine, and placebo for PTSD. The study had equivalent numbers of patients with child-onset (N=45) and adult-onset (N=43) index traumas. Child-onset traumas were defined as we do in our daily work—physical, emotional, or sexual abuse occurring before age 18.  It turns out that in the 8-week EMDR condition:

Participants endorsing child-onset trauma:

• Were more likely to drop out
• Only 33% achieved complete symptom remission at 6-month follow-up

Compare that to outcomes for adult-onset trauma clients (trauma after age 18):

• 100% lost their PTSD diagnosis
• 75% achieved complete symptom remission at 6-month follow-up

Why such dramatically different outcomes with the standard protocol?

Because child-onset trauma amplifies damage… It creates adverse memories while it damages the internal systems needed for EMDR processing to work.  This is why your client keeps saying “nothing’s coming up.” The affect regulation system that should help them identify and tolerate emotions is underdeveloped.

The researchers concluded that what was needed was a better understanding of “treatment sequencing”—understanding what needs to happen first for those whose internal systems were distorted by early experience.

We’ll be exploring treatment sequencing in future issues.

The one intake question that changes treatment planning

So how’s it relevant to you? 
Consider adding one assessment question to your next trauma intake—a question that reveals whether your client developed affect regulation with relational support, or learned to manage distress alone:

“When you were growing up, and you got upset about something, what typically happened?”

Answers that suggest they developed regulation with support:

“My dad would lie next to me on my bed until I calmed down, I liked him there, he’d talk to me.”

“I could go to my mom when I was upset, and she’d drive us around for a while. In the car we could talk.”

“I could always go to my older sister’s room…she’d make room for me on her bed, listen and help me figure out what I was feeling.”

Answers that suggest they learned to manage alone:

“I’d go to my room until I felt better. A few times the dog would come in and lie at the end of the bed” (learned to manage alone)

“I don’t really remember getting upset…it’d drive my older brother crazy, he said I needed to react more…he thought people took advantage of me.” (emotional shutdown)

“My parents had it hard for the times they were living in; I’m really grateful to them, they were good parents who were dealing with their own stuff” (unavailable)

“I don’t know what you mean, only grandma could show emotion.” (emotional expression = unsafe)

“Nobody really noticed” (emotional neglect)

Once you start listening for these patterns, you’ll hear them everywhere—and it’ll change how you plan treatment.  It’s a lot better than hearing “Huh, it looks like the side panel is a shade lighter….”

Okay, it’s after midnight, so I’ll leave you with that for now.

If you have comments on the topic or what you’re seeing in your sessions, shoot me an email.

And we’ll be sure to pick up the thread in two weeks.