Meet Linda

about me.

I’m not your typical therapist. I’m real. I’m sarcastic. I love to find ways to laugh about our problems and I tend to roll my eyes a LOT. The thought of a stale, clinical therapy experience makes me feel ill. It doesn’t all have to be so serious!!! If you’re looking for something outside the box and a therapist who can dive into problems but keep the humor in the room, I might be your person.

I have a nerd-level fascination with the brain science behind why we do what we do and why we feel what we feel.  I enjoy working with clients who like to dig into problems (and by that I kinda mean “obsess”) and I really love working with people who consider themselves, or their problems, to be different than other people. (anxious-ADHD-autistic-neurotic-perfectionist types….yes, yes, yes!)

My husband and I managed to space our children out in such a way that we have 18 straight years of parenting teenagers.   (I don’t recommend this, by the way.)  By the time I was 40, I decided to go back to school, first to study chemical dependency counseling followed by an undergrad degree in psychology.  I went to graduate school where I earned a masters degree in Marriage and Family Therapy - with a specialization in Child and Adolescent Family Therapy.

The endless years of parenting teens is DIRECTLY connected to me going back to school. If you have a teen you know exactly what happened here: we were defeated, I knew it, and I was INTENT to WIN the battle. (I don’t recommend trying to win!)

I completed a rigorous grad school internship at Attachment and Trauma Specialists, specializing in treating kids with attachment disorders and other behavior issues. I have been working in social service since 2003, working in drug treatment programs, youth shelters and housing service programs as well as an adolescent residential mental health program (it was in an adolescent girls residential program that I was told repeatedly that there was no way I could be a therapist because I can’t hide what I’m thinking- it shows on my face. I’m still not quite sure how to feel about that. Gotta love teenage girls!).  

If you’re looking for a therapist who was or is a perfect person….well, that’s not me. If you’re looking for someone a little different…..schedule an appointment, let’s see if we click!

Licenses and Certifications:

Licensed Mental Health Counselor, Washington State #LH61287862

Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor, Vermont #068.0134844TELE

Licensed Mental or Behavioral Telehealth Counselor, Idaho #2161175

Certified EMDR Therapist, EMDRIA

EMDR Consultant in Training, EMDRIA

Certified Anger Management Specialist, National Anger Management Association (please note: I do not do Anger Management Assessments for court-involved situations)

Certified Crisis Intervention Specialist III, National Anger Management Association

Certified Life Coach, World Coach Institute

Certified Addiction Coach, World Coach Institute

Shift Work, Hypervigilance, and Why Your Nervous System Never Fully Clocks Out

You've been off for six hours. You should be asleep. Instead you're lying there, aware of every sound in the house, running a low-level threat assessment of your neighborhood, your family, the creak in the hallway that is definitely just the house settling but that your nervous system has flagged anyway.

This is not a sleep problem. This is a nervous system problem. And it's one of the most common — and least addressed — occupational consequences of first responder work.

What hypervigilance actually is

Hypervigilance is the nervous system operating at a sustained elevated threat level. It's not anxiety in the ordinary sense — it's not catastrophic thinking or worry about specific things. It's a baseline state of activation: scanning, assessing, ready to respond. The threat detection system running continuously even when there's nothing to detect.

In the field, this is an asset. It keeps you alive. It keeps your crew alive. The hyper-awareness that catches the thing everyone else missed, the gut sense that something is wrong before you can articulate why — these are the products of a nervous system trained to stay on.

The problem is that the nervous system doesn't have an off switch. Once it's been trained to maintain that level of vigilance, it maintains it. Off duty. At home. On vacation. In the middle of the night when nothing is happening and nothing is going to happen and you still can't sleep because your amygdala doesn't know that.

What shift work does to the nervous system

The human nervous system is designed to regulate around a consistent light-dark cycle. Sleep consolidates memory, processes emotional material, and restores the nervous system's capacity to regulate. When that cycle is disrupted — through rotating shifts, night shifts, long shifts with irregular schedules — the nervous system loses one of its primary recovery mechanisms.

For first responders who are already carrying significant cumulative exposure, this matters enormously. The processing that would normally happen during sleep — the consolidation of difficult experiences, the emotional regulation that happens in REM — is interrupted or insufficient. The material accumulates without adequate processing. And the nervous system that was already running hot runs hotter.

The specific problem of night shifts

Night shift workers have consistently higher rates of cardiovascular disease, metabolic disorders, mood disorders, and immune dysfunction than day shift workers. Their nervous systems are chronically working against their biology. For first responders on night shifts who are also carrying significant traumatic exposure, the cumulative physiological load is substantial.

The day-off paradox

Many first responders describe a counterintuitive experience: days off feel harder, not easier. The structure of the shift is gone. The clear role and purpose are absent. The nervous system that has been oriented toward mission has nothing to orient toward and doesn't know what to do with the activation it's carrying.

This can manifest as restlessness, irritability, difficulty being present, a pulling toward work even when you don't want to be there. It's not workaholism. It's a nervous system that has been trained to a specific state and doesn't know how to downregulate without the structure that state requires.

The hypervigilance-sleep-trauma cycle

Here's why this becomes a self-reinforcing problem. Hypervigilance disrupts sleep. Disrupted sleep impairs the nervous system's ability to process traumatic material. Unprocessed traumatic material maintains and intensifies hypervigilance. Which disrupts sleep further.

This cycle can run for years. Most of the interventions people try — better sleep hygiene, limiting screens, melatonin, exercise — work at the edges but don't address the core. Because the core isn't a sleep problem. It's a nervous system that has been trained into a state it can't get out of on its own.

What actually interrupts the cycle

Two things work at the level of the nervous system itself rather than just the symptoms.

The first is addressing the traumatic material that's maintaining the activation. EMDR targets the specific memories and accumulated exposure that are keeping the threat detection system engaged. When the stored material is reprocessed — when the nervous system stops treating old experiences as active threats — the baseline activation level can come down. Not all the way, not immediately, but meaningfully.

The second is somatic work — approaches that work directly with the body's activation patterns rather than through cognitive or narrative processing. This might be integrated into EMDR or complement it, depending on the individual presentation.

The goal isn't to eliminate vigilance. Your vigilance is part of what makes you good at your job and it's not something to pathologize. The goal is to give your nervous system the ability to come down when the situation actually calls for it — to have a range again, rather than just a floor.

Your nervous system learned to do this for good reasons. The work isn't about undoing that training. It's about giving your system the flexibility to know when it's actually safe to rest.

EMDR for Dispatchers — The Most Overlooked Population in First Responder Mental Health

When people talk about first responder mental health, they talk about firefighters, police officers, paramedics. The people in the field. The ones whose faces you see at the scene.

Dispatchers are almost never in that conversation. And that's a serious problem.

Because dispatchers are exposed to trauma in a way that is unique, relentless, and largely invisible — and the mental health field has been slow to recognize it, slow to study it, and slow to develop resources specifically for them.

This post is specifically for dispatchers. And for anyone who cares about one.

What dispatchers actually experience

A dispatcher does not go to the scene. This is often used — sometimes by dispatchers themselves — to minimize what they experience. They weren't there. They didn't see it.

What they did do: they heard it. In real time, without the ability to intervene, while simultaneously managing multiple channels, tracking multiple units, and making decisions that affect outcomes they will never directly witness.

They were on the line with the person who didn't make it. They gave CPR instructions to a parent whose child wasn't breathing. They stayed on the call during the mass casualty event. They heard what happened to the officer before units arrived. And then they took the next call.

The absence of visual exposure doesn't reduce the traumatic load. In some ways the auditory experience — without the visual context, without the closure of seeing the resolution, without the physical presence that at least allows for action — creates a particular kind of incomplete processing that is especially prone to getting stuck.

The specific burden of secondary traumatic stress

Dispatchers experience what researchers call secondary traumatic stress — trauma that develops from exposure to other people's traumatic experiences rather than from direct personal threat. The symptoms mirror PTSD closely: intrusive memories (often auditory rather than visual), hypervigilance, emotional numbing, sleep disruption, difficulty functioning outside of work.

Secondary traumatic stress is real trauma. It responds to the same treatments. And it tends to be significantly under-treated in dispatchers because dispatchers themselves often don't feel entitled to claim it.

"I wasn't even there." That sentence has kept a lot of dispatchers from getting help they needed.

The additional weight dispatchers carry

Outcome uncertainty

Field responders usually know what happened. They were there. Dispatchers often don't. A call ends, units clear, and the dispatcher moves on to the next call without knowing whether the person survived. That unresolved uncertainty accumulates.

Absolute responsibility with limited control

Dispatchers make consequential decisions under extreme time pressure with incomplete information, while managing multiple simultaneous channels. The responsibility is enormous. The control over outcomes is limited. That combination — high responsibility, low control — is one of the most psychologically taxing situations a person can be in.

Invisibility within the first responder community

Dispatchers are often not fully included in the first responder identity, even when they work alongside field personnel every day. The peer support resources, the critical incident debriefs, the cultural acknowledgment of what the job costs — these are less consistently available to dispatchers than to field responders. The isolation this creates adds to the burden.

Physical immobility during crisis

Field responders can act. When the adrenaline activates, there is physical action to discharge it. Dispatchers remain seated, voice controlled, managing the situation through communication alone while their nervous system is running the same threat response as if they were in the field. The physical immobility during activation is a specific stressor that has real physiological consequences over time.

Why EMDR works particularly well for dispatchers

EMDR doesn't require you to recreate the visual scene because for dispatchers, the traumatic material is often auditory. The protocol can target sounds, voices, the specific moment of a call that has stayed with you — without requiring you to construct a visual memory you don't have.

It also works well for the diffuse, cumulative nature of dispatcher trauma. A career of thousands of calls, the ones that stayed, the outcomes that were never resolved — these can be systematically addressed in a way that indefinite talk therapy typically can't.

We work with dispatchers — and have specialized training to do EMDR with dispatchers. We understand what the job involves. And we don't ask you to justify why it affected you.

The Hidden Cost of Being the One Who Holds It Together

There's a version of this story that gets told a lot: the first responder who falls apart. The breakdown, the crisis, the dramatic moment where everything comes undone.

That happens. But it's not the most common story.

The more common story is quieter and longer. It's the first responder who holds it together for fifteen years, twenty years, a whole career — who does the job well, who shows up — and who pays a price for that that shows up somewhere else. In their marriage. In their kids. In their body. In the slow erosion of things they used to enjoy and no longer can.

This is the hidden cost. And it's hidden precisely because the person carrying it is so good at not showing it.

What holding it together actually requires

The emotional labor of first responder work is invisible because it's done so well. Every shift involves a continuous process of managing your own responses — suppressing fear, containing grief, staying functional while witnessing things that would destabilize most people entirely.

This isn't a weakness. It's a skill. A highly developed, deeply trained skill that the job demands and that you've perfected over years.

But the suppression doesn't disappear the material. It stores it. And the nervous system that is trained to hold everything in check on the job doesn't always know how to release that training when the shift ends.

Where the cost shows up

In relationships

Partners and family members describe a specific experience: the person who shows up to family life emotionally elsewhere. Present physically but absent in some essential way. Difficulty engaging with minor domestic concerns because they feel trivial against the backdrop of what happens at work. An impatience with other people's problems. A flatness where warmth used to be.

This isn't indifference. It's a nervous system that has been calibrated to real emergencies and struggles to modulate down to the frequency of ordinary life. The gap between what happens on the job and what happens at home becomes harder and harder to bridge.

In the relationship with your own children

This one is particularly painful. The hypervigilance that makes you good at your job — the constant threat assessment, the awareness of everything that could go wrong — doesn't turn off at home. It can manifest as overprotectiveness, as difficulty letting children take normal risks, as an anxiety about their safety that feels constant and disproportionate.

Or it goes the other direction: a difficulty being emotionally present with your children because emotional presence requires the kind of openness that the job has trained you to close down.

In your body

Chronic pain. Sleep that never quite restores. A low-grade exhaustion that doesn't respond to rest. Gastrointestinal problems. Cardiovascular strain. The body keeps the score of twenty years of chronic activation, and eventually the bill comes due.

Many first responders have had these symptoms evaluated medically without resolution, because the source isn't structural. It's neurological. The nervous system has been in a state of chronic stress for so long that the physical symptoms are an expression of that, not an independent condition.

In what you've stopped feeling

The things that used to give pleasure and no longer do. The hobbies abandoned. The social connections that feel like too much effort. The gradual narrowing of life to work and recovery from work, with less and less in between.

This is often the last thing to be named because it happens so gradually. It doesn't feel like a symptom. It feels like just how things are now. Like you've changed. And in a way you have — but not in a way that's permanent or irreversible.

What you can actually do about it

The cost of holding it together doesn't have to be permanent. The nervous system can recalibrate. The emotional flatness can lift. The relationship damage can be repaired, often more than people expect.

But it requires addressing the underlying material — not just the symptoms. Managing stress better, exercising more, sleeping differently: these things have value, but they don't process what's been accumulated. They help you carry the weight more efficiently. They don't put it down.

EMDR addresses the accumulated material directly. It's not a process of talking about everything you've seen — it's a protocol that works with the nervous system to reprocess the stored charge of years of exposure. For first responders who have been holding it together for a long time, the shift that comes from actually putting down the weight rather than just managing it better can be profound.

You've been holding it together for a long time. You're allowed to put some of it down.

Why First Responders Resist Therapy — And What Actually Works Instead

If you're a first responder reading this, there's a decent chance you almost didn't click on it.

Therapy has a reputation problem in first responder culture. It's associated with weakness, with oversharing, with sitting in a room talking about your feelings to someone who has no idea what your job actually involves. It's something other people need. People who can't handle it.

We're not going to tell you that reputation is entirely unfair. Because a lot of the therapy that first responders have been sent to — through EAP programs, through mandatory referrals after critical incidents, through well-meaning HR departments — has been exactly that. Generic. Ill-fitting. Delivered by clinicians who don't understand the culture and apply standard therapeutic approaches to a population for whom standard doesn't work.

The resistance isn't irrational. It's based on experience. What we want to do is explain what's different about the approach that actually works — and why it's different.

Why standard therapy often doesn't work for first responders

It asks for the wrong kind of vulnerability

Traditional talk therapy asks you to sit with uncomfortable emotions, name them, explore where they come from, talk about your childhood, process feelings out loud. For someone whose professional survival has depended on emotional control and forward momentum, this feels not just uncomfortable but actively wrong. Like being asked to malfunction on purpose.

The skills that make you good at your job — composure under pressure, rapid problem-solving, compartmentalization, keeping it together when everyone else is falling apart — are the exact skills that traditional therapy asks you to set aside. No wonder it feels like a bad fit.

The clinician doesn't understand the culture

There's a specific kind of frustration that comes from trying to explain your job to someone who has never been near it. The gallows humor. The bond with your crew. The way you have to check out emotionally on certain calls just to function. The culture of not showing weakness, and why it exists, and what it actually costs.

A clinician who treats this as pathology — who tries to talk you out of the coping mechanisms that have kept you functional — isn't going to get very far. And they shouldn't.

It feels passive and slow

First responders are action-oriented. They solve problems. They make decisions in seconds. Spending fifty minutes exploring how something made you feel, then doing it again next week, without a clear sense of where it's going or when it will be done — that's not a format that makes sense to a population trained for efficiency and outcomes.

What actually works

EMDR — because it doesn't require you to talk everything through

EMDR doesn't ask you to narrate your trauma. You hold the material in your own mind. The therapist doesn't need to know every detail. The processing happens internally, guided by bilateral stimulation — not by extended emotional disclosure.

For first responders, this is often the first therapeutic approach that makes intuitive sense. You're not being asked to perform vulnerability. You're being asked to notice what comes up while a structured protocol does its work. That's a task. That's something you can engage with.

A therapist who understands the culture

This matters more than almost anything else. A clinician who respects the compartmentalization instead of trying to dismantle it. Who understands why the humor exists. Who doesn't pathologize the coping mechanisms that kept you functional for twenty years. Who can work with the culture rather than against it.

Structured, goal-directed treatment

EMDR is not open-ended. There's a protocol. There are specific targets. There's a measurable sense of whether processing is moving. Sessions have a beginning, middle, and end. This is a format that works for people who are used to operating with clear objectives.

You don't have to talk about everything. You don't have to feel it out loud. You just have to show up. We'll work with what you bring.

What Cumulative Trauma Looks Like in First Responders — And Why It’s Different From PTSD

Most conversations about first responder mental health focus on PTSD. The critical incident. The one call that broke through. The moment that changed everything.

That's real. But it's not the whole story — and for many first responders, it's not even the primary story.

The more common experience is something different: a slow accumulation. Hundreds of calls. Thousands of hours. A career's worth of exposure to suffering, death, violence, and human beings in their worst moments. Nothing catastrophic on any given day. But the weight doesn't leave between shifts. And over years, it builds into something that can be just as debilitating as a single traumatic event — and much harder to recognize.

This is cumulative trauma. And understanding how it's different from classic PTSD matters for how it gets treated.

What PTSD looks like — and what cumulative trauma doesn't

Classic PTSD follows a recognizable pattern: a specific traumatic event, followed by intrusive memories, avoidance, hyperarousal, and negative changes in mood and cognition. The person can usually identify what happened. There's a before and an after.

Cumulative trauma is less clean. There's often no single event to point to. The person may not be able to tell you when things changed, only that they did. The symptoms are real but diffuse — and because there's no obvious precipitating incident, the person often doesn't believe they have trauma at all.

"Nothing that bad happened to me. I've seen worse. Other people have it harder."

That sentence — or some version of it — is one of the most common things we hear from first responders who are struggling. The comparison to worse cases is almost universal. And it keeps people from getting help for years.

What cumulative trauma actually looks like

The presentation varies, but certain patterns are common across first responder populations:

Emotional numbing that spreads

It often starts as compartmentalization — a necessary and adaptive skill in the field. You deal with the call, you move on, you don't bring it home. But over time, the compartment gets so full that the lid starts leaking. And the numbing that was supposed to be targeted starts affecting everything: relationships, enjoyment, the ability to feel much of anything positive.

Anger that doesn't match the trigger

Irritability, short fuses, disproportionate reactions to minor frustrations. The person knows their reaction doesn't fit the situation. They often feel ashamed of it. They don't connect it to a career's worth of exposure because there's no obvious line between the exposure and the reaction — just a nervous system running at a threat level that stopped matching reality sometime in the last decade.

Cynicism that hardens into something darker

Healthy cynicism in first responder culture is functional — it's a buffer. But cumulative trauma can turn it into something more pervasive: a generalized expectation that things will go wrong, that people can't be trusted, that nothing matters. This is different from professional skepticism. It starts to color everything.

Physical symptoms without a clear cause

Sleep disruption is almost universal. Chronic pain, gastrointestinal problems, fatigue that doesn't resolve with rest. The body has been in a state of chronic activation for years, and eventually that shows up somatically. Many first responders have had these symptoms investigated medically without resolution because the source isn't structural — it's neurological.

Difficulty transitioning off duty

The inability to decompress after a shift. Still scanning for threats in the grocery store. Sitting with your back to the wall. Difficulty being present with family because part of you is always on the job. The on-duty nervous system state that won't turn off.

Why it's harder to treat than single-incident PTSD

EMDR and other trauma therapies are highly effective for single-incident PTSD because there's a specific target: the memory of the event. The protocol can address it directly, reprocess it, and the symptom picture often resolves significantly.

Cumulative trauma doesn't have one target. It has hundreds, or thousands. The treatment approach has to account for that — working through the layers, identifying the memories that carry the most charge, addressing the negative beliefs that have built up over years of accumulated exposure.

This takes longer. It requires a therapist who understands the culture and the specific way cumulative trauma presents in this population. And it requires the client to accept that there isn't one thing to fix — there's a pattern to address. That's a harder sell to someone who is used to solving problems directly and efficiently.

But it is addressable. Cumulative trauma responds to treatment. The nervous system can recalibrate. The weight can lift. We've seen it happen.

You don't have to have had the worst call of your career to deserve support. If the weight is there, that's enough.

When the Body Holds the Story: Trauma, Neurology, and Why Both Matter

By Joanna Bugden, Supervised Graduate Therapist, NWMHA

There’s a group of people who often fall through the cracks of mental health care: those navigating trauma at the same time as chronic illness, medical trauma, or neurological conditions.

This can look like someone recovering from a traumatic brain injury while also processing the emotional impact of the accident, or someone living with a seizure disorder—whether related to epilepsy, other neurological conditions, or stress-related experiences such as functional neurological symptoms. It may also include healthcare workers or others in high-demand roles whose bodies begin responding in ways that don’t always have a clear medical explanation.

In other cases, it may be family members or loved ones supporting someone through conditions like Alzheimer’s, ALS, or dementia, navigating the emotional weight and ongoing changes that come with those experiences. For others, it may mean living with chronic illness and the loneliness that can come with it or coping with a physical injury sustained in high-risk professions such as first responders or veterans.

Across all of these experiences, there is often an important connection between what someone has been through and how it is held in the body. Experiences don’t just live in our thoughts—they’re also carried in the body and nervous system. When both are given space to be understood and supported, it can open the door to meaningful change.

Trauma affects the brain and nervous system— and why that matters

Trauma doesn’t just affect how we feel—it can also shape how the brain and nervous system respond to stress, memory, and a sense of safety. Over time, experiences can become held not only in our thoughts, but in the body and in the patterns the nervous system develops.

Because of this, responses to trauma and stress don’t always show up in clear or predictable ways. They can take different forms for different people, sometimes affecting both emotional and physical experiences in ways that aren’t always easy to recognize.

The nervous system is constantly taking in information about safety and threat, adjusting in response to both past experiences and what someone may currently be going through. When experiences feel overwhelming—whether ongoing or from the past—these patterns can continue, influencing how the body responds. As a result, certain reactions may feel automatic or difficult to control—not because something is “wrong,” but because the body has adapted in a way that is trying to protect.

Medical trauma is real and underrecognized

Medical trauma can take many forms and can be just as impactful as other difficult experiences. It may come from undergoing or having had invasive or complex medical procedures, living with a chronic illness or navigating the process of healing from one, managing neurological conditions, or recovering from injuries such as traumatic brain injury.

It’s often not only the physical experience itself, but everything that comes with it—the uncertainty of trusting the body again, a sense of loss of control, ongoing medical experiences, and the emotional impact that can follow, or simply feeling alone in it, which can feel deeply isolating. For others, it may be connected to high-risk professions, such as first responders or veterans, where both physical injury and ongoing stress can play a role in recovery.

Some of these experiences can show up in ways that are hard to ignore—like feeling anxious before medical appointments, avoiding care, or having difficult or traumatic memories of past or ongoing medical experiences come up unexpectedly.

In trauma-informed care, these responses are understood not as something being “wrong,” but as the nervous system trying to protect. Therapy can help create space to process these experiences in a way that feels safer and more manageable over time, and to begin making sense of them.

Approaches such as EMDR can be especially helpful in this area. EMDR works by helping the brain process and integrate distressing experiences, so they feel less overwhelming and more manageable over time.

When these experiences are handled with care and understanding, it can help people feel less alone in what they’re going through and begin to reconnect with both their body and their sense of safety.

Somatic presentations — when the body speaks what the mind hasn't processed

Sometimes, what someone has been through doesn’t just stay in their thoughts—it can also show up in the body. This might look like ongoing pain, fatigue, or physical symptoms such as unexplained gastrointestinal issues, even when medical care has been sought and no clear explanation has been found.

This doesn’t make those experiences any less real. In many cases, it reflects how closely the body and nervous system are connected to our experiences, especially when something has been overwhelming or difficult to process.

Approaching these symptoms with curiosity and care, rather than dismissal, can be an important part of helping someone better understand what their body may be holding. In a counseling setting, this often means working with the nervous system in ways that support greater awareness, regulation, and a sense of safety over time, while also creating space to process experiences and gently shift patterns that may no longer feel helpful

If you're navigating trauma alongside a medical or neurological condition and haven't found a therapist who can hold both — that's exactly the kind of work I'm trained to do.

More about Joanna here!

Meet Joanna: On Healing, Whole People, and Why Therapy Found Her

By Joanna Bugden, Supervised Graduate Therapist, NWMHA

I didn’t take a traditional path into counseling. Before starting my training, I spent years working in the music industry — managing music labels, coordinating tours and live events, creating music myself, and working with artists across the USA and Europe. It was fast-paced, creative work that I really enjoyed, but what stayed with me most was something else—how much people carry beneath the surface, and how rarely they have a space to talk about it or feel understood.

Over time, I realized I wanted to make a different kind of impact in people’s lives. I had often found myself emotionally supporting the artists I worked with and the people around me, and alongside my own lived experiences, I felt increasingly drawn toward counseling. I eventually returned to school — first at Washington State University for Clinical Psychology, and now at the University of Western States for Clinical Mental Health Counseling. Through my studies, I found myself drawn to questions I had been asking for a long time: how trauma affects people differently, how the body and brain are involved in that process, and what it actually means to process and move through those experiences, rather than just get by.

What I bring to this work

I grew up surrounded by people in healthcare, with family members practicing everything from Western medicine to integrative and holistic care, including acupuncture. That early exposure shaped how I think about healing and the connection between the mind and body—as something that needs to address the whole person, not just a diagnosis or set of symptoms.

I’m particularly drawn to clients navigating trauma alongside a medical condition, chronic illness, or past medical experiences—including different types of neurological conditions—as well as those experiencing the chronic stress of high-demand professions such as first responders, healthcare workers, and veterans. While these are areas of particular interest, I also work with a wide range of trauma and mental health concerns. I also value a multicultural perspective on health and healing and aim to approach this work with cultural awareness and respect for each client’s unique background.

My approach

I take an integrative, humanistic approach to counseling, drawing from person-centered, trauma-informed, and somatic perspectives, including utilizing EMDR in my work. I don’t believe there’s a one-size-fits-all approach to therapy. My goal is to create a space where clients feel seen and supported as whole people—not just as a diagnosis or presenting problem, but as individuals—and where we can work together to find what is most helpful for them.

A little more about me

Outside of the office, I’m a devoted amateur baker and self-proclaimed foodie, with my own micro-bakery that has been catering events and feeding friends with my sweet creations. I love to travel and have spent many years living in Europe, and I really enjoy discovering new cultures and learning about them.

I also find great joy in spending time in nature with my husband and connecting to music and the arts. I strongly value staying connected to my community through giving back—I have volunteered with PAWS as a pet foster, and regularly donate baked goods to our local homeless shelters, and the “Seattle Community Fridge” programs.

A quote that I hold close and try to live by is from Hippocrates:
“Healing is a matter of time, but it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity.”

You can find more about Joanna here!

"I Tried EMDR and It Didn't Work" — What Might Have Actually Happened

By Northwest Mental Health Alliance

We hear this regularly. Someone comes in, mentions they tried EMDR before, and says it didn't work. Sometimes they say it made things worse. Sometimes they just say nothing seemed to happen.

Before we take that at face value, we ask a few questions. And more often than not, what they describe doesn't sound like EMDR.

What people describe

The accounts vary, but certain patterns come up repeatedly.

Someone who spent sessions with their therapist doing eye movements for long stretches — twenty minutes at a time — without pausing, without the therapist checking in, without any sense of where the session was going. They left feeling disoriented and didn't notice any lasting change.

Someone who was moved into trauma processing in the second or third session, before any groundwork had been laid. They left feeling flooded and raw. Subsequent sessions were hard to attend. Things felt stirred up rather than resolved.

Someone whose sessions consistently ran over time or ended abruptly, with no real closure. They'd leave carrying whatever had come up in session — sometimes for days.

Someone whose therapist described themselves as EMDR trained but seemed to be using the bilateral stimulation as an add-on to regular talk therapy, rather than following a structured protocol.

If any of these descriptions sound familiar, it's worth considering that what you experienced may not have been complete EMDR. Because complete EMDR, delivered correctly, shouldn't feel like this.

What EMDR is actually supposed to feel like

Real EMDR is hard work. It asks you to hold difficult memories in mind and trust a process that can feel strange and nonlinear. Some activation between sessions is normal — your brain is continuing to process material after the session ends.

But there's a difference between hard work that moves somewhere and hard work that leaves you worse off.

Properly delivered EMDR should feel like: a session with a clear beginning, middle, and end. Processing that has direction, even when it feels circuitous. A sense that you are being tracked and guided — not left alone with difficult material. A clear closure at the end of every session so you can leave and function. And over time, a palpable shift in how the targeted material feels — not just that you've talked about it, but that your relationship to it has actually changed.

Why incomplete EMDR is so common

EMDR basic training is a two-day course. The therapist learns the protocol in theory, practices it briefly with other trainees, and is then credentialed to offer it to clients. Most therapists who complete basic training never pursue the consultation hours required for EMDRIA certification — the process that would have an experienced clinician actually look at their work and catch errors.

The result is a significant number of practitioners using the bilateral stimulation component of EMDR without the full protocol that surrounds it. They're not being dishonest. They believe they're doing EMDR. They just weren't trained deeply enough to know the difference between what they're doing and what EMDR fully requires.

What this means for you

If you've had a negative or unsuccessful experience with EMDR, we want to offer you a few things.

First: it wasn't your fault. If the protocol wasn't followed correctly, the outcome isn't a reflection of your readiness to heal or your capacity to benefit from treatment.

Second: EMDR itself isn't the problem. The evidence base for EMDR is substantial. When delivered correctly, by a well-trained and supervised clinician, it is one of the most effective treatments available for trauma. An incomplete or incorrect version is not representative of what the approach can do.

Third: it may be worth trying again. We understand the hesitation — why go back to something that hurt you or didn't help? Because this time, you'd know what to look for. And you'd know what to ask.

What we do differently

At NWMHA, EMDR is our specialty. Every clinician here practices under ongoing supervision and consultation. Our clinical director, Kevin St-Jacques, is an EMDRIA-approved consultant — which means he has met the field's highest standard for EMDR expertise. Interns are supervised closely. Cases are reviewed regularly. No one is practicing in isolation.

We follow the full eight-phase protocol. Every time. Preparation before processing. Resourcing before touching trauma material. Closure at the end of every session. Reevaluation at the start of the next.

We can't promise any particular outcome — no ethical clinician can. But we can promise that what you receive here will be EMDR, done correctly, by clinicians who take the protocol seriously.

If you've been burned before and you're willing to try again — we'd be honored to talk to you. Your experience matters to us, and we'll take it seriously from the very first conversation.

Apply for an intake — we respond within 3 business days. If you've had a difficult experience with EMDR before, please mention it in your application so we can approach things thoughtfully. →

The 8 Phases of EMDR — And Why Skipping Any of Them Is a Problem

By Northwest Mental Health Alliance

EMDR is an eight-phase protocol. This structure isn't arbitrary — each phase serves a specific clinical purpose, and the sequence matters. Understanding what the phases are, and what each one does, helps you recognize whether you're receiving EMDR correctly.

We're going to walk through all eight. We're also going to be direct about which phases get skipped most often and what happens when they do.

Phase 1: History-taking and treatment planning

Before any EMDR processing begins, your therapist needs to understand your full clinical picture. This means gathering a thorough history — not just the presenting problem, but your broader life history, current functioning, and any factors that might affect how you respond to trauma processing.

This phase also involves identifying specific target memories: the experiences that will be addressed in treatment and the order in which they'll be approached. EMDR has a specific protocol for sequencing targets that isn't intuitive and isn't optional.

Therapists who skip or rush this phase often do so because it feels slow — it's not the exciting part of EMDR. But it's foundational. Without it, treatment lacks direction and targets may be addressed in an order that activates material the client isn't ready for.

Phase 2: Preparation

Before touching any trauma material, clients need to be prepared. This means psychoeducation about how EMDR works, what to expect during processing, and — critically — the development of internal resources.

Resources are mental anchors: a safe or calm place the client can access internally, a sense of a supportive presence, a felt sense of stability. These resources aren't decoration. During active trauma processing, if things become overwhelming, these resources are what allows the client to regulate and continue.

Skipping preparation and jumping directly into trauma processing is one of the most common and consequential errors in EMDR practice. It removes the safety net. Clients who haven't developed resources can become flooded during processing with no way to stabilize.

Phase 3: Assessment

Before processing a specific memory, the therapist identifies the target precisely — the image, the negative belief associated with it, the desired positive belief, the emotions present, and where they're felt in the body. Baseline measurements are taken.

This isn't paperwork. It's calibration. It establishes exactly what's being targeted and how activated it currently is, so the therapist can track movement during processing.

Phase 4: Desensitization

This is what most people picture when they think of EMDR — the bilateral stimulation phase where active trauma processing occurs. The therapist guides sets of bilateral stimulation while the client holds the target memory in mind, then pauses to check in about what emerged.

The pauses are not optional. Each set of bilateral stimulation is followed by a brief stop where the therapist tracks what's happening and adjusts. Continuous bilateral stimulation for long stretches without checking in is incorrect protocol and can leave clients overwhelmed and unguided.

Phase 5: Installation

Once the emotional charge of the target memory has decreased, the therapist works to strengthen the positive belief the client identified in phase three. This installs the new adaptive meaning — not just "the trauma feels less intense" but "I now genuinely believe something different about myself in relation to it."

Phase 6: Body scan

The client scans through their body while holding the target memory and the positive belief, noticing any remaining tension or discomfort. If physical sensations remain, they are targeted with additional processing until the body is clear.

This phase recognizes that trauma is stored somatically as well as cognitively. Completing processing only at the cognitive level without checking the body misses half the work.

Phase 7: Closure

Every session must end with closure — regardless of whether processing is complete. If the target memory has been fully processed, closure involves containment and grounding. If processing is incomplete, the therapist uses specific techniques to help the client put unprocessed material in a container so they can function safely until the next session.

A session that ends without closure leaves clients with open trauma material and no container for it. This is one of the most harmful errors in EMDR practice. Clients describe leaving sessions feeling destabilized, unable to function, or worse than before they arrived. This is not what EMDR is supposed to produce.

Phase 8: Reevaluation

At the beginning of the next session, the therapist checks in on the previous target. Was the processing complete? Did anything shift between sessions? Are there new aspects that emerged? This ensures treatment is actually moving and allows the plan to be adjusted based on what's happening.

All eight phases. Every time. That's the protocol. That's what makes EMDR safe and effective — not just the bilateral stimulation.

If what you've experienced in EMDR didn't include all of these phases — if sessions jumped quickly into processing, if they ended abruptly, if you never developed resources before touching trauma material — what you received wasn't the complete protocol.

If you want EMDR done correctly, apply for an intake at NWMHA. We respond within 3 business days. →

What EMDR Supervision Actually Looks Like — And Why It Makes Your Care Better

By Kevin St Jacques, PsyD, LMHC — Clinical Director, NWMHA

When people hear that they'll be working with a supervised intern, one of two things usually happens. Either they're relieved because of the price, or they're quietly worried about what supervision actually means for the quality of care they'll receive.

I want to address that worry directly. Because the supervision model at NWMHA isn't a compromise on quality. In some ways, it's a higher standard than what most private practice clients receive.

What supervision looks like in a typical private practice

In a standard private practice setting, a licensed therapist sees clients independently. They make clinical decisions alone. They write notes alone. If a case is complicated or something unusual happens, they might consult informally with a colleague — or they might not. There is no structural requirement for ongoing oversight of their clinical work once licensure is obtained.

This is normal. It's how most therapy works. But it's worth being honest about: once a therapist is licensed, the systems designed to catch clinical errors are largely gone.

What supervision looks like at NWMHA

At NWMHA, every intern's clinical work is reviewed regularly in formal supervision with a licensed, experienced clinician. This isn't a formality. It's a working clinical conversation about each case — what's happening, what the treatment plan is, whether the approach is working, and what to adjust if it isn't.

Before an intern works with a client on trauma material in EMDR, the case has been discussed. The targets have been reviewed. The treatment plan has been examined by someone with years of clinical experience. The intern is not making these decisions alone.

When something unexpected comes up in a session — and in trauma work, things come up — there is an experienced clinician available to consult with. Not eventually. Immediately.

Two sets of eyes on your case

Here's what this means practically for clients working with one of our interns: you have two clinicians invested in your care. The intern who is in the room with you, who is building a relationship with you and learning your history and showing up consistently. And the supervisor who is reviewing that work, catching anything that needs to be caught, and ensuring the clinical decisions being made are sound.

That's not a consolation prize. In complex trauma work, that's an advantage. Two clinicians thinking about a case together will reliably catch things that one clinician thinking alone will miss.

What I look for in supervision

When I supervise an intern's EMDR cases, I'm looking at several things. Whether the preparation phase was thorough enough before trauma processing began. Whether the targets being addressed are sequenced correctly. Whether closure is being done at the end of every session. Whether the intern is tracking the client's window of tolerance and adjusting accordingly.

I'm also listening for things that aren't in the notes — the intern's read on the client's emotional state, what they noticed that didn't make it into writing, what felt uncertain to them. That uncertainty is information. A supervisor who creates space for interns to voice what they don't know catches problems before they become patterns.

Why this model matters for EMDR specifically

EMDR requires more clinical judgment than many other therapy approaches. It's not simply a technique — it's a structured protocol with a specific sequence for good reasons, and the reasons matter. Moving too fast through preparation can leave a client without the internal resources they need to process safely. Skipping closure leaves trauma material open and uncontained. Targeting memories in the wrong order can activate material the client isn't ready to work with.

A well-supervised intern learns to make these judgments carefully, with the safety net of an experienced clinician reviewing their work. A licensed therapist practicing without oversight can develop blind spots that no one ever catches.

We built this model because we believe oversight should be structural, not occasional. And because the clients who trust us with their trauma deserve clinical care that is held to a standard someone is actually watching.

Supervision isn't about having less experienced clinicians. It's about building in the oversight that makes good care consistent.

Interested in working with an NWMHA intern? Apply for an intake — sliding scale from $35. We respond within 3 business days. →

Why I Became an EMDR Consultant — And What I Wish Every Therapist Was Trained to Do

By Linda Smith, MA, LMHC — , Directory of Operations, NWMHA

I didn't set out to become an EMDR consultant. I set out to get better at EMDR.

When I completed my basic training, I thought I understood the protocol. I had the manual. I had the theory. I had practiced with other trainees. I started seeing clients with EMDR and, by most measures, it seemed to be working.

Then I started consultation. And I realized how much I hadn't known.

What consultation revealed

My first consultation sessions were humbling in the best possible way. Presenting a case to an approved consultant and walking through what I'd done — describing my clinical decisions in real time, out loud, to someone who knew the protocol deeply — exposed gaps I hadn't been aware of.

I was moving too fast through the preparation phase. I was making assumptions about a client's window of tolerance that weren't backed by enough assessment. In some cases I was targeting memories in an order that made clinical sense to me but wasn't actually following the treatment plan protocol. Small things that, accumulated across sessions, meant my clients weren't getting the full benefit of what EMDR can offer.

None of this was catastrophic. But it was wrong. And I wouldn't have found it without someone looking at my work.

What I started seeing in consultation with other therapists

As I progress toward becoming an approved consultant myself, I began providing consultation to therapists working toward EMDRIA certification. What I heard in those sessions confirmed what I'd been seeing in a different form — through clients who came to our practice after EMDR elsewhere.

Therapists running bilateral stimulation continuously, for long sets, without pausing to process what emerged. Therapists who skipped resourcing because clients seemed stable. Therapists who ended sessions without closure because time ran out. Therapists who were applying the bilateral stimulation component of EMDR to trauma without the protocol that makes it safe — and not realizing that what they were doing wasn't complete treatment.

These weren't negligent clinicians. Most of them were thoughtful, caring therapists who genuinely wanted to help their clients. They had simply received a training that gave them the technique without the clinical judgment to deploy it correctly. And without consultation, there had been no opportunity to discover the gap.

Why the field has a problem

EMDR basic training is 5-6 days. Twenty hours of consultation are required for certification — but certification is optional. There is no mechanism that prevents a therapist from completing a training and practicing EMDR indefinitely without any further oversight or development.

For most therapy approaches, this might be an acceptable risk. EMDR is different. It's a structured protocol designed to access and reprocess traumatic material. Done correctly, it can produce meaningful change faster than almost any other approach. Done incorrectly — without proper preparation, without the correct sequencing, without closure — it can leave clients flooded, destabilized, and more reluctant to seek help in the future.

The gap between trained and competent is not trivial. And the field's current structure doesn't do enough to close it.

Why I pursued approval and what it required

Becoming an EMDRIA-approved consultant requires meeting standards that go significantly beyond basic certification. It requires a depth of clinical experience, a track record of consulting with other therapists, and a demonstrated understanding of the protocol sophisticated enough to identify errors in someone else's work.

I pursued it because I believed that the way to address the problem I was seeing wasn't to complain about it — it was to build something better. The training center at NWMHA exists because Kevin and I decided we wanted to train therapists the way we wish we had been trained: with intensive supervision, with ongoing consultation built into the model, and with a standard that asks not just "did you complete the protocol" but "did your client actually move."

If you're a therapist working toward EMDRIA certification and looking for consultation that takes your clinical development seriously — that's exactly what I do.

And if you're a client who has had EMDR before and it didn't feel right — I'd like you to know that what you experienced may not have been the full protocol. You deserve the real thing.

For consultation inquiries or new client intakes, apply at the link below. We respond within 3 business days. →

The Difference Between "EMDR Trained" and "EMDR Competent"

By Northwest Mental Health Alliance

When you search for an EMDR therapist, almost every therapist profile says the same thing: "EMDR trained." It's listed alongside CBT, DBT, mindfulness, and half a dozen other approaches as a service they offer.

What that phrase tells you is that a therapist completed a basic training at some point. What it doesn't tell you — and what actually matters — is what happened after that training.

What basic EMDR training involves

The standard EMDR basic training approved by EMDRIA — the Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing International Association — is a 5-6 day course, including didactic training, demonstrations, and practice with other trainees.

To be fair, this training is not nothing. It covers the protocol, the theory, the phases. Trainees practice bilateral stimulation with each other. They leave with a working understanding of what EMDR is supposed to look like.

But it is not enough to make someone competent in a complex trauma treatment protocol. And the field knows this — which is why EMDRIA has a certification process that requires significantly more.

What EMDRIA certification actually requires

To become EMDRIA certified, a therapist must complete the following beyond basic training:

• A minimum of fifty EMDR sessions with actual clients

• Twenty hours of consultation with an EMDRIA-approved consultant

• Continuing education in EMDR

• An active license in good standing

That consultation requirement is the most important piece. Twenty hours with an approved consultant means twenty hours of having your clinical work examined by someone who can identify gaps, correct errors, and push you toward genuine competence. It means someone has actually looked at how you practice.

Most therapists who complete basic training never pursue certification. There is no requirement to. No enforcement. No follow-up. The training happens and then the therapist goes back to their practice and uses EMDR — or something they call EMDR — indefinitely.

What competence actually looks like

An EMDR-competent therapist has done more than attend a training. They have:

• Delivered EMDR to a range of clients with different presentations and levels of complexity

• Worked through stuck cases in consultation — learning what to do when the standard protocol isn't moving the way it should

• Developed clinical judgment about when to proceed with processing and when to slow down and stabilize

• Learned how to adapt the protocol for clients who are highly activated, dissociative, or have complex trauma histories

• Made mistakes and had those mistakes examined and corrected in a supervised setting

That last one is significant. Every therapist makes clinical errors, especially early in their EMDR practice. The difference between a competent EMDR therapist and an undertrained one isn't that one never makes errors — it's that one has had those errors caught and corrected before they become patterns.

What this means at NWMHA

At NWMHA, we have built a model where consultation and supervision are not optional extras — they are built into the practice. Our supervised graduate therapists work under licensed clinicians who review their cases regularly. Our licensed therapists have completed significant post-training consultation. Kevin St-Jacques and Linda Smith are both EMDRIA-approved consultants in training, which means they have met the field's standard for clinical expertise and are qualified to help certify other therapists.

When we say we specialize in EMDR, we mean that everyone practicing here has gone significantly beyond the basic training. We mean that clinical oversight is ongoing, not historical. We mean that the standard we hold ourselves to is what EMDR is supposed to look like — not what a two-day training makes possible.

"EMDR trained" is a starting point. Ask what came after.

Interested in working with an EMDR-specialized practice? Apply for an intake — we respond within 3 business days. →

What Bad EMDR Looks Like — And How to Know the Difference

By Northwest Mental Health Alliance

We're going to say something most therapy practices won't: not all EMDR is good EMDR. Some of it is done incorrectly. Some of it is incomplete. And some of it, delivered without the proper protocol and preparation, can make things worse rather than better.

We're not saying this to alarm you or to disparage other providers. We're saying it because you deserve to be an informed consumer of mental health care — especially trauma care, where the stakes are high and the harm from poor treatment is real.

Here's what to look for.

What the full EMDR protocol actually involves

EMDR is an eight-phase treatment protocol. This isn't a suggestion — it's the structure that makes EMDR safe and effective. Each phase serves a specific clinical purpose, and skipping or rushing through any of them creates real problems.

The phases are: History-taking and treatment planning. Preparation. Assessment. Desensitization. Installation. Body scan. Closure. Reevaluation.

The phases that get skipped most often are preparation, closure, and reevaluation. These are also the ones that matter most for your safety.

Red flags in an EMDR session

Bilateral stimulation for long stretches without stopping

Standard EMDR protocol involves short sets of bilateral stimulation — eye movements, taps, or sounds — followed by a pause where the therapist checks in with you about what came up. Those pauses are not optional. They're where the therapist tracks what's happening, adjusts direction, and ensures the processing is moving appropriately.

If your therapist runs bilateral stimulation continuously for five, ten, fifteen, or twenty minutes without pausing to check in, that's not correct protocol. (Suggested timing is 20-45 seconds.) It's one of the most common errors we hear about, and it's one that can leave clients flooded and disoriented rather than processed and grounded.

Starting trauma processing without resourcing first

Before any trauma material is directly processed in EMDR, a client needs to have established what the protocol calls resources — internal anchors of safety and calm that can be accessed if processing becomes overwhelming. This might be an imagined safe place, a sense of a calm internal state, or a felt sense of support.

Skipping this phase and moving directly into processing trauma material is like opening a wound before you have the supplies to close it. Some clients can tolerate this. Many cannot. The result is sessions that feel out of control and leave clients in worse shape than before.

Sessions that end without closure

Every EMDR session should end with a closure phase — a deliberate process of containing whatever material was opened during processing, so the client can leave the session and function in their daily life. This is especially important when processing hasn't reached a natural endpoint within the session time.

A session that ends abruptly, with a client still emotionally flooded, is a session that wasn't properly closed. This isn't just uncomfortable — it can be genuinely destabilizing, and it's a sign that the therapist either doesn't know the closure protocol or isn't applying it.

No assessment or history-taking before treatment begins

EMDR should never begin with active trauma processing in the first session. The early phases of the protocol involve taking a thorough history, identifying specific target memories, and developing a treatment plan. A therapist who jumps into bilateral stimulation in session one hasn't done the assessment work that tells them what's safe to target.

"We did some EMDR" as a description of the session

If a therapist describes what you did as "some EMDR" or uses it as an occasional add-on when the conversation feels stuck, that's a signal. EMDR is a structured protocol, not a technique to sprinkle in. Competent EMDR therapists have a treatment plan with specific targets in mind. Sessions have a clear structure. The approach is deliberate, not improvised.

Questions to ask a prospective EMDR therapist

• How many hours of EMDR consultation have you completed beyond basic training?

• Are you EMDRIA certified, or working toward certification?

• How do you handle closure when processing doesn't complete in a session?

• What does your resourcing process look like before we start trauma work?

• How many EMDR clients have you worked with, and in what presentations?

A therapist who is genuinely competent in EMDR will answer these questions specifically and confidently. Vague answers or defensiveness are worth paying attention to.

If EMDR has hurt you before

If you've had EMDR and came away feeling worse — more activated, more destabilized, unable to function in the days after a session — please know that this is not what EMDR is supposed to feel like, and it is not your fault.

Processing can bring up difficult material. Some activation between sessions is normal. But sustained destabilization, a sense that things have been stirred up with no resolution, or feeling flooded during sessions with no way to come back to ground — these are signs that the protocol wasn't being followed correctly.

Properly delivered EMDR, by a trained and well-supervised clinician, should feel like hard work that moves somewhere. Not like a door opened with no plan to close it.

If what you've described sounds familiar — we'd like to hear from you. Our intake process is designed to understand your history and meet you where you are.

Apply for an intake — we respond within 3 business days. →

Why We Started a Training Center — What We Kept Hearing About EMDR Scared Us

By Kevin St-Jacques, PsyD and Linda Smith, LMHC — Northwest Mental Health Alliance

This is not an easy article to write. It requires us to say something uncomfortable about a field we love and a therapy we've built our practice around.

But we think it needs to be said. Because the pattern we kept seeing — across clients, across consultation sessions, across intake after intake — was too consistent to ignore. And staying quiet about it felt like a choice we couldn't make.

So here it is: a lot of EMDR being practiced right now is not being done correctly. And some of it is causing real harm.

What we started hearing

It didn't happen all at once. It accumulated.

Clients would come to us after working with another EMDR therapist — sometimes for months — describing sessions that didn't sound like EMDR. A therapist who did bilateral stimulation for twenty minutes straight without stopping to process what came up. Sessions that jumped directly into trauma material without any preparation, assessment, or resourcing. Clients who left sessions feeling worse than when they arrived, with no closure, no grounding, no way to put things back in a container before driving home.

Some of them had been retraumatized. Not because EMDR doesn't work — it does. But because what they received wasn't actually EMDR. It was bilateral stimulation applied to trauma without the protocol that makes it safe and effective.

EMDR is a structured, eight-phase protocol. Bilateral stimulation is one component of it. Bilateral stimulation alone, without the rest of the protocol, is not EMDR.

We also heard this from the other direction — from therapists who came to us for consultation. What they described in their sessions sometimes stopped us cold. Skipping the history-taking phase because it felt slow. Moving into active trauma processing without establishing any sense of safety or internal resources for the client. Not completing closure at the end of sessions, leaving clients emotionally flooded and ungrounded.

These weren't bad therapists. Many of them genuinely cared about their clients. They had completed EMDR training. They believed they were doing EMDR correctly. They just hadn't been taught what correctly actually looked like — and the gap between what they learned and what the protocol requires was significant.

Why this happens

EMDR basic training is a 5-6 day course. That’s it. For a structured, eight-phase treatment protocol designed to address some of the most complex presentations in clinical practice.

To be clear: that training is a beginning. EMDRIA — the governing body for EMDR — requires many hours of consultation beyond basic training before a therapist can become certified. Twenty hours of working with an approved consultant who can watch your clinical work, identify gaps, and help you develop genuine competence.

Most therapists who complete basic training never pursue that consultation. There's no requirement to. There's no enforcement mechanism. A therapist can complete a basic training and begin billing for EMDR the following Monday, indefinitely, with no further oversight.

The credential "EMDR trained" tells you almost nothing about whether a therapist knows how to do EMDR well.

What we decided to do

We'd been running our practice for years when we made the decision to formalize what we were already doing informally: training therapists to a higher standard than the field requires.

The training center at NWMHA exists because we couldn't find what we needed in the existing landscape. Basic training courses that send therapists out the door with a certificate and minimal supervised practice. Continuing education that teaches technique without clinical judgment. A culture in the field that treats EMDR as a skill to add rather than a discipline to develop.

We wanted something different. A program where interns and clinicians learn EMDR from the ground up, under close supervision, with ongoing consultation built into the model rather than treated as optional. Where the standard isn't "did you complete the training" but "can you actually do this safely and effectively."

What this means for clients

Every clinician at NWMHA — including our graduate therapists — practices under a model of ongoing clinical oversight. Cases are reviewed regularly. Consultation is built into the week, not an occasional add-on. We review transcripts of sessions and notes. When something unusual comes up in a session, there is a licensed, experienced clinician to consult with — immediately, not eventually.

This is not standard practice. In most private practice settings, a therapist sees clients alone, writes notes alone, and makes clinical decisions alone. At NWMHA, no one is working in isolation.

We built it this way because of what we kept hearing. Because clients deserve to know that the EMDR they're receiving has been taught carefully, supervised closely, and held to a standard that goes beyond the minimum the field requires.

That's what the training center is for. That's why it exists.

If you've had EMDR before and it didn't feel right — or didn't work — we'd like to talk to you. What you experienced may not have been the full protocol. There's a difference, and it matters.

Apply for an intake at NWMHA — we respond within 3 business days. →

EMDR for Kids — What Parents Need to Know

If your child has been through something hard — a scary medical experience, a loss, an accident, bullying, or something you can't quite put your finger on but know is affecting them — and someone suggested EMDR, you probably had questions.

Is EMDR safe for kids? Will they have to talk about what happened? What does it even look like for a child?

Here's what we tell parents in our office.

Yes, EMDR works for children — and the research backs it up

EMDR wasn't originally developed for children, but it's been adapted and studied extensively in pediatric populations. It's recommended by major mental health organizations for trauma treatment in kids and adolescents. In some ways, kids respond faster. Their brains are more plastic. Trauma that's been present for a year in a child hasn't had decades to calcify the way it might in an adult.

How EMDR is different for kids

It's more playful

Child-adapted EMDR doesn't look like adult EMDR. Good child therapists use age-appropriate tools — storytelling, drawing, puppets, games, sand trays. The bilateral stimulation might be taps on the knees rather than eye movements. The language is different. The pace is slower.

They don't have to explain everything

One of the most common parent fears: "My child doesn't want to talk about what happened. Will they be forced to?" No. EMDR doesn't require verbal narration of trauma. Your child holds the memory in their own mind. The therapist doesn't need to know every detail.

You're involved

A good child EMDR therapist keeps you in the loop. You'll understand the treatment plan, you'll know what your child is working on in general terms, and you'll get guidance on how to support them at home. You're part of the team.

Signs EMDR might be a good fit for your child

• Had a specific scary or distressing event (accident, medical procedure, witnessed something frightening)

• Experienced bullying, social trauma, or relational harm

• Has anxiety, sleep problems, or behavioral changes that started after a specific event

• Has been through a loss — a person, a pet, a big life change

• Shows physical symptoms (stomachaches, headaches) with no clear medical cause

• Is neurodivergent and has had experiences that felt overwhelming to their nervous system

What about teenagers

Teens are often excellent EMDR candidates — and often more open to it than you'd expect, once they understand that they're not going to have to "talk about their feelings" for an hour every week. The structured nature of EMDR often appeals to adolescents who feel uncomfortable with open-ended therapy.

What to tell your child about their first session

Keep it simple. Something like: "You're going to meet someone who helps kids when their brain gets stuck on something scary or hard. You don't have to tell them anything you don't want to. You can always say stop."

You don't need to have all the answers before you apply. Tell us about your child and we'll figure out the right path together.

Apply for a child or teen intake — we respond within 3 business days. →

What to Expect in Your First EMDR Session

What to Expect in Your First EMDR Session

If you've been told EMDR might help you — and you've spent the last hour down a rabbit hole trying to figure out what it actually involves — this post is for you.

EMDR has a reputation for being mysterious. People hear "eye movement" and picture someone dangling a watch in front of your face while you confess your deepest fears. That's not what happens. Let's walk through what actually does.

First, a quick reality check on what EMDR is

EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. It's a structured therapy approach developed in the late 1980s that's now one of the most well-researched treatments for trauma and PTSD. The World Health Organization recommends it. So does the American Psychological Association. It's not fringe — it's evidence-based.

The basic idea: traumatic memories get stored differently in the brain than normal memories. They stay "stuck" with the full emotional and physical charge of the original event. EMDR uses bilateral stimulation — typically side-to-side eye movements, taps, or sounds — to help your brain reprocess those memories so they lose their grip on you.

Skeptical? That's fair. The mechanism isn't fully understood yet. But the outcomes are well-documented. We've seen it work on people who've tried years of talk therapy without much movement. That's why we built our entire practice around it.

What actually happens in session one

It's mostly talking

Your first session is an intake and assessment. Your therapist is getting to know you — what brought you in, what you've tried before, what your life looks like, what feels safe to work on first. There's no rushing.

Your therapist will explain the process

A good EMDR therapist walks you through exactly what to expect before anything happens. You'll learn about the phases of treatment, how to signal if you need to stop, and what "processing" actually feels like. You're in control of the pace.

You might do some resourcing

Many therapists will spend early sessions building "resources" — mental anchors of safety and calm that you can return to if feelings gets intense. Think of it as building the floor before you open the door.

You won't have to narrate everything in detail

This surprises people. EMDR doesn't require you to describe your trauma in detail to a therapist who writes everything down. You hold the memory in mind — your therapist doesn't need to know all of it (sometimes they don’t need to know ANY of it!). That's part of why it works for people who've found traditional talk therapy re-traumatizing.

What processing actually feels like

During bilateral stimulation, most people describe a sense of the memory "moving" — emotions and sensations shifting, sometimes getting more intense briefly before settling. Some people cry. Some feel nothing at all at first. Some feel physical sensations in their body as things release.

The goal isn't to relive the trauma. It's to change your relationship to it.

How long does it take

It depends on what you're working on. A single incident trauma — like a car accident or a medical procedure that happened to someone who had a pretty OK childhood— might resolve in 3 to 6 sessions. Complex, childhood, or developmental trauma takes longer. Your therapist will give you a realistic picture after the assessment.

What to do after a session

Processing doesn't stop when you leave the room. Your brain continues working on things between sessions. Some people feel tired. Some feel emotional in the days after. Some feel lighter. Don't schedule anything intense right after your first few sessions if you can help it.

One last thing

You don't have to be sure EMDR is right for you before you apply. That's what the intake process is for. You meet with a therapist, talk through your situation, and figure out together whether this is the right fit. No pressure, no commitment.

Ready to find out if EMDR is right for you? Apply online — we respond within 3 business days.