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, 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, spending several sessions working on one issue, taking a break, and then returning 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. 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 have been on this planet for half a century, am Mom to two boys and a fur baby, and have been married for almost 26 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 hands in the dirt.