Who I Work With
Therapy for First Responders
For the people who run toward it. Police, fire, EMS and dispatch, working on the calls that did not stay at the scene.
The Calls That Followed You Home
You can probably list them without effort. The address you still slow down at. The one involving a kid. The pediatric call, the one where the equipment was right there and it did not matter, the one where you knew the family. Most of the shift is routine and then there is the run that got stored differently.
It shows up off duty. A tone drops on the scanner app you never uninstalled and your chest goes tight in your own driveway. You are short with people at home over nothing. Sleep is broken into pieces that no set of days off puts back together. Somebody says "you okay?" and you say "long week", because that answer ends the conversation.
Dispatch carries a version of this that gets overlooked: you heard the whole thing and never got to see how it ended, and you were back on the next call in ninety seconds.
Why This Gets Postponed in This Line of Work
The reasons I hear most are not about the therapy. They are about the job. Concern about what ends up in a file. Concern that a supervisor learns something. The habit of deferring: someone had it worse on that call, so you are not the one who gets to be affected.
So I will be plain about the frame. I am a private practice. I am not your department, not a peer support team, and not an employee assistance program. I do not write fitness for duty opinions or return to work clearances, and I do not report to your agency. What is discussed in session is confidential within the ordinary legal limits I will go over with you before we start.
What a Session Looks Like Here
We work one call at a time, starting with whichever image is loudest, and often it is a detail rather than the incident: a shoe in the road, a face at a window, the sound of a radio in a quiet house. You hold that while I guide the eye movements.
You do not narrate the run for me the way you would write it up. This is not a debriefing, there is no timeline to reconstruct, and I am not evaluating your decisions. Sessions are 60 minutes by secure video, which means you can do it from home on a day off instead of being seen walking into a building in the county you patrol. An ART intensive of up to three hours is an option when your schedule works in blocks rather than weekly slots.
What This Is Not, and When It Is Not the Fit
- Not fitness for duty, psychological evaluation, or any assessment your agency can request from me.
- Not critical incident stress debriefing and not peer support, both of which do something different.
- Not a claim about any outcome, and never a promised number of sessions.
- Not the right fit while alcohol use is the primary thing that needs attention. We would talk about sequencing honestly.
- Adults only, by secure video in Kentucky and Ohio.
This is not a crisis service.
If you are in crisis, please call or text 988, call 911, or go to your nearest emergency room. ART is not appropriate during active psychosis or acute crisis. Individual outcomes vary.
First Responder Therapy by City
Sessions are by secure video anywhere in Kentucky and Ohio, with no office visit. These pages cover the areas people ask about most often.
Fifteen free minutes, off duty and off the record with your agency.
Video or phone, no charge. You can name one call or none at all. We would talk about what is happening now and how I would work with it, and you decide from there.