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 due to underlying complex trauma being 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, EMDR, Brainspotting, parts work and biofeedback. I am a Parnell Institute Attachment-Focused EMDR Level 3 Therapist.
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. My initial assessment tends to be quite thorough, occasionally including formal testing, in order to justify the nature and course of treatment to insurance providers.
More about me: I have been on this planet for more than half a century, am a Mom of two, and have been married for almost 27 years. I was raised in a fundamentalist Christian community in a small rural town in Canada and experienced religious and other trauma, as well as financial and food insecurity. I defied the values of my religious community and family by attending university, which I only had access to through the financial assistance afforded to me by my First Nations heritage. While I value spirituality, I am most connected with that outside of any organized religion. I value diversity and believe in equity, as opposed to equality, and I am aware 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 face in the sun, toes in the water, or hands in the dirt.