Using Trauma-Informed Psychotherapy, An Integrative Approach to Treating Trauma and Dissociation

In this interview, Rachel Walker explains how trauma-informed psychotherapies like EMDR, Parts Work, Attachment Theory, and Structural Dissociation work better in collaboration than they do alone. She discusses her journey to this realization, and the integrative treatment model which she developed and now practices as a result. This model, which Rachel teaches throughout the United States, moves beyond any one treatment modality to focus on the ways in which ALL trauma-informed therapies overlap. Her work illuminates the bigger picture, helping clinicians and trauma survivors alike to be more oriented within the treatment, and clearer about every aspect of the healing journey - from assessment, to goal setting, to pacing, to the application of interventions. The roadmap which she has developed provides a trauma-informed treatment progression that keeps the healing moving forward, regardless of the level of trauma and dissociation. The end result is a process that can be consistently relied on to work, leaving both therapist and client feeling more hopeful, collaborative, and empowered in the treatment and healing of complex trauma and dissociation. Rachel Walker, LMFT is a trauma-informed psychotherapist and EMDR Approved Consultant practicing in Oakland, CA. She is the winner of CAMFT’s Mary Reimersma Distinguished Clinician Award for 2021 for her innovative contribution to the field of trauma treatment. She has created an in-depth trauma training for mental health professionals called, 'At the Crossroads of Trauma Therapy', which integrates theories and interventions from many of today’s most effective trauma models. Rachel is also the founder and creator of the online platform, TraumaRecoveryStore.com which provides simple tools for improving trauma treatment and promoting the self-healing process. She has written and designed numerous treatment tools for therapists and clients, including the Trauma Recovery Guidebook for Therapists and the Trauma Recovery Handbook for Survivors (in English, Spanish, and Icelandic). Rachel’s therapeutic training began in the arts where she learned to apply play, metaphor, creativity and spontaneity to the work. Her deepest and most heartfelt desire is to inspire trauma survivors, and the therapists who treat them, to hope! With perseverance, patience, curiosity, and human to human contact—recovery is absolutely possible!