Episode 53: Christine Mark-Griffin
Christine Mark-Griffin: Yeah, I've had grown adults go to my bookshelf, my child bookshelf, and like, you know, I've seen this book. I've seen it around. I see that it's popular. It was gifted to my own child when they were a baby in their baby gift basket. No one has ever read this to me.
Jessica Fowler: Welcome back to What Your Therapist is Reading. I'm your host, Jessica Fowler. Today, we are speaking with Christine Mark Griffin, who is the author of EMDR Workbook for Kids. Christine is a licensed clinical social worker, MDREA approved consultant, and advanced trainer and trauma conscious yoga therapist. Christine is passionate about playfully combining her love of music, movement, fitness, and yoga with clinical practice to help children learn, grow, and heal. She is the owner of Spark All Wellness, a small group practice located in San Francisco, California, specializing in EMDR and trauma therapy for women and children. Additionally, she is the founder of EMDR kids.
After today's episode, make sure you head on over to social media @therapybookspodcast to find out about the latest giveaway. And if you're enjoying these episodes and would like to support the podcast, leaving us a five-star review is the best way. And as always the information shared in this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only.
Welcome back listeners. Today we are speaking with Christine Mark Griffin, LCSW. Welcome.
Christine Mark-Griffin: Hi, Jessica. So glad to be here.
Jessica Fowler: It's so good to have you on the podcast. And as we were talking earlier, I like to start with this question. Can you share a memory of how reading has impacted you?
Christine Mark-Griffin: Yeah, you know, I, let me reflect on that a little bit. So, when I think about that question, English was actually not my first language, despite being born and raised in California. So I'm Vietnamese American, and when I was little, Vietnamese was the main language spoken in my home, essentially between zero and five, until I went to kindergarten. So I have this memory of my mom buying a Vietnamese workbook because she wanted me to, like, know how to say apple or just the ABCs, essentially. So she would teach me my ABCs and, um, reading in Vietnamese. So I, I just have that memory of learning how to read, and it wasn't English in the beginning.
Jessica Fowler: That's a nice memory of, you know, that you could remember that to do that and then have the transition of what that's like in Vietnamese and then later on, right, learning to read and write in English.
Christine Mark-Griffin: Yeah, it's helped me now. I will say I could be better with my Vietnamese, but, um, I can read very basic words in Vietnamese and it's just nice to be multilingual in that way, um, and have access to that. And I think that's definitely impacted me to just be multilingual being able to read, um, in multiple languages, right. And in high school I took Spanish. And so that, you know, took off essentially. And I went all the way through and now I can have, you know, very basic conversational Spanish and very basic conversational Vietnamese, um, and English, of course, you know, but it's all, it, I think reflecting back on reading for the first time, just, it's interesting to know that it wasn't in English, even though I'm an author now and obviously have written my book in English.
Jessica Fowler: Nice. And so we're going to transition to talking about your book so EMDR Workbook for Kids. I was wondering if you can give a little brief summary of what EMDR is for our listeners who may not be aware.
Christine Mark-Griffin: Yeah, sure. So EMDR is an acronym. It stands for eye movement desensitization reprocessing. It's a big word. And because I work with kids, and I wrote the EMDR Workbook for Kids as a therapist, how I typically explain it to children is that EMDR, um, is different than regular therapy. What we're going to be doing in EMDR is focusing on a problem that you would like to work on. And we're going to be doing something called bilateral stimulation, or that's also a big word. So, I simply just call it back and forth movement. And essentially that's what sets EMDR apart from other therapy modalities. It has you do two things at one time. You're focusing on a problem and you're also doing a bilateral stimulation. Of course, there are, there's lots more content to what EMDR actually is, but it's an evidence based therapy that was originally founded to be effective with veterans and veterans specifically who had lots of PTSD and trauma. And after they did research and found that it was super effective with veterans and PTSD, they're like, well, it probably will work with all populations, PTSD. So, it's, it's an international therapy. Now, speaking of languages, I mean, every I think every continent country has an EMDR or chapter of EMDR and therapists in other countries trained in EMDR. So, it's pretty international evidence-based approach. And yeah, um, I would say that's kind of what sets it apart. The bilateral stimulation.
Jessica Fowler: And when you say bilateral stimulation, just give it some examples maybe for our listeners.
Christine Mark-Griffin: Yeah. So, if you think about bilateral stimulation and moving your body back and forth, we do it all of the time when we're walking or maybe we're dancing and moving our hips from side to side. The founder of EMDR originally called it EMDR because she had people start with moving their eyes back and forth. And so, they, they would move their eyeballs as fast as they could from one side to the other. And since the discovery of EMDR, research has found that there are all types of other bilateral stimulation, tactile, audio, and there's tons of technology out there as well now to aid in EMDR therapy, to help EMDR therapists integrate tactile. So, a version of tactile might just be, you know, tapping on your shoulders. Or tapping on your knees back and forth one at a time, like you're drumming almost and, um, audio for audio. They, they can, you could put headphones on and sounds or beeping or some kind of audio can kind of travel back and forth between your ears. And back in the day, they would just snap each finger like back and forth. So there's different ways to, to do different types of sensory and integrate bilaterals based on the client's preference and what works well for them.
Jessica Fowler: Yeah, what feels best for them, what's comfortable for them. So in this workbook, can you explain this workbook and what happens in this workbook and how it's used?
Christine Mark-Griffin: Yeah. So, this gives us an opportunity to go a little deeper into EMDR. EMDR has eight phases. And it's pretty structured in that way, where you, you go through each phase through EMDR and so how the workbook is set up is that each chapter aligns with a phase of EMDR therapy and all the child friendly worksheets and activities that you can do with a child during that phase. So phase one in EMDR is history taking, learning about your client's history and doing all the assessments, which is what all therapy does, right? You're doing intake and assessment with all of your clients. EMDR with children, I simply call it learning your story. Like, what's your story? What's going on here? There's a lot of worksheets in chapter one to help learn the child's story, have them draw it out, have them draw it out as a comic, as if they're like a comic character, um, and also identifying some problems that they're experiencing circling, you know, things like I'm being bullied at school or there's trouble happening at home and I'm getting worried about certain things.
I'm having nightmares. And so, it's really child friendly. Imagine like, um, a child activity and coloring book where they're really engaged coloring and circling and connecting the dots and doing mazes. It's, uh, I tried to make it feel that way as I was writing the book and being really intentional about it. The special part and the part that I'm most proud of for the EMDR Workbook for Kids is that if you're going to do therapy with kids, you are inevitably going to be working with their grownups. You're going to be working with the parents and the caregivers. So, the workbook has chapter nine, which I call better together. And that Is all activities, um, and attachment focus EMDR taking from research from Deborah Wesselman and a couple others. And I created worksheets and activities for that. So, they're super visual, the caregivers or the parents can pick it up. There's something called the storytelling technique and typically used for younger children in EMDR. Where. When the child can't verbalize the story or their trauma narrative, you have the parents or the caregivers come in and try to share that story while adding bilaterals. There is not a lot of guidance for it. There's a chapter book that kind of highlights how to do it by, um, her name is, um, I forget her name at this, at this time, we'll have to remember it, but, um, I did it in a med lib style in the workbook. So it's so much more engaging for parents, parents. And like, when I tell a parent, write a, story about your child's trauma narrative. They don't even know where to start, but if they have a worksheet, that's fun and engaging and more like a Mad Lib and with some instructions, they are more easily able to fill it out and then come in and be prepared for a conjoint session with their child. And I've just seen some phenomenal work, some healing being done in session with parents and their kiddos.
Jessica Fowler: I'm so glad that you brought that up because I loved that chapter. I thought, how amazing is it for a parent, right? It's because you're talking about EMDR and Kids getting, you know, who are learning about EMDR and doing this in their therapy sessions. And parents often may not know what to do because if there was a trauma, right? Oftentimes parents don't know what to do. And you gave them the tools to be able to do that to help their kid. Which I thought was amazing. It's definitely in an attachment theory way to do it but how to help their kids and what to do. Um, I just, I, I loved seeing that because we kind of talk about how to bring parents in and what to do. Again, I don't work with kids, but I know that exists, but this was, this is what you can do. Here's how you can help your child who's receiving this type of therapy. I thought that was great.
Christine Mark-Griffin: Yeah. And you know, I think the other thing too is everybody, kids and adults, they want to know what to expect. And so chapter nine is also filled with tons of information for what to expect from your child. After they have had an EMDR session, because some kids will leave an EMDR session and they will totally regress, right? They will have nightmares. They will start wetting the bed again. They will have tantrums. And the parents were like, what, what is going on? Where did this come from? I mean, just understanding that this is the body's way and the child's way of saying they are overwhelmed and there the EMDR is is letting out a lot and not that it's not helpful, but sometimes EMDR is like opening that big can of worms, and then all the worms are spilling out now. And the parents need some tools and need some guidance and kind of a heads up like, hey, your child might be a little dysregulated after they leave an EMDR session. The other. thing that parents will learn too is that sometimes your kids all of a sudden going to be kind and laughing and smiling and feel lighter and sleep better. And there's going to be a lot of progress and there might be some ebbs and flows as you are going through EMDR sessions in general, the EMDR process with your child. So I think all of us as EMDR therapists, as EMDR therapists, they might verbally say this to a parent, but to have it all written out. Um, and all of that actually comes from my EMDR consultant, Annie Monaco, who has a book on play therapy and EMDR herself. She sat down and wrote it all out. So, she allowed me to adapt it for the workbook, which I'm so thankful for.
Jessica Fowler: Oh, nice. And two, I want to say this about, right, so that's the parent part. The other part, I want the adult version of this book as an EMDR therapist. I said to you earlier that, you know, EMDR is this, there's lots of training. We all go through tons of training, lots of consultation that we continue to get right as we do this work, but you took it and you explained it so well that I thought everyone should have a book like this going through EMDR therapy and just the tools and how you bring in different ways to even like practice bilateral. Let's practice that first to see what that's like for you and here's the story of writing it down or show me in your body or here are your ideas of what you can do. I just thought was a fantastic tool.
Christine Mark-Griffin: Yeah. I have had that request for creating an adult version and a teen version. And I will also say I have so many therapists use the EMDR workbook for kids with their adult clients and with their teens. Oftentimes these are clients who are coming to therapy to heal their own childhood trauma and their childhood wounds. And so the book really calls to them. I see a handful of adults in my practice and I had this one older, um, active duty military, very, you know, manly man, like strong guy. And I see, adults and kids in between, and I was cleaning up some of the toys, gathering some of the art materials, and he came in and asked me, how come you always put away all the toys and the art materials? And it opened up this whole conversation. He actually shared, you know, I didn't get to have a childhood. I bounced around from home to home and my parents were, you know, into drugs. And I just, I, we didn't have money for, they didn't buy us toys. They spent it on other things. They didn't have art materials. They didn't have all these things. And it just, the light went off, light bulb went off in my head. Like. Well, yeah, why don't I just leave all the toys out? You know, I thought like an adult client is coming. I need to clean up all the toys and make my office seem a little bit more adult like, and I didn't realize how many of the adults needed to still play. They still needed to come in. And for him, he wanted to draw. He wanted to play circle has said scale and his VOC scale. He wanted to go up to the whiteboard cause he didn't do well in school. So it was healing for him in therapy session to do EMDR with more child friendly interventions, even though he was this, this adult who, you know, had present, you know, was presenting like definitely not like someone who would want to be playful and color with crayons, but it was really moving to see some of the healing work with that client.
Jessica Fowler: As you saw that, that makes so much sense to me of why you would use us with an adult client because often, I mean, not always, but often we're talking about childhood trauma when we're doing EMDR work. And it's really just. It's. It's. really turning or tuning into that part of oneself and allowing some healing in that way just by using that book, right? That's why people bring in sanitary therapy and other forms of art therapy into their practice as well. So that makes a lot of sense.
Christine Mark-Griffin: Yeah, definitely. I, you know, as a play therapist and EMDR therapist myself, there's just so, there's so much play. Um, and a lot of bibliotherapy, you know, speaking of writing the EMDR workbook for kids, not only do adults want to pick this up and do some of the worksheets. When I've given them like blank worksheets that I've gotten offline for that were created for adults, they're not colorful. They're black and white. They look very serious. You know, there's no rainbows or smiley faces or things that are more inviting for the adult. And they're like, wait a minute. Why can't I have the one that has Legos on it or a little teddy bear? Like, why do I get this boring black and white, you know, printout or worksheet? And so I'm like, well, what? Yeah. Why not? Why not have this? It's more child friendly, subscale with dinosaurs. I'm happy to let you use this, um, but I'm also doing a lot of bibliotherapy with adults. With some of their, their healing and resourcing with that, with EMDR resourcing that they didn't get this part. They should have gotten this part. They weren't cared for in this way and helping them make sense of that and grieve, have some grief and loss around the childhood they never had due to their circumstances. And yeah, I've had grown adults go to my bookshelf, my child bookshelf and like, you know, I've seen this book. I've seen it around. I see that it's popular. It was gifted to my own child when they were a baby in their baby gift basket. No one has ever read this to me. You know, the, like the classic ones, like, Guess How Much I Love You. Like no one ever told me that and helping them find like, well, maybe no one told you in childhood, but who's telling you now who's in your circle now, who's your network now and resourcing that adding some of the back and forth movement and the bilateral. But just having access to some of the child, I think childhood materials, like in children's books and toys, I think can be so healing for adults.
Jessica Fowler: Oh, definitely. Definitely. That's, that makes a lot of sense. So, tell me how this works. Do therapists tell their clients to bring this in? Do they use it throughout session? Can a parent bring it in? Um, can you buy this and say, hey, we're doing EMDR therapy. Can you use this book? Like how does that work?
Christine Mark-Griffin: Yeah. So, the way the book was designed was to be supplemental use used in therapy with children by a trained EMDR therapist. With that said, though, I have so many parents and so many therapists who are not yet trained in EMDR. Um, I call it EMDR curious. I'm curious about EMDR because again, EMDR is, can be really serious or just hard and complex to understand if you try to pick up an academic book about EMDR. And so, and even, going to the main EMDR website or looking up EMDR articles. They're all pretty academic. They're not user friendly. So, I have a lot of parents and also therapists who have not yet been trained in EMDR used it as an introduction. And I think even lower the anxiety of, oh, I can do this. I can learn this concept. Like, let me go deeper. And it sparks their curiosity to go and learn more and go to, you know, eventually. Sign their child up for EMDR therapy, um, and find a therapist near them, or if they're a therapist, like, finally go and sign up for that training so that they can get certified in it.
Jessica Fowler: So, just to be clear, right, this is, you're saying this as an EMDR curious to be used. Well, not to do EMDR on yourself or your child, right? Right. I just want to make that clear for our listeners. Um, but it's a way to learn more about it.
Christine Mark-Griffin: Yes. I discourage, uh, self EMDR or, uh, doing EMDR, being your child's therapist. I mean, parents are so therapeutic in so many ways, but you are not your child's therapist. So yes, definitely go find a therapist who's trained in EMDR. Um, and they may already know about the EMDR Workbook for Kids, but I've also had parents say, use this book with my child. And then I get therapists reaching out saying, one of my parents actually introduced me to your book and that's been an interesting way to learn about, you know, learn how people have discovered the book as their client and the parents.
Jessica Fowler: And I'll say, if a parent does do that, brings it to a therapist who their child is getting EMDR therapy for the therapist out there, you could easily pick up this book and follow along and know exactly. It's user friendly for therapists as well as for the child and as well as for the parents. So don't be like, oh, no, they brought in this book. You'll be able to know what to do.
Christine Mark-Griffin: Yeah. Um, I have had EMDR trainers, basic EMDR trainers tell me this, you just wrote the manual. You just wrote the manual for basic EMDR in a child friendly way. You basically took the basic weekend one and two manuals and condensed it to be, for a child to go through and walk through. Uh, so that would be the dream that, you know, this is something that's used in training from the get go. Um, when you get trained in EMDR, most EMDR trainings right now are still geared towards adults. And that's what inspired me to write this book and create it. Because when I left my basic EMDR training, I thought that EMDR was so cool. I went and looked online and I was searching for more child resources and set scales and just more child friendly worksheets or something, printouts, visuals, and. I didn't find that many. So, I started creating my own. And when I started creating my own, I was just drawing them. And, you know, if I had a child who liked unicorns, I would draw, you know, unicorns as they're said in VOC scale, which for those of you who are not familiar with EMDR, SUD stands for your level of stress on a scale of zero to 10, 10 is the most stress you've experienced. Um, and zero is no stress. And the VOC stands for validity of cognition. And that just, it's just a rating scale to rate how true a positive statement feels for you. I am enough, or I am safe. How true does that feel on a scale of one to seven? One is completely false and seven is all the way true. And yeah, I have kids go come in and they still create their own. They're like, I'm into Spider Man this week. So, I'm going to draw five or, you know, and with kids, you adjust the skills based on their age. So, I might do, um, a set scale, like how stressed you feel, small, medium, or big, and they might draw a small Ninja turtle, a medium Ninja Turtle and a big Ninja Turtle and they'll show me how stressed they feel about a specific problem we're working on, uh, and just making it super child friendly, but a way the child can have buy in and connect because it's something that they're already interested in.
Jessica Fowler: That's something you talk about in the book. You give examples what it could look like for someone who maybe is older, who has more understanding of what that could look like to somebody who is younger, right? Words much bigger than medium and small to give options for a therapist.
Christine Mark-Griffin: Yes. And you know, my other goal for this book, and I have a letter in the, um, beginning of the book, a letter to therapists that my hope for the book is that this was just a springboard. This is just inspiration. There are like infinite ideas of what you can do at each phase of EMDR. And if you have no ideas or you're like, scared about working with kids are beginning to learn how to integrate EMDR with kids. The workbook is a great place to start to build your confidence. Um, or if you're newly trained and you're still figuring out the protocol and all the eight phases, that's a really good learning tool to walk yourself through it. But once you get it down and you learn how to do it. It's just a starting point. It's to inspire therapists to be creative and, um, make it their own and just add some of their ideas for how they'll integrate EMDR with the kids that they're working with.
Jessica Fowler: I'm glad you just said that for new EMDR therapists, because I think that that's totally true, right? It's this really complex therapy, like I said before, and you broke it down to make it easy really easy and digestible, and I could see how that could be really beneficial to newer therapists to read and be like, oh, this is the eight phases. This is what this could look like. Right. You're giving a visual to what it can look like instead of just the practice that we do.
Christine Mark-Griffin: Absolutely. And I think the other, I think I forget the data, so there are. therapists who get trained in EMDR and then don't go on to use it because it's complex or because it's just too much. It's an overload. Um, they call it the firehose effect where it's just like, here's all this information. They just spray you with it. It's just so much to EMDR and it's really dense in that way. And it's really complex. So some people do shy away from it and they decide not to use it. Like I'm training it, but I just like, I'm not in practice with it. I, there are a lot of therapists who discover the EMDR workbook for kids and it reignites that desire to, you know, what this is doable. It's broken down into understandable language and understandable steps now. And so, I, I can do this. I can do this with kids and adults. They're working with adults.
Jessica Fowler: Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. I enjoyed this conversation. What would be the best way for our listeners to connect with you?
Christine Mark-Griffin: So, the best way to connect with me, I would say, is through our website or our social media, EMDR for Kids. It's just at EMDR for Kids on social media, we're on Facebook, and we are on Instagram. The website is emdrforkids. com and you can send us a message there. You can also check out all of our free resources. I have free downloadable worksheets. There's also training and consultation available on the website and there's free videos. We have a little YouTube channel. Again, EMDR for Kids, pretty easy to find if you just search in YouTube and you'll find a bunch of child friendly EMDR themed videos for kids by kids. So, I had kids do the voiceover, um, and we have them available in English and Spanish at this time.
Jessica Fowler: That sounds like an amazing resource, all of those. That's wonderful. so much. I really appreciate you coming out today.
Christine Mark-Griffin: Thanks again for having me. It was awesome.
Jessica Fowler: Thank you for listening to this week's episode of What Your Therapist is Reading. Make sure you head on over to the website or social media to find out about the latest giveaway. The information provided in this program is for educational and informational purposes only. And although I'm a social worker licensed in the state of New York, this program is not intended to provide mental health treatment and does not constitute a patient therapist relationship.