Experiential trauma therapy that goes to where your patterns were formed instead of just managing how they show up today.
You’re probably aware that your early experiences connect to the way you move through relationships, handle stress, or feel about yourself. Managing this has likely become exhausting. If you’re looking for trauma therapy in Dallas that goes further than retelling your story, this is what I do.
Most people who come to me for trauma therapy aren’t describing a single catastrophic event. They describe a childhood that felt unsafe, a parent who was emotionally unavailable or overwhelming, or relationships where they learned to shrink, perform, or manage other people’s feelings. That is what developmental trauma looks like. It is not one event but a pattern that shaped how you learned to be in the world.
In adult life, it shows up as anxiety that seems disproportionate or relationships where you keep ending up in the exact same position. It is a persistent sense that something is wrong with you that you can’t quite explain or a feeling in your body that something is wrong.
These are adaptations. They are responses that made perfect sense in the context where they developed, and your nervous system has been running them ever since. The work we do is oriented around updating them. We do not rely on willpower or insight alone, but engage in the kind of processing that actually changes how the pattern operates.
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a structured approach developed to help people process distressing experiences that haven’t fully integrated. Traumatic memories often stay stored in a fragmented, highly charged state. Because of this, the nervous system keeps responding to things that resemble them as if the original event were still happening.
EMDR uses bilateral stimulation like guided eye movements, tapping, or auditory tones while you bring a distressing memory or belief to mind. This appears to support your brain’s natural capacity to process and integrate what has been stuck. It often moves material that years of other therapies haven’t touched.
We don’t start there right away. Early work can be about building enough stability before asking your system to engage with difficult material. EMDR pairs particularly well with Coherence Therapy or parts work for people whose trauma is relational or developmental. In these cases, the emotional learning is much more layered than a single memory.
EMDR is highly versatile. It can be used to simply desensitize the distress and emotional charge around a traumatic memory, making it less overwhelming. However, when we actively target negative cognitions, EMDR also works at the deeper level of meaning to update implicit beliefs. For example, it can target the deeply held feeling that you are unworthy of love or that closeness inevitably leads to being consumed.
Coherence Therapy is laser-focused on that deeper level of meaning. Grounded in the neuroscience of memory reconsolidation, it is designed to access these profound implicit beliefs directly, make them fully present, and create the exact conditions for your brain to fundamentally revise them at the root. Because both modalities can reach these foundational layers, I often integrate them to best support what your system needs in the moment. I also draw on IFS to understand the protective parts of you that originally formed around these traumatic experiences.
Sessions are active. I track what you’re experiencing and where it is moving. The work moves at the pace your system can actually integrate. We are not about pushing through material as fast as possible. We go to the emotional level rather than just recounting the story. What happens in your body and the felt sense of the experience is exactly where the pattern lives.
EMDR and Coherence Therapy are not about reliving trauma in detail until the distress habituates. They are about creating the right conditions for your brain to update what it learned. This is often done with less distress and more quickly than approaches that rely on sustained exposure.
In-person (Dallas) and telehealth (Texas) are both available.
I hold an MS in Counseling from SMU with a concentration in trauma studies and am trained in both EMDR and Coherence Therapy. My approach to trauma work is experiential. I work directly with the emotional patterns underneath the presenting concerns instead of just building insight about them.
MS · LPC Associate · NCC
Supervised by Erin Wysong-Warren, LPC-S
Currently accepting new clients
In-person (Dallas) & telehealth (Texas)
What is the difference between developmental trauma and PTSD?
PTSD is typically associated with a discrete event like an accident, assault, or combat experience where the response is diagnosable. Developmental trauma is the cumulative effect of chronic experiences. This includes growing up in an unpredictable household, having a parent who was emotionally unavailable, or navigating relationships where your needs were consistently unmet. These don’t always produce a PTSD diagnosis but they deeply shape how you regulate emotions and relate to people. Most of the people I work with are dealing with developmental or complex trauma, and the approaches I use are specifically designed for that.
What does an EMDR session actually look like?
EMDR sessions are more structured than standard therapy. You bring to mind a target like a memory, a specific belief, or a body sensation while I guide you through sets of bilateral stimulation. This is typically eye movements or tapping. Between sets, you briefly report what came up. Material can shift quickly. We don’t start EMDR on day one. Early sessions are used to establish our relationship and build your internal resources before we begin any deep processing.
Is EMDR right for me if my trauma isn’t from one specific event?
Yes. While EMDR is well-known for single-incident trauma, it is also highly effective for relational and developmental trauma. In those cases, we typically work with clusters of related experiences or the underlying beliefs they created rather than one specific memory.
Will I have to talk about everything that happened in detail?
No. EMDR in particular doesn’t require detailed narrative processing. In some protocols, you don’t need to tell me much about what you’re holding in mind at all. What matters is your ability to access the material internally.
How is Coherence Therapy different from EMDR?
They often complement each other beautifully in practice. EMDR is extremely versatile. It can be used for desensitization to significantly reduce the distress around a traumatic memory, but it can also actively target and resolve the negative beliefs that the trauma formed. Coherence Therapy is uniquely designed to focus exclusively on that deeper level of meaning. It specifically targets and updates the implicit core beliefs you hold about yourself and the world. Because EMDR and Coherence Therapy can work at the exact same depth when targeting negative cognitions, I am able to fluidly integrate both within the same course of treatment to provide whatever intervention your emotional system needs most in the moment.
Do you offer telehealth for trauma therapy?
Yes. I see clients via telehealth for anyone in Texas. EMDR can be done effectively via telehealth, and the research doesn’t suggest meaningful differences in outcomes compared to in-person sessions. If you’re in Dallas and prefer in-person, that is available too.
Free 15-minute consultation call.