Writings from a Virginia Therapist who loves horses and helping.
Blog
Growing Up With a Narcissistic Parent: How It Shows Up in Adulthood
If you grew up with a narcissistic parent, you probably didn't get a neat little label for it as a kid. You just got a set of rules for survival: read the room before you enter it, keep your needs small, and never, ever let your parent look bad. You became fluent in a...
Can You Do an EMDR Intensive if You’re Already in Therapy?
Short answer: yes. Please keep your therapist; we are not trying to steal them. Longer, more useful answer: this is one of the most common questions we get at Gray Horse Counseling, and it's a genuinely good one. If you've built a solid relationship with a weekly...
Healing Trauma Faster: How EMDR Intensives Help You Process the Past
Trauma has a terrible sense of timing. It shows up uninvited during your work presentation, your kid's soccer game, or at 2 am while you're staring at the ceiling reliving something from twelve years ago in crisp, high-definition detail. Yet when you finally decide to...
What Actually Happens During an EMDR Intensive Day
If you've been circling the idea of an EMDR intensive for a while now — reading about it at midnight, adding it to a mental "someday" list, maybe even opening my contact form and then closing the tab — I want to talk you down off the ledge of not knowing. Because the...
Summer Stress: Managing Expectations When “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year” Feels Like a Lot
Somewhere along the way, summer got recruited into the same marketing department as the holidays. It's supposed to be all lake days, barefoot evenings, and the kind of easy joy you see in sunscreen commercials. And yet — for a lot of adults, summer is actually one of...
Beyond the 50-Minute Hour: Why Therapy Intensives Might Be Your Shortcut to Feeling Better
Let's be honest: adulthood did not come with a manual, and if it did, someone lost it before shipping. Between work, kids, aging parents, and the sheer logistical Olympics of getting anywhere on time, the idea of committing to therapy every single week, indefinitely,...