Trish is a Somatic Experience Practitioner (SEP), a body-centered therapy that is a holistic approach with talk and physical therapy. Its main focus is to heal the impacts of trauma through the processes of the connection of body, mind, nervous system, behavior, and cellular levels. The objective is to help navigate the internal landscape of an individual still caught in survival or defensive orienting responding and move them into exploratory orienting responding, which increases resilience to move in and out of fight, flight, fear, freeze without getting seized up in any one survival pattern. This work helps them move through patterns of undercoupling and overccoupling due to trauma impact, and opens up the possibility of them recoupling or coming back online. This opens up the ventral vagal pathway, specifically the point of social engagement, leading to a sense of feeling anchored, calm, safe, and more expansive in body and mind. She trained for 3 years with the Somatic Experience Training Institute under Gina Ross, Dr. Larry Heller, Dr. Raja Selvam, and Dr. Peter Levine.

Trish has specialized training in NeuroAffective Touch, under the teaching and guidance of Dr. Aline LaPierre, and Somatic Touch taught by Kathy Kain. This type of therapeutic work is an interwoven approach of psychotherapy and touch work. It focuses on bringing balance and connection with the body and mind. Conceptualized by LaPierre as a “polyvagal-informed psychobiological approach”, it promotes interoceptive awareness, unwinding the unspoken stories, the body and energetic systems, and bridging the vital relationship of body and mind. It is both a bottom-up (body-mind) and top-down (mind-body) that encourages the capacity to touch into the depth of emotions, nervous system, and the mind, with the objective to clear the path to aliveness and awaken an innate sense of healing.

Trish is certified in Attachment Focused Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing, taught by Dr. Laurel Parnell and Constance Kaplan. Using the technique of bilateral stimulation, this approach focuses on attachment-repair orientation while processing and freeing stored information that may continue to hold someone back in their life evolution and expansion. It has many layers to healing. One specific landing point is objective memory where the relationship to the old unfinished trauma is awakened, processed, and completed, then integrated; this allows the truth of someone’s story without reliving it. Another specific landing point is a generalization effect where if you target and unlock a specific trauma it can move many traumas that sync up to it without having to go through each trauma individually.

Trish is a certified Deceptive Sexuality and Trauma Therapist (DSTT), a specialization in deceptive sexuality and trauma (DST), offered by The Institute for Sexual Health (ISH). DST Treatment (DSTT) subsumes infidelity, compulsive sexual behavior, and sex addiction and the traumatic impacts the intimate partner or spouse, the relationship(s), children, and family systems, as well as the abuser. This model of treatment embodies the vein of justice that runs through it to heal the systemic injustice that has occurred, often for years. It is a non-shaming approach that provides accurate and authentic information and intervention to help people move towards integrity, intimacy, and integration.

Trish is a leading professional voice in Deceptive Sexuality and Trauma Treatment (DSTT) and is an Adjunct Professor and Faculty Member of The Institute for Sexual Health (ISH), and currently teaches Level 3 of the DSTT Professional Training along with Dr. Omar Minwalla, Licensed Psychologist and Clinical Sexologist. Trish formally trained directly under Dr. Omar Minwalla and was an instrumental part of Dr. Minwalla’s original core clinical treatment team at The Institute for Sexual Health from 2009 – 2015, which is referred to as Dr. Minwalla’s, Sacred Clinical Incubator, giving birth to both DSTT and IVTT, Intentional Vibe Trauma Treatment. IVTT is a treatment for systemic abuse, injustice, and complex trauma, and relevant in particular to survivor-based communities.

Trish is a Certified Sex Addiction Therapist (CSAT), a specialization in addictive and compulsive sexual behaviors, offered by the International Institute for Trauma and Addiction Professionals (IITAP). This training was taken to better understand the field, and what was happening to treat sex addiction populations, and to see how to build a bridge between her work at ISH with CSAT training, and to foster collegial growth, continuing education, and important professional development in this area of treatment.

Trish is a Certified Partner Trauma Therapist (CPTT), a specialization for partners who experience trauma due to an addiction, offered by the International Institute for Trauma and Addiction Professionals (IITAP). This training for partners of sex addictions provides continued knowledge of other perspectives and current approaches being developed in the field, particularly related to an often-marginalized population in survivors of deceptive sexuality.

Trish is a Certified Clinical Partner Specialist (CCPS) working with the Multidimensional Partner Trauma Model (MPTM), a specialization in the treatment of partners of sex addicts and betrayal trauma, offered by the Association for Partners of Sex Addicts Treatment Specialists (APSATS). In her work with intimate partners of deceptive sexuality, APSATS has provided ongoing collegial networking opportunities as they continue to learn about trauma and sex addiction.