conditions treated via online therapy

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I treat behavioral addictions involving a compulsive repetition of self-harming actions. All addictions stem from trauma during childhood. Why? The very parents or caregivers who are supposed to love, validate, and protect their child are ignoring, rejecting or actively harming  her. The child lacks the cognitive capacity to understand that her parents are incapable of nurturing her so she blames herself. The child comes to believe that she must be defective, worthless or unlovable because she cannot account for her parents' maltreatment of her in any other way. In addition to this cognitive bias in favor of self-blame the child is biologically driven to attach to her parents as the only way to physically survive. Consequently she will excuse and explain away their maltreatment in order to receive food, shelter, and whatever crumbs of approval they occasionally throw her way. Many traumatized children suppress  all trauma memories to avoid going insane or killing themselves.  Some children have fragmentary memories. Either way they grow up with highly dysregulated nervous systems and intense internal distress. As they reach their teens these trauma survivors find ways to reduce distress and feel "normal." These ways include alcohol, drugs, and a host of behavioral addictions including workaholism, excessive Internet use or video gaming, shopping sprees, shoplifting, hoarding, cutting, burning, hair or skin picking, eating disorders, headbanging or compulsive masturbation to porn.

I am trained in the use of EMDR and have used it to treat PTSD, depression, anxiety, and other disorders. EMDR is an internationally recognized trauma recovery technique created by psychologist Francine Shapiro in 1989. It is endorsed as an effective treatment for PTSD by the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, the US Dept. of Veterans Affairs, and the US Dept. of Defense. The treatment involves alternately stimulating each hemisphere of the brain by having the client shift her gaze while tracking the therapist's moving fingers. Alternating bilateral brain stimulation can also be done using a pointer, buzzers held in each hand by the client, alternating sounds in the client's ears or even by sequential tapping of the client's knees or having the client sequentially tap her upper chest just under the collarbones. Prior to this kind of processing the client is prepared by using guided visualization to feel safe and calm. Next the client is asked to articulate her most painful negative belief about herself (e.g. I am worthless or I am unlovable) and to rate the emotional pain caused by that belief on a 1-10 scale. The client is also asked to describe the sensations in her body when she holds this belief in mind. Next the client is invited to describe the positive belief she would like to have about herself (e.g. I am worthy and lovable) and to measure how much she actually believes it on a 1-7 scale. During processing many things can occur. The client may vividly recall events from long ago that she had completely forgotten. She may experience a great variety of feelings tied to childhood events that include fear, shame, sadness or anger. The basic theory of EMDR is that it unfreezes trauma memories which have been stuck and hidden in the brain since childhood. This renders them capable of being reprocessed by the client's innate intelligence which Shapiro called AIP or the adaptive information processing network. While the client's AIP is activated she can see herself in a new light and rapidly, automatically reinterpret old events to show how much courage, strength, vitality, creativity, resourcefulness or tenacity she has always had but never given herself credit for. This serves to reframe how the client views herself, liberating herself from negative, self-defeating beliefs borne or childhood trauma and coming to own new positive self-beliefs that potentiate greater self-compassion, self-acceptance, and healthy self-love.