EMDR Therapy Jacksonville, FL Trauma and PTSD Treatment
EMDR Therapy
EMDR Therapy is a highly effective therapeutic approach that helps individuals process and heal from trauma and PTSD. As an advanced EMDR therapist, I have dedicated my career to guiding countless individuals on their journey toward recovery from complex PTSD.
How does EMDR work?
EMDR involves using bilateral stimulation, such as eye movements, to help the brain process and reprocess traumatic memories. This process can help individuals:
- Reduce distressing symptoms: Anxiety, depression, nightmares, and flashbacks.
- Improve emotional regulation: Develop effective coping mechanisms and manage emotions more effectively.
- Enhance self-esteem: Rebuild a sense of self-worth and confidence.
As an advanced EMDR practitioner, I have specialized training and experience in working with individuals who have experienced complex trauma, including:
- Childhood trauma
- Relationship trauma
- Abuse
- Military trauma
- First Responders
- Natural disasters
- Accidents
If you are ready to take the first step toward healing from complex PTSD, I invite you to schedule a consultation. Together, we can explore how EMDR can help you find relief and reclaim your life.
Internal Family Systems IFS
Discover Inner Healing with Internal Family Systems (IFS)
Imagine your mind not as a single voice, but as a rich, dynamic system made up of many "parts" each with its own story, emotions, and wisdom. Internal Family Systems (IFS) offers a powerful framework for understanding yourself at a deeper level.
Our parts, thoughts, feelings, sensations, and beliefs, develop as adaptive responses to life’s challenges. Some parts act as protectors:
- Managers work to maintain control.
- Firefighters react to perceived threats.
- Exiles carry the pain of difficult experiences, holding emotions like sadness, fear, or shame.
At the heart of this internal system is the Self your true essence, defined by compassion, curiosity, calmness, clarity, courage, connection, creativity, and confidence. The Self holds the natural leadership needed for healing and inner balance.
But trauma can disrupt this harmony, causing parts to get "stuck" in the past. In an effort to protect you, parts may take on extreme roles ones that helped you survive then but may be holding you back now.
IFS invites you to connect with, understand, and heal these wounded parts not to erase them, but to help them transform.
IFS and EMDR: A Powerful Pathway to Healing
When combined with Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy, IFS offers an even deeper path to lasting change:
- Prepare and Stabilize: Identify trauma-activated parts and build inner safety for EMDR work.
- Access and Understand Memories: Explore past experiences with compassion and clarity.
- Provide What Was Missing: Offer love, support, and validation to parts still carrying pain.
- Unburden and Transform: Release old wounds so parts can take on healthier roles.
- Strengthen Self-Leadership: Empower the Self to lead with wisdom, compassion, and confidence.
Together, IFS and EMDR guide you toward healing, integration, and a profound sense of inner peace.
Step Into Your Healing Journey
You don’t have to remain trapped by the wounds of the past.
With the right support, you can reconnect to your true Self, restore harmony within, and move forward with strength, compassion, and hope.
Somatic Experiencing
Welcome to Embodied Healing
Persistent tension, headaches, joint stiffness, teeth grinding, digestive issues, or a racing heart can be the body’s way of signaling unresolved emotional pain, trauma, or stress. When we avoid difficult feelings and memories, they often get stored in the body, showing up as physical symptoms, including the common physical signs of anxiety like muscle tension, dizziness, and digestive upset.
What is Somatic Experiencing?
Somatic experiencing recognizes that the body holds the memory of past experiences. Instead of focusing only on thoughts, somatic therapy works directly with physical sensations to release stored emotions and trauma.
Our Integrative Approach: EMDR and Somatic Experiencing
We combine Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy with somatic techniques to support deep healing:
- EMDR Therapy helps process traumatic memories while easing related physical tension.
Somatic Experiencing:
reconnect you to your body and include:
- Body Awareness: Mindfully noticing sensations.
- Movement and Dance: Expressing and releasing stored emotions.
- Breath work: Calming the nervous system.
- Grounding Techniques: Building presence and safety.
- Somatic Experiencing®: Gently resolving trauma through body awareness.
Healing the Body for Lasting Relief
By addressing trauma at the body level, we can help you:
- Relieve muscle tension and pain
- Ease headaches and migraines
- Improve digestion
- Calm heart palpitations and blood pressure
- Reduce physical symptoms of anxiety
- Restore a sense of safety and connection within
If you're ready to move beyond physical symptoms rooted in past trauma or stress, we invite you to begin your journey toward embodied healing today.
Exposure Response Prevention
Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP)
Build confidence. Break the cycle. Reclaim your life.
Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) is a research supported treatment for obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). It helps interrupt the cycle of intrusive thoughts, anxiety, and compulsions that can make everyday life feel overwhelming.
With your therapist’s guidance, you gradually practice facing thoughts, situations, or sensations that trigger distress while resisting the urge to perform rituals or seek reassurance. Over time, this practice helps you respond to discomfort and uncertainty with greater flexibility.
What Can ERP Help With?
ERP addresses OCD symptoms such as:
- Contamination fears and excessive washing or cleaning
- Repeated checking of locks, appliances, or other potential risks
- Distressing intrusive thoughts followed by efforts to neutralize them
- Mental rituals, including counting, repeating phrases, or reviewing events
- Repeated reassurance seeking and avoidance of everyday situations
What to Expect
You and your therapist develop a personalized plan with gradual challenges and practice between sessions. Treatment is collaborative, with your participation and consent at every step.
The goal is to reduce the control OCD has over your choices, helping you spend more time engaged in the relationships, activities, and experiences that matter to you.
Polyvagal Theory
Understanding Your Nervous System and the Path to Safety: Polyvagal THave you ever wondered why certain situations trigger strong emotional or physical reactions?
Polyvagal Theory, developed by Dr. Stephen Porges, shows how your autonomic nervous system controlling heart rate, breathing, and digestion shapes your sense of safety, connection, and resilience, especially after trauma.
Discover the Three States of Your Nervous System
Polyvagal Theory reveals how your body navigates the world through three key states:
- Ventral Vagal (Safety & Connection): Feel calm, connected, open to relationships, and emotionally regulated.
- Sympathetic Activation (Fight or Flight): Prepare for danger with increased heart rate, tension, and alertness; chronic activation can fuel anxiety and exhaustion.
- Dorsal Vagal (Shutdown): When overwhelmed, the system may freeze, leading to numbness, disconnection, or deep fatigue.
Learn the Dynamic Dance of Protection and Connection
Your nervous system is always scanning for safety or threat.
Stress, trauma, or reminders of past danger can pull you into survival states.
Recognizing and responding to these shifts is key to healing.
Heal with Polyvagal Informed Therapy
Polyvagal informed therapy helps you:
- Understand your body's survival responses with compassion.
- Learn how to recognize and shift your nervous system states.
- Cultivate a felt sense of safety, presence, and connection.
Practice Tools to Regulate and Restore Safety
Simple, powerful practices send "safety signals" to your nervous system:
- Slow, Deep Breathing: Calms and anchors the body.
- Vocalization: Humming or singing stimulates healing pathways.
- Gentle Movement: Rocking or swaying releases stored tension.
- Safe Social Engagement: Positive connection strengthens regulation.
- Orienting to Safety: Focusing on safe, peaceful surroundings restores calm.
Transform Trauma Responses Into Resilience
Through Polyvagal informed care, you will:
- Recognize and understand your nervous system's patterns.
- Build emotional resilience and flexibility.
- Develop practical skills to return to calm and connection.
- Foster deeper, healthier relationships with yourself and others.
Healing starts by listening to the wisdom of your body.
Let us help you reconnect with your natural capacity for safety, strength, and well being.
DBT Therapy
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) skills provide a powerful framework for managing emotions, improving relationships, and reducing distress. As a experienced DBT therapist, I have helped countless individuals overcome challenges and achieve their goals.
What are DBT skills?
DBT skills are a set of techniques that focus on mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness. These skills can be invaluable for individuals struggling with:
- Borderline Personality Disorder
- Bipolar
- Depression
- Anxiety
- Trauma
By learning and practicing DBT skills, you can:
- Manage unwanted emotions: Reduce the impact of negative emotions that can hinder your progress.
- Improve relationships: Build stronger connections with others, fostering support and encouragement.
- Set and achieve goals: Develop effective strategies for goal setting and overcoming obstacles.
- Increase self-esteem: Boost your confidence and belief in your ability to manifest your dreams.
As a DBT therapist, I am committed to helping you develop the skills you need to create a life beyond your wildest dreams. I have personally experienced the transformative power of DBT and have trained countless clients and mental health professionals in these techniques.
Are you ready to unlock your full potential and manifest your desires? Let's work together to develop the DBT skills you need to succeed.
CBT Therapy
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
Evidence Based Therapy for Anxiety, Depression, Trauma, and Lasting Change
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is an evidence based form of psychotherapy that focuses on the relationship between your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. The way we interpret what happens to us can influence how we feel, how we respond, and the patterns we repeat.
CBT is not about simply "thinking positive" or convincing yourself that difficult experiences do not matter. Instead, CBT therapy helps you become more aware of automatic thoughts, beliefs, and behavioral patterns, examine whether they are accurate or helpful, and develop healthier ways of responding.
At Therapy For The Soul in Jacksonville, Florida, we integrate CBT with trauma informed therapy to help clients better understand the patterns keeping them stuck while developing practical skills they can use outside of the therapy room.
What Can CBT Help Treat?
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is used to treat a wide range of mental health concerns, including:
• Anxiety and excessive worry
• Depression
• Panic and fear
• Post traumatic stress symptoms
• Low self esteem and negative self talk
• Perfectionism
• Avoidance and procrastination
• Difficulty regulating emotions
• Stress and burnout
• Relationship patterns
• Grief and life transitions
• Maladaptive coping behaviors
CBT can be particularly helpful when you recognize a pattern intellectually but continue to find yourself reacting to it in the same way.
Therapy can help move you from simply recognizing the pattern to learning what to do differently when it appears.
Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) for Trauma and PTSD
Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) is a specialized cognitive behavioral treatment developed specifically for post traumatic stress disorder and trauma related symptoms.
Traumatic experiences can change more than the way we remember the past. They can affect the conclusions we draw about ourselves, other people, safety, trust, control, intimacy, and the world around us.
After trauma, people may develop beliefs such as:
"It was my fault."
"I should have stopped it."
"I should have known."
"I cannot trust anyone."
"I am not safe."
"Something is wrong with me."
"If I let my guard down, something bad will happen."
These beliefs can continue long after the traumatic experience itself has ended.
Cognitive Processing Therapy helps identify places where trauma has disrupted the way an experience is understood and helps clients examine beliefs that may be keeping the trauma active in the present.
The goal is not to minimize what happened or force yourself to see something terrible in a positive way. The goal is to develop a more accurate, balanced understanding of the experience so that what happened to you does not have to continue defining how you see yourself or your future.
What Does Cognitive Processing Therapy Treat?
CPT has been extensively used in the treatment of PTSD and trauma related symptoms, including:
• Post traumatic stress disorder
• Childhood and developmental trauma
• Sexual trauma
• Interperson
Mindfulness Teacher
Mindfulness and meditation have gained widespread recognition for their profound benefits on mental, emotional, and physical health. By cultivating present-moment awareness and reducing stress, these practices can enhance overall well-being and quality of life.
Benefits of Mindfulness and Meditation:
- Reduced stress and anxiety: Mindfulness helps to calm the mind and body, reducing feelings of stress and anxiety.
- Improved focus and concentration: Regular meditation can enhance attention span and cognitive function.
- Enhanced emotional regulation: Mindfulness can help individuals better manage emotions and cope with challenges.
- Improved sleep quality: Practicing mindfulness before bed can promote relaxation and improve sleep quality.
- Boosted immune system: Research suggests that mindfulness can strengthen the immune system, reducing susceptibility to illness.
- Increased self-awareness: Mindfulness helps individuals become more attuned to their thoughts, feelings, and sensations.
- Improved relationships: Mindfulness can enhance empathy, compassion, and communication skills, leading to stronger relationships.
As a dedicated practitioner of mindfulness and meditation for over 10 years, I have personally experienced the transformative power of these practices. I continue to reap the benefits of reduced stress, increased focus, and a greater sense of inner peace.
Are you ready to embark on a journey of self-discovery and well-being? Let's explore the transformative power of mindfulness and meditation together.