Therapy FAQ | EMDR & Trauma Therapy in Gaithersburg, MD & Online
Trauma-Informed Therapy
Questions, Answered
For people researching therapy before reaching out. You don't need to have it figured out or know exactly what you're dealing with to read this.
Most people who find their way here have been circling the idea of therapy for a while. They know something needs to shift, but they're not sure if what they're carrying is "bad enough" to bring to a therapist, or whether a therapist who also does personal training is someone they can take seriously for clinical work.
The answers below cover the questions that come up most often before someone submits a therapy inquiry, about the modalities I use, who I work with, what sessions actually look like, and what it costs. If you're looking for personal training FAQs, those live on a separate page.
Licensing note: Therapy services are available to clients physically located in Maryland, Washington DC, or Virginia. EMDR intensives are offered in person in Gaithersburg, MD. Personal training and wellness coaching are available virtually worldwide.
Do I need therapy, or is what I'm dealing with not serious enough?
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Functioning well and struggling privately are not opposites. A lot of the people I work with are high-achieving women who show up fully for everyone around them and feel completely disconnected from themselves underneath. The fact that you're holding it together on the outside doesn't mean what you're carrying isn't real, or that you don't deserve support. High-functioning exhaustion, chronic hypervigilance, and the inability to rest without guilt are all things therapy can address, even when they don't look like a crisis from the outside.
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Yes, and this is one of the most common things people say before their first session. Trauma doesn't require a single catastrophic event. It includes the chronic experience of not being seen, having to shrink yourself to keep the peace, growing up in environments where your needs came last, navigating racism, homophobia, or other forms of systemic harm, and the accumulated weight of having to be strong for everyone around you. If your nervous system is still braced for something, that's worth exploring, regardless of whether it fits a particular definition.
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Often because previous therapy worked at the level of thoughts and feelings without reaching what the body is holding. If your last therapist didn't specialize in trauma, didn't use somatic or body-based approaches, or if the space didn't feel culturally affirming or safe enough to go deep, those are real gaps, not evidence that therapy can't help you. My approach integrates EMDR, IFS-informed parts work, and somatic therapy alongside relational, anti-oppressive care, which tends to reach things that talk therapy alone doesn't.
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Not at all, and it's more common than you'd think. When your nervous system has been in a heightened state for a long time, rest and ease can feel unfamiliar or even unsafe. You don't need to know what you're working toward before you start. We build that picture together, at a pace that feels manageable, starting from where you actually are.
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Yes. Burnout and trauma often share the same nervous system roots, which is why I treat them together rather than as separate problems. Chronic over-functioning, the inability to say no, the feeling of numbness underneath constant productivity, and the collapse that follows a long period of pushing through, these are patterns therapy can address directly. If what's driving your burnout is a deeply held belief that your worth is tied to your output, or that rest has to be earned, that's the kind of thing that doesn't shift from a productivity app or a vacation. It shifts in therapy.
What therapy with me actually looks like
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EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. It's a therapy modality with strong research support for processing trauma and reducing the emotional intensity of distressing memories. It works through bilateral stimulation, meaning alternating left-right sensory input that helps both hemispheres of the brain process and integrate experiences that got stuck. In practice, this might look like following a light with your eyes, tapping alternately on your knees, or using headphones with alternating audio tones, while holding a target memory or belief. EMDR is not hypnosis and you remain fully present and in control throughout. Many clients find it reaches things that years of talk therapy haven't touched.
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A standard therapy session is 50 minutes. An EMDR intensive is a 2 to 4 hour block of dedicated time for deep processing, held in person in Gaithersburg, MD. The extended format allows us to work at the pace of your nervous system without having to stop and start every week. Rather than spending the first 15 minutes re-orienting from where we left off, we can move through multiple layers of processing in a single container, with grounding, integration time, and pacing built in throughout. Intensives are not about pushing harder. They're about creating the spacious, uninterrupted time that trauma healing often requires. They tend to suit people who have plateaued in weekly therapy, can't commit to long-term weekly sessions, or want to go deeper in a concentrated way.
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Internal Family Systems, or IFS, is a therapy framework that understands the mind as made up of multiple parts, each with its own perspective, feelings, and protective role. Some parts developed to keep you safe in environments that weren't. Some carry burdens from old wounds. IFS-informed therapy helps you build a relationship with those parts rather than fighting them, so the inner critic, the people-pleaser, the one who shuts down under pressure, can be understood and cared for rather than overridden. The result is a sense of internal steadiness that doesn't depend on everything being under control.
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Somatic therapy is any therapeutic approach that works directly with the body, not just with thoughts and feelings. The premise is that trauma and chronic stress are stored somatically, in the body's patterns of tension, bracing, and dysregulation, and that healing needs to include the body to be complete. In practice, somatic work might involve noticing physical sensations during a conversation, slowing down to track what happens in the body when a particular memory or belief comes up, or using breath and movement to support nervous system regulation. I integrate somatic approaches throughout therapy because I've found that the body often holds what the mind has been trying to move past for years.
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Sessions are 50 minutes and collaborative rather than scripted. We typically start with a check-in on what has come up since we last met, then move into whatever is most present for you that day. Sometimes that means working through something concrete, a stuck pattern, a relationship dynamic, something that happened this week. Sometimes it means slowing down and looking at what's underneath the surface issue. I follow your lead while also noticing things you might not be able to see yet. Depending on where you are in the work, sessions may include EMDR processing, somatic tracking, or IFS-informed exploration, integrated with the conversation rather than added on as a separate protocol.
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It means your full identity is welcome in the room, and that the therapeutic framework accounts for the systems you move through rather than treating your experiences as purely individual. For clients navigating racial trauma, queer invisibility, intergenerational grief, or the particular exhaustion of being the first or the only in spaces not designed for you, a generic therapeutic approach often misses the mark. Liberation-based practice names systemic harm as real rather than reframing it as a cognitive distortion. Identity-affirming means I'm not asking you to separate who you are from what you're healing from. They're the same thing.
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Look for a licensed clinician, not just a coach or wellness practitioner, with specific training in trauma modalities such as EMDR, somatic therapy, or IFS. Ask whether their approach accounts for the cultural and identity-based dimensions of your experience, not just the clinical symptoms. Ask how they handle moments when you feel overwhelmed in session, and whether the pace of work is something you have input on. At Unbothered Psychotherapy and Wellness, I am a licensed clinical social worker based in Gaithersburg, Maryland, licensed in Maryland, DC, and Virginia, with training in EMDR, IFS-informed parts work, and somatic therapy. I work with adults navigating trauma, attachment wounds, family estrangement, anxiety, and burnout, with a specific focus on BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ clients.
The questions people search at midnight
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Because familiarity and safety are not the same thing, and your nervous system doesn't always know the difference. Attachment patterns formed early in life shape what feels like connection, and familiar dynamics, even painful ones, can register as comfort simply because they're known. Knowing better cognitively doesn't override a nervous system that learned love in a particular way. Attachment-focused therapy works at the level of those early patterns, building the capacity to recognize and tolerate relationships that feel different from what you grew up with, not just understand them intellectually.
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Yes, and it's one of the most common experiences people describe after estrangement. Guilt and relief are not in conflict. They're both true, and they often coexist for a long time. The guilt doesn't mean you made the wrong decision, and the relief doesn't mean the loss isn't real. Estrangement is grief, even when the distance was necessary. Therapy can hold both of those things at once, without pressuring you toward reconciliation or insisting you feel one way about a decision that cost something regardless of which way it went.
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Because people-pleasing isn't a habit, it's a protection strategy. It developed for a reason, likely in an environment where your needs were less important than keeping others comfortable, or where expressing yourself came with consequences. Knowing it's a pattern doesn't automatically make it feel safe to do something different, because the nervous system is still responding to an old threat. Therapy works underneath the insight to shift what the body believes is possible when you take up space, say no, or let someone be disappointed in you.
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Yes. The effort it takes to manage something is often more telling than whether it looks managed from the outside. If keeping your anxiety contained is taking up significant energy, disrupting sleep, affecting your relationships, or leaving you feeling like you're always one thing away from falling apart, that's a real and worthy reason to seek support. You don't have to wait until it stops working before you address it.
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By starting exactly where you are, which is allowed to include uncertainty, unfamiliarity, and not having the right words. Many of the clients I work with are the first in their families to seek therapy, and some carry cultural or religious backgrounds where mental health support wasn't normalized or was actively discouraged. That context is part of what we hold in the work, not something to set aside before you can begin. A consultation is a low-pressure conversation with no commitment attached. You don't have to know what you need before you show up for it.
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Yes, especially for clients whose communities are directly affected by policy changes and ongoing systemic harm. The anxiety, hypervigilance, and exhaustion that come with living in a body that is targeted by political decisions is not a clinical overreaction. It's a rational response to ongoing threat. Therapy can't change the external conditions, but it can help you build internal capacity, regulate your nervous system, identify where you can act and where you need to protect your energy, and process the grief and anger that are appropriate responses to what's happening. My work explicitly accounts for this context rather than asking you to reframe it away.
Cost, insurance, and how to get started
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I am a private pay practice and do not bill insurance directly. This is a deliberate choice. Insurance billing requires a mental health diagnosis in your permanent record, limits the number of sessions your plan will authorize, and can shape the direction of treatment based on what insurers reimburse rather than what you actually need. Private pay means the work is between us, moves at your pace, and isn't shaped by a third party's criteria. Under the No Surprises Act, you have the right to a Good Faith Estimate of costs before your first session, which I provide to all clients.
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Session rates are provided in the Good Faith Estimate before your first appointment. I don't publish rates publicly because I want the cost conversation to happen in context, where we can talk through what level of support makes sense for your situation and what that looks like financially. If cost is a concern, please mention it when you reach out. That conversation is worth having early rather than discovering a mismatch after the process has started.
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Possibly. Many insurance plans include out-of-network mental health benefits that reimburse a portion of therapy costs after your deductible is met. I can provide a superbill, which is an itemized receipt with the codes your insurer needs, that you submit directly to your insurance company for potential reimbursement. Whether and how much you receive back depends on your specific plan. It's worth calling the member services number on your insurance card before your first session and asking specifically about out-of-network outpatient mental health benefits and what your deductible is for those services.
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I am based in Gaithersburg, Maryland and licensed to provide therapy to clients physically located in Maryland, Washington DC, or Virginia. Virtual sessions are available for clients throughout MD, DC, and VA. EMDR intensives are offered in person at my Gaithersburg office, which is accessible from Rockville, Bethesda, Silver Spring, and the broader DMV area. If you are located outside of MD, DC, or VA, personal training and wellness coaching are available to you virtually, but therapy is not something I can legally provide across state lines without additional licensure.
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Most clients begin with weekly sessions, which is where therapy tends to do its most consistent work. As the work progresses, we may shift to biweekly depending on where you are and what makes sense. How long therapy takes depends on what you're working on. Some clients come for a focused period around a specific issue. Others do longer-term work on patterns that have been present for much of their lives. I don't push clients to stay longer than is useful, and I don't rush toward a finish line when there's still meaningful work to do. We assess as we go.
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Therapy is a licensed clinical service focused on mental health treatment and trauma recovery. It involves diagnosis when clinically warranted, evidence-based modalities like EMDR and IFS, and is governed by strict licensure laws. It is only available to clients in MD, DC, and VA. Wellness coaching is non-clinical, future-focused support available to clients anywhere in the world. It is not a substitute for therapy and does not involve diagnosis or crisis management. Personal training focuses on movement, strength building, and nervous system-aware fitness. Sessions are designed with trauma-informed awareness but are not a form of therapy or emotional processing. All three are ethically and legally distinct services, and I'm happy to help you figure out which one fits where you are right now.
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Yes, with a clear understanding that they are separate services with separate purposes. Many clients find that working on both the mental and physical dimensions of their healing at the same time is productive, particularly when nervous system regulation is a goal in both. That said, I maintain clear ethical boundaries between the two roles and the two spaces. What comes up in therapy stays in therapy. Personal training sessions are not a continuation of therapy, and I won't blur those lines. If combining services feels right for your situation, we can talk through how to structure that in a way that serves both.
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Yes, with the standard legal and ethical exceptions. What you share in sessions is confidential. I am required by law to break confidentiality if there is an imminent risk of harm to you or someone else, if I receive a court order, or if a minor is at risk of abuse or neglect. These exceptions are covered in your informed consent paperwork at intake. If you have questions about confidentiality before your first session, please ask. I'd rather you understand it clearly than wonder about it.
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No. I am a licensed clinical social worker, not a prescriber. If medication seems worth exploring as part of your care, I'll say so and can help you find a psychiatrist or psychiatric nurse practitioner who can evaluate that. Therapy and medication often work well together, and I'm comfortable being part of a coordinated care team when that's what serves you best.
Ready when you are
If your question isn't here,
that's what the consultation is for
A free consultation is a 20-minute conversation with no commitment attached. You don't need the right words or a clear sense of what you need to show up for it.