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The Evolution of a Therapist

Welcome to Artemis Behavioral Health! I’m Katie.




It has been almost 6 years since I started on the path of opening my own private practice, and this seemed like a nice time to reflect on the path that led me to where I am today. It was a huge decision at the time that I made it to leave the relative comfort and security of working at a large organization and branch out on my own. However, the decision was ultimately made by needing to listen to my own body about what it could tolerate as I grappled with chronic migraines and a new journey with autoimmunity. I had learned so much from working in a community mental health clinic, and had made some of the deepest and most rewarding bonds ever with my colleagues in that role through being intensively trained in Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT). Being part of that group of amazing adolescent and teen therapists offering DBT to families provided the early foundation to the type of therapy I still offer today.


My mentors at that clinic gave me a solid introduction to helping clients recognize and heal from trauma that was causing dissociation, and how to be a steady presence for someone while they are experiencing some of their most intense emotions. I will be forever grateful to the women from that team and clinic who each uniquely shaped my therapy skills, and allowed me to become the therapist I am today. Those relationships with my colleagues are what made it an especially tough decision to eventually prioritize what my body was telling me and to leave community mental health. I was discovering that I needed to find a way to continue providing therapy while staying within my own body’s window of tolerance. I hoped that honoring this new perspective would cut back on the number of monthly migraines I was having, although it meant taking the scary leap of being on my own. Thankfully, being in private practice has given me the ability to continue to offer therapy, while not sacrificing my own body’s limits.


Therapist, heal thyself.


Being a DBT therapist had taught me that sometimes we need to radically accept things, and that accepting difficult truths didn’t necessarily mean that we liked or approved of them. I had to challenge my own internalized ableism to accept my body’s limits, and understand that the migraines that I was experiencing were my body’s way of telling me I was pushing myself too hard. I didn’t particularly like that my body’s threshold was different than others, but not radically accepting this fact was causing me to have more migraines.


Once I was able to accept the limit my body was giving me, I was able to start finding ways to continue to provide therapy, build a business that I never would have dreamed of when I first started on this path of becoming a social worker all the way back in 2008, all while preventing my body from “red-lining” and having migraines. I also discovered that I could use this information to help a whole community of individuals who also wanted to learn how to heal their trauma while working in collaboration with their bodies and nervous systems to reduce physical symptoms.


Helping others through learning how to help myself.


As I discovered a better balance for how to reduce my own migraines, I realized that this was something I could help others with by using the training and skills I had already been collecting throughout my years of social work practice. After learning how to provide multiple types of therapy that had their foundation in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) based approaches to treating trauma and dysregulation such as Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) and Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), I was given the opportunity to attend basic training for Eye-Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy.


This training felt like the culmination of what I had been learning up to this point, with a deep emphasis on noticing the impact that dysregulation and trauma has on the body and nervous system. It was incredible to practice these skills with my fellow trainees, but then also immediately be able to put them into action and see the healing take place on my own caseload. Participating in this intensive training over a series of months also gave me the opportunity to find new healing for myself, and even better understand how to stay within my own body’s window of tolerance, even learning how to widen my window of tolerance.


How did the horses get involved?





Throughout five years of practicing EMDR therapy and finding ways to implement this modality in the midst of the global COVID pandemic, I learned about many of the multi-faceted ways that other therapists were providing EMDR therapy to their clients. From brilliant art therapists and play therapists, to individuals innovating better ways to provide this therapy remotely and reach even more people, some truly inspiring work came out of such a collectively traumatic experience. While preparing for my license renewal in 2023, I was able to attend a training on utilizing equine therapy for trauma healing from a polyvagal perspective. Having been a horse lover for as long as I can remember, and with my own history of riding and handling horses since the age of 7, I was absolutely thrilled to discover a way to combine my passion for healing trauma with my love for horses.



With this training and my lifelong passion for horses in mind, I went about adopting my first two horses, ever: Tom the Judge and Calamity Janet. Aside from being the realization of one of my own lifelong dreams, adding Tom and Janet to the team has proven to be beneficial to them as well, both having survived and recovered from their own traumatic experiences, making them a perfect fit for being equine partners in a therapy setting. Since I began offering horse therapy in May of 2024, Tom and Janet have continued to open my eyes to the deep healing ability that these animals have, with very minimal intervention on my part to make that happen. Tom has shown that he has an innate ability to sense when anyone in his presence is grappling with big feelings, and stays by their side offering companionship and sometimes kisses. Janet’s kind eyes provide a steady warmth and comfort, and a connection with her feels like the sun shining on you. Allowing the horses to choose how much or how little they want to participate in each session allows us to maintain a high priority on animal welfare, while still creating an environment for important healing experiences to occur for the client, just by being near them.



Ready to get started on your own healing?





If any of this has resonated with you today, whether you’re on your own path of healing from trauma, or trying to better learn how to listen to the signals your body is giving you, I’d love to talk more with you about how I can help you. I currently have some limited spaces left on my caseload to offer trauma treatment, either remotely via telehealth, or in-person in the Western New York area with my equine partners.


Schedule a free 15-minute consultation to have a one-on-one chat with me about therapy at Artemis Behavioral Health, and if it would be a good fit for you. I can’t wait to meet you!





 

 

 

 

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