Trauma & EMDR Therapy in Colorado Springs | Online Across CO & FL
Make peace with the past and finally feel free.
You’ve been through some hard things, and you know they’ve had an impact - you’ve tried to move forward but most days you just feel like you’re getting in your own way.
You’re stuck in a seemingly endless cycle of anxiety and self-doubt that leaves you feeling out of control a lot of the time. Living with flashbacks, fears that feel irrational, or panic attacks has caused you to lose so much of your joy, hope, and self-worth. It’s hard to relax the way you want to - even for a moment - when you can’t quiet your mind and are so easily triggered and overwhelmed.
Maybe you’re struggling with…
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Growing up with difficult family dynamics can leave an imprint with a long-term impact. If you had an early experience in a family system with…
addiction
untreated mental health issues
extreme conflict or violence
harsh or critical parenting
narcissistic parenting
neglect or abandonment
lack of nurturing
any kind of abuse
… those experiences carry forward with you. As a child, you have limited ability to process or cope with overwhelming experiences, so it’s normal to be left dealing with them as an adult. The good news is that these experiences can be resolved, no matter how much time has passed.
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Exposure to situations that come with a high level of fear…
medical events (like a heart attack, brain tumor, surgery, cancer or other diagnosis)
military experiences (such as combat, deployment, power dynamics, sexual assault)
religious trauma (including spiritual, physical, or sexual abuse, negative messages, betrayal by a trusted leader)
chronic illness (like autoimmune issues, chronic pain)
accidents (commonly auto accidents, falls, injuries, personal injury cases)
assaults (things like experiencing or witnessing a crime, domestic assault, sexual assault)
… can overwhelm your brain’s ability to process in the moment, leaving these experiences feeling stuck and easily triggered. This happens because the nature of trauma is that it changes the way your brain processes and stores memories. Through trauma therapy and EMDR we can help your brain use its innate ability to heal itself so that these experiences become neutral memories from the past.
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If you’ve experienced a relationship that involved…
domestic violence
narcissistic abuse
addiction
a loved one with mental health issues
… those experiences likely took a tremendous toll on you and your life. Significant relationships that don’t feel safe require you to go through life in survival mode, causing you to lose touch with a sense of safety and control. Therapy can help you take back your power in your own life so that you can let go of who they expected you to be and embrace who you are.
AT THIS POINT YOU…
Realize there are patterns in your life - whether it’s in your relationships, your responses, or the way you think about things - and you want to understand them
Are ready to stop the cycle - of getting triggered, feeling easily overwhelmed, and having strong reactions - so you can feel more present and at peace
Want to come to terms with what has happened in the past - so you can close that chapter and finally move forward
Whatever the painful experience was, it’s possible to heal past hurts so they lose their power over you and your future.
EMDR & therapy for trauma can help you feel whole again.
You can reconnect to yourself, restore your self-confidence and worth, reclaim your joy and hope, and live with less anxiety. Once emotional burdens from the past are resolved, you’re free to enjoy life again, and to see the future with excitement instead of fear.
The peace you are seeking is hidden in the pain you haven’t resolved.
MY APPROACH
I know that processing trauma can feel like a really daunting thing to do –
especially if you, like so many people, have worked hard over time to forget what happened.
Even though you’re ready to be unburdened by the weight of the past, it’s still normal to feel apprehensive about what may come up if you go there, and to wonder if you’re really ready.
There’s no rush for us to go any faster than you want to - we’ll use gentle, evidence-based approaches that allow you to maintain a sense of control in the process and that honor a pace that feels safe to you. Together we’ll make a plan that is focused and intentional so that we don’t get lost in pain from the past. After doing this work for more than 25 years, I know there are ways to process trauma that don’t require you to relive what happened in order to come to terms with it.
METHODOLOGY
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
Just like our bodies are designed to heal from physical wounds, our brains are innately designed to heal from emotional wounds - however, sometimes emotional pain gets "stuck" in the face of very overwhelming life events. EMDR is an evidence-based protocol that works by activating your brain's innate ability to heal and process memories so that they feel neutral and firmly in the past. You'll remember what happened and you'll remember that it was painful, but you'll no longer feel an emotional charge in the present.
EMDR can bring resolution much more quickly than traditional talk therapy. It is often assumed that emotional pain takes a long time to heal, but repeated studies show EMDR to be effective in delivering benefits of psychotherapy that once took years to make a difference. EMDR is best known for effectively treating trauma, but it is also highly effective in soothing intense emotions, neutralizing triggers, transforming negative thoughts and beliefs, and overall leading to the resolution of anything that feels "stuck." Often EMDR is effective when it feels like nothing else has worked to relieve suffering or symptoms.
Internal Family Systems (IFS)
IFS is a gentle, compassionate approach that sees your mind as a "family" of different inner parts, each with its own feelings, thoughts, and roles. These parts are like family members—they all mean well, but sometimes they get stuck in old patterns, especially if you experienced hard things in childhood. Our goal is to understand these parts, connect them, and heal the pain they hold from the past so that you can feel more at peace and in control today.
Faith Integrative
Faith experiences are often woven into trauma experiences. Sometimes faith is a positive resource that offers great comfort and guidance. Other times faith can be connected to a negative event that caused pain and created trauma. However you’ve been impacted by your faith journey, we’ll figure out how it fits into our work together - whether you are strong in your faith, questioning your faith, or aren’t interested in faith.
What Trauma Therapy & EMDR can do for you:
Calm overwhelming emotions so you feel confident and clear-headed to respond instead of react
Change negative thought patterns and self-talk so you can stop feeling so mentally tied up with analyzing and second-guessing - and finally feel secure in yourself and your decisions
Neutralize triggers so you can stop avoiding the people, places, and situations that remind you of your past experiences - and start choosing what’s best for you
Resolve memories and feelings that are stuck - so you’re freed up from fear and the past loses its power over your present and future
Create clarity to move forward, able to confidently dismiss unnecessary anxiety, no longer consumed with worrying the past will repeat itself
Heal and become the person you were always meant to be – so you can live life on your terms.
Frequently asked questions
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The EMDR International Association (EMDRIA) recognizes EMDR therapists who have completed advanced training and supervision in the practice of EMDR through their Certification process. Completing a 50 hour Basic Training course allows therapists to practice EMDR, but to be Certified therapists must have a minimum of: 2 years of experience post-licensure; completion of at least 50 EMDR sessions with at least 25 clients; 20 hours of ongoing consultation to expand knowledge and expertise in the practice of EMDR; and 12 continuing education hours specific to EMDR annually. EMDRIA’s extensive approval process to become Certified also includes letters of recommendation from Consultants who provided supervision and professional peers familiar with the work of the therapist, ensuring that the provider delivers a high level of quality care for clients seeking EMDR.
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EMDR is a structured protocol, and it can be just a process of following the script - or it can be so much more. I weave together 25 years of mental health experience using a variety of approaches with the standard, evidence based EMDR protocol - this means that we can create a plan tailored to your unique, individual needs vs just following a protocol that may feel too rigid for you.
I believe that one of the most important aspects of processing trauma is that you feel in control of what happens, so our process will always be highly individualized to you and your needs. In general, there are 4 steps we’ll take as we partner together…
Step 1: Intake and planning sessions to focus on stabilizing, relieving current symptoms, and creating a plan for processing relevant memories or experiences
Step 2: Building up positive resources that can link with negative and traumatic memories to help neutralize them... our goal is not only to reduce the impact of what feels hard, but also to increase the power of what feels good in life
Step 3: Reprocessing sessions to resolve disturbance connected to past memories, current triggers, and future fears
Step 4: Debrief, ensure all past memories and current triggers targeted in our plan feel resolved, and develop a plan to move forward and maintain progress
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It depends on your goals and the complexity of the trauma we're processing. Single event traumas or phobias can generally be resolved within 8 to 15 sessions, or in a 2-3 day short-term intensive. Complex PTSD or childhood trauma takes longer to process, and it’s important to go at a pace that feels manageable instead of overwhelming - we can make a plan at the beginning of our work together so you know what to expect.
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It’s really common to feel unsure of what you should process, or that you can’t pinpoint specific memories - this is especially common when it comes to processing childhood experiences. It’s okay if you’re not sure where to start, I’ll walk you through how to choose memories or beliefs we can work with to meet your goals. We don’t have to process everything that’s happened in your life, we’ll typically create a timeline and pick 1-4 issues to process that are most relevant to current stressors. Because of the way EMDR targets memory networks in the brain, each event that we target impacts other memories as well, creating a broad sense of resolution.
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One of the wonderful things about EMDR is that you don’t have to do a ton of talking. The process involves following a side to side motion - it may be eye movements, taps, or sounds - while watching parts of the memory in your mind for 30-60 seconds. After each set, I’ll ask you what you notice - you don’t have to describe much to me at this point, you can just give me a blurb, or even just a comment that something changed without sharing details. This can minimize any distress connected to voicing details of the trauma.
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I have helped clients resolve the following issues, and more, using EMDR:
imposter syndrome
performance anxiety
domestic violence or abuse
narcissistic abuse
early childhood trauma
fear of abandonment or rejection
lack of confidence and insecurity
relationship stress, conflict, and trauma
medical trauma (heart attacks, brain tumors, falls, medical procedures, and more)
car accidents & driving anxiety, as well as other types of accidents
parenting issues
pregnancy loss or infertility
anxiety & phobias
religious trauma
sexual trauma