With processes that are rooted in research, you can be confident in your treatment and progress.
Client Services
Expertise – I can combine and deliver interventions that fit your unique situation. I’m a:
- Certified EMDR Therapist and Approved Consultant,
- Level 1 AEDP Therapist,
- Level 1 ASCH Certification in Clinical Hypnosis
- Polyvagal Theory informed Therapist and
- Becoming Safely Embodied – Certified Practitioner
I work with adults (18 and older) using trauma-informed models to transform symptoms and move toward wholeness.
To do this, I follow the recommended three-phase model of trauma recovery as outlined by Pierre Janet in the 1800s and Judith Herman in the 1990s.
Phase 1 focuses on your safety and stabilization of symptoms, Phase 2 on trauma processing, and Phase 3 on integrating the new you once the trauma isn’t your sole focus.
I partner with the following insurance companies to help you budget medical costs.
Aetna
PEHP Advantage, Preferred, Summit, and Capital Networks
If you have another insurance, I’m happy to call your insurance plan to ask about out-of-network benefits you may not know about. These benefits allow you to submit invoices for reimbursement according to your provider’s out-of-network benefits plan.
The length of therapy is informed by your goals and other factors, including your history, schedule, and stability. In addition, people learn at different paces, and anyone can learn with support and willingness.
Clients who progress take an active role in the process… even if that means exploring barriers. I am open to working with clients long-term as long as the work is focused, goal-oriented, and moves forward with your active participation.
Preferably, we meet weekly and ultimately, we have you graduate from therapy transformed.
Effective January 1, 2022, the No Surprises Act, which Congress passed as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021, is designed to protect patients from surprise bills for emergency services at out-of-network facilities or for out-of-network providers at in-network facilities.
You have the right to receive a “Good Faith Estimate” explaining how much your medical care will cost. Under the law health care providers are required to give new and established patients who are uninsured, self-pay, or patients who are shopping for care, a good faith estimate of costs for services that they provide. Beginning January 1, 2022, a good faith estimate of expected charges is
- available in a written document that is clear, understandable at least one day before your service; and
- will be orally provided when the service is scheduled or when the patient asks about costs; and
- available in accessible formats, and in the language(s) spoken by the patient.
If you receive a bill that is at least $400 more than your Good Faith Estimate, you can dispute the bill. Embodied Trauma Therapy emails these estimates, provides copies and can answer any billing questions. Make sure to save a copy or picture for your records.
What are Becoming Safely Embodied® Skills?
Deirdre Fay organized the skills needed by trauma survivors to help calm the nervous system, relax the body, sort the many aspects of the inner world and aid your mind to go where you want it to go. She ran inpatient and outpatient groups with feedback that clients who took the group got better faster.
As a certified practitioner, I’m happy to help you develop these skills.
complete the form below. I will contact you with information on registering for the next round of BSE groups.
What is the Rhythm of Regulation?
Polyvagal Theory in Therapy
Polyvagal theory is a roadmap to work with the autonomic nervous system and build regulation and resiliency. A Polyvagal lens helps us to come into friendship with our bodies by appreciating how they work on our behalf.
Being in a survival state means facing a moment which is too much of a neural challenge. ‘Too much’ varies for each person…what is too much for me may be the right amount of activation for you as neural challenge is shaped by our histories and everyday realities.
Through Polyvagal theory we learn to befriend our nervous systems. We can do this by tuning into what happens right before we go into a survival state, identifying our ventral vagal anchors, and learning what’s effective in getting back to a state of restoration, learning and engagement.
If you think about an airplane engine, you want it to be well attended to and maintained. In flight, it encounters a lot of forces… overcoming gravity as well as the accompanying wind, atmospheric and temperature changes. To get you safely from Point A to Point B, the engine is maintained by the airline industry to operate reliably in the midst of environmental challenges.
Our engines are our bodies and nervous system but probably not as well maintained as airline engines. Helping the nervous system recoup after chronic stress from bullying, emotional/physical abuse and discrimination doesn’t happen reliably in our families and communities. Many people come into therapy running on fumes, their nervous system oscillating between survival responses of fight, flight, withdraw, freeze, collapse. Polyvagal theory helps us understand the process by which our bodies cycle through stages of mobilization, disconnection and engagement. When you learn how your body adapts to help you survive, with practice you can befriend it and recruit it as an ally in your recovery.
EMDR Therapy
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing
EMDR Therapy is an eight-phase trauma processing therapy designed to resolve unprocessed traumatic memories in the brain.
Our brains have a natural way of recovering from traumatic memories and events. This process involves communication between various brain regions including the amygdala (the alarm signal for stressful events), the hippocampus (which assists with learning, including memories about safety and danger), and the prefrontal cortex (which analyzes and mediates behavior and emotion). While many times traumatic experiences can be managed and resolved spontaneously, stressors that overwhelm our body’s system may not be processed without help.
Stress responses are part of our natural fight, flight, or freeze instincts to survive. When distress from a disturbing event remains, the upsetting images, thoughts, and emotions may present as symptoms including avoiding reminders of the event, flashbacks, emotional outbursts or triggering. Unprocessed trauma can contribute to anxiety, depression or acting out of old but strong survival patterns such as being “frozen in time.”
EMDR therapy helps the brain process disturbing memories, allowing the body’s normal healing to resume. The experience is still remembered, but the survival responses of fight, flight, or freeze attached to the original event are resolved.
An extensive variety of research studies support EMDR Therapy as an empirically validated treatment of trauma. In addition, national and international organizations such as the American Psychiatric Association, the World Health Organization, the International Society for the Study of Traumatic Stress and the Department of Veteran’s Affairs have recognized EMDR as an effective treatment for trauma.
Getting Started
After reviewing this page, fill out the contact form below or schedule a 20 -minute free consultation.
I’ll contact you to discuss needs and we’ll decide whether I’m a good fit for you.
If so, we’ll schedule your first appointment which is always 90 minutes. This appointment allows us time for you to talk about your situation, and for me to conduct a thorough review as well as answer questions/concerns important to you.
You will arrive at your appointment at your scheduled time (either virtually or at my Ogden office). I will greet you in the waiting room at the start of your session. Near the end of the appointment, we will discuss next steps, which may include rescheduling with me and deciding frequency of sessions, or a referral, etc. You’ll pay for the session and be on your way.
Join The Waitlist
To receive updates from Donna regarding BSE groups enter your contact information below.
I look forward to your participation and presence.
