Introducing EMDR UK's new Patron Darren McGarvey with a Pre Conference 2025 Special

EMDR UK Association's new patron, Darren McGarvey, is a writer, columnist, broadcaster, social commentator, and hip-hop recording artist (Loki).

Darren grew up in Pollok on the south side of Glasgow and has lived through extreme poverty, addiction, and homelessness.

In this episode, he shares his story with Russell Hurn, detailing how he began EMDR therapy as a teenager following the sudden death of his mother. He highlights the importance of his relationship with his therapist, Marlyn, and offers his thoughts on the current discourse surrounding trauma on social media. Darren also gives us a glimpse into his conference presentation at the EMDR UK 2025 conference in Liverpool.

In 2009, he founded Volition Scotland, an organisation that was designed and run by the young people who used it. He was part of the Poverty Truth Commission that was hosted in Glasgow in the same year. McGarvey became the Violence Reduction Unit’s first ever ‘Rapper-in Residence’ in 2015 and continues to work across Scotland in some of its most challenged communities.

He was recently inducted as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, which deemed his books on social inequality to be of 'outstanding literary merit'.

His new book Trauma Industrial Complex: Oversharing in the Age of Lived Experience is available for pre order and due for release on 14th August 2025.

Tickets for his 60 minute show at the Edinburgh Fringe Show 2025 https://www.thestand.co.uk/fringe/2459/darren-mcgarvey-trauma-industrial-complex-the-live-show

11/08/25 Trauma Industrial Complex is Book of the Week on Radio 4 and you can listen again on BBC Sounds

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/series/m002gztq

In a world where disinformation about personal trauma abounds, Darren McGarvey asks if the stories we tell ourselves are liberating us - or keeping us trapped

This is a Laura Beech production for EMDR UK.

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the authors and presenters and are not endorsed by the Association.