The EMDR Future Template: Script, Steps and Clinical Decision Rules

The future template is the third prong of Shapiro's three-pronged protocol — past memories, present triggers, future situations. It is an imaginal rehearsal of a future situation the client anticipates and dreads, paired with the positive cognition and bilateral stimulation, run until the client can move through the imagined scene with an adaptive response and no residual disturbance.

It is not visualization for its own sake and it is not exposure. Structurally the future template is closest to Phase 5 installation: the client holds an image of themselves handling the situation well, holds the PC, and receives sets of BLS while the adaptive network strengthens. Where disturbance appears, the clinician drops back into short reprocessing sets before returning to installation.

Shapiro's position (2018) is that a course of EMDR is not complete until future templates have been installed for the situations the client will actually meet. Reprocessing the past removes the charge; the future template builds the template for behaviour that the client has often never had.

Install a future template when:

– The past targets for a cluster are at SUD 0–1 and the PC is at VOC 6–7. – Present triggers for that cluster have been processed and are no longer producing disturbance in vivo. – A specific, dateable or foreseeable future situation exists — the flight in three weeks, the deposition, the first date, the conversation with the parent, returning to the intersection.

Do not install a future template when past targets are still charged. Anticipatory anxiety that persists at high intensity is usually a signal that an earlier memory has not been reprocessed rather than a skills deficit — run a float-back before assuming the future is the problem.

Also pause when the client genuinely lacks the skill the template rehearses. A future template installs an adaptive *response*, not a competence the client has never had. If the client cannot actually assert a boundary, teach the skill first, then rehearse it with the template.

Three procedures get conflated. They are distinct.

Order matters: if a flash-forward (catastrophic fantasy) is present, process it as a target to SUD 0 before installing the future template. Installing over an unprocessed flash-forward produces a template that collapses in vivo.

Verbatim wording clinicians can adapt. Keep BLS slow and short (8–12 passes) unless disturbance appears, in which case switch to reprocessing-length sets.

If disturbance rises instead of the VOC, stop installing. Treat the disturbance as new material: identify what came up, and either reprocess it with standard sets or use a [cognitive interweave](/emdr-guide/cognitive-interweaves).

The movie check is the quality-control step. It is what distinguishes an installed template from a pleasant image. Do not skip it.

The template is complete when the client can run the whole film start to finish, with challenges included, with BLS, and end with VOC 6–7 and a clear body scan. Anything less means unfinished material.

What to do when the template will not install.

Two use cases, same procedure.

Recurring triggers. For a trigger the client meets weekly — a supervisor's tone, driving past the intersection, a partner raising their voice — the future template rehearses the next encounter. These are usually installed immediately after the trigger itself has been processed in the second prong, in the same session where possible.

Dateable events. For a specific upcoming event — court, a medical procedure, a flight, a wedding, contact with an estranged family member — install the template in the sessions leading up to it, and re-check it in the session immediately before. Anticipatory anxiety re-accumulates as the date approaches; a template installed six weeks out is worth re-running one week out.

In both cases document the template in the treatment plan alongside the past and present targets it belongs to, and note the in vivo outcome at Phase 8 re-evaluation. The real test of a future template is not the VOC in the room — it is what happened when the client actually met the situation.

At the next session, ask directly: did the situation occur, and what happened? Three outcomes:

– *Handled as rehearsed.* Note it, reinforce it, and move to the next cluster. Nothing further is needed. – *Handled but with residual anxiety.* Re-run the movie check with BLS on the parts that were hard. Usually one short pass finishes it. – *Did not go as rehearsed.* Treat the actual event as a new present-trigger target: assess it, reprocess it, then reinstall the template. This is common and is not a failure of the method — it usually surfaces the specific unprocessed element the imagined scene missed.

A course of EMDR closes when past targets are at SUD 0, present triggers no longer activate, and future templates have been installed and confirmed in vivo. Until that third condition is met the three-pronged protocol is incomplete, however good the SUD numbers look.

Minimum record for each template: the future situation, the PC used, the starting and closing VOC, whether the movie check ran clean with BLS, any blocks reprocessed, and the in vivo outcome at re-evaluation. Inside EMDR Assist the future template is captured as the third prong of the target sequence plan, so it appears in the structured session report alongside the past and present targets it belongs to — see EMDR session notes for the documentation format.