Down-Regulating Techniques (DRTs) for reducing activation.
Dr. Kerri Tom, Licensed psychologist (She/her)
PLEASE NOTE: Dr. Kerri is not accepting new clients at this time.
My interest and focus is to provide services for people with complex trauma (C-PTSD). I work primarily with adults who have had difficulty making progress or are considered to have “treatment resistant” issues, which I often find is because underlying complex trauma has been overlooked and untreated. I also work well with with various presentations of anxiety. I tend to use interventions based in Cognitive Behavioral Theory (I do not ever use CBT exclusively during sessions), Acceptance & Commitment Therapy, Attachment-Focused EMDR, Brainspotting, Ego State Therapy (aka “parts work”) and biofeedback.
Complex trauma is not something that is resolved in 6-8 sessions. This kind of work often takes much longer and can take different paths; some people do chunks of work in therapy, where they spend a few months working on one issue, take a break, and then come back to work on another chunk, when the time feels right. Others do sessions twice weekly (depending on symptom severity) or weekly sessions until they feel solid enough to start reducing frequency of sessions before ending treatment altogether. Because this treatment tends to be longer than it is for someone working on adjusting to a situational stressor, for example, I complete a thorough assessment, occasionally including formal testing, in order to justify the nature and course of treatment to insurance providers.
More about me: I am speeding toward the big 5-0, am a Mom to two boys and a fur baby, and have been married for almost 25 years. I was raised in a fundamentalist Christian community and experienced religious and other trauma. While I value spirituality, I now find I am most connected with that outside of any organized religion. I value diversity of all kinds and believe in equity, as opposed to equality, and I know there is so much work to do in the area of social justice. I was raised in an interracial family and am now in an interracial marriage. I find peace in nature and am happiest with my hands in the dirt.