For the people who did the job.
You didn't come this far to be handed a worksheet. This is depth work — for what the training didn't cover.
What I actually bring to this.
Veterans and first responders end up in my office when the strategies that got them through the mission stop working in the rest of life. The switch that turned everything off during a shift doesn't turn back on at home. The sleep never really came back. The anger arrives sideways at people who don't deserve it. The person you were before the job is starting to feel like a stranger.
I don't need you to prove your trauma is bad enough. I don't need you to cry on cue. I don't romanticize service, and I don't pathologize it either. Moral injury is real, non-combat wounds are real, the slow attrition of the job is real. So is the identity question underneath it all: who am I when I'm not doing this.
EMDR is a large part of what I do here. It doesn't require you to retell the worst of it in detail; we prepare carefully first, and you stay in the driver's seat throughout.
You might recognize —
- Sleep never fully came back after the deployment / the shift / the incident
- You go from zero to ten and can't find the middle
- You feel most like yourself around the people who did the job — and increasingly like a stranger at home
- You can describe the memory calmly and still can't sit through a fireworks show
- You did the VA groups, the worksheets, the check-the-box therapy — and you're still carrying it
- Moral injury: the parts you can't just process, because they were about what was asked of you
Questions people actually ask.
Are you a VA provider?
I'm in private practice, not VA staff. Many veterans use Community Care Network authorizations to see me; check with your VA case manager about the current process.
Do you only work with combat trauma?
No. Non-combat trauma, moral injury, MST, and the ordinary weight of the job all count. What matters is that we take what you carried seriously — not that it looks a certain way.
I'm active duty, not a veteran. Can you still see me?
If you're in California, yes. We work around the confidentiality and scheduling realities of your role.