Therapy on the Cutting Edge

In this episode, I speak with Rachel about using Energy Psychology (EP) and Sound Healing (SH) in her psychotherapy work. Rachel describes how she was originally trained psychodynamically and had been in psychodynamic therapy herself. After Rachel learned about EP from her acupuncturist she pursued training in the approach, and found it was very effective with clients. She also worked with an EP psychotherapist and experienced a significant shift. Rachel explains that EP facilitates changes in subtle energy resulting in shifts in behaviors, emotions, physical symptoms, anxiety, PTSD, performance and other issues. Rachel discussed the most well-known EP approach, Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). Many people have learned it as a technique to help regulate the nervous system. With more in depth training, EFT can be used for a variety of issues one might bring to a therapist. Rachel discusses how she integrates SH into other EP techniques. She has found that it often increases the speed and ease of change. Rachel discussed the significant research support for EP, including numerous double blind, randomized and controlled research studies. Lastly, Rachel shared practical strategies listeners can use to calm their nervous system and also demonstrated the sound produced by her various SH instruments. Rachel Michaelson, LCSW is a licensed clinical social worker in the state of California with over 35 years of clinical experience. Along with providing individual and group psychotherapy, Rachel is a clinical supervisor and consultant, who specializes in energy psychology and sound healing. She is a certified Diplomate in Comprehensive Energy Psychology (D-CEP) and has training in several energy-based therapeutic modalities including Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), Havening Techniques, Advanced Integrative Therapy (AIT), Tapas Acupuncture Technique (TAT,) Psych-K, Trauma Tapping Technique and other energy medicine techniques. Rachel has developed an Energy Psychology protocol called Release Issues Past and Present which she uses with individuals and in groups and teaches to other mental health providers. When working with clients, Rachel often integrates sound healing by utilizing calibrated tuning forks and chimes to facilitate change. For over 25 years Rachel has been providing training to mental health professionals on a variety of topics including Energy Psychology, Sound Healing, trauma informed care, clinical supervision, law and ethics, telehealth, diagnoses, time and paperwork management, and suicide. Rachel is a past chair of the Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology’s Humanitarian Committee.

In this episode, I speak with Nigel about his work with Integrative Attachment Therapy (IAT). He discusses how his studies with Dan Siegel, M.D. and his meditation training in the Tibet Bon Dzongchen, led him to be very interested in what is a “mind”, how it works, what its about, and how ti develops. He discussed how attachment is the basis for the development of the mind, which we create "bottom up in our relation to others. He explained that the key developmental processes for the mind include attachment, care and nurturance, social rank, sexual identify and safety. He said that the novel part of the work that Daniel Brown, Ph.D., the coauthor of Attachment Disturbances in Adults: Treatment for Comprehensive Repair, was using an ideal parental figure to repair what had or had not been established in development. Nigel talks about the three pillars of IAT, where the therapist and client are collaborating on the work they’re doing together at the beginning of the session, doing the imaginal intervention of the ideal attachment figure, and then using metallization to process the experience and gain new awareness. He explained that they are helping a client to connect with the felt experience of feeling safe, seen, being able to trust and other elements of experiencing a secure attachment with this imagined parental figure. He shared that the conditions for a secure attachment include embodied trust, felt safety, being good enough, that its ok to explore, being able to down regulate the nervous system, and knowing your a good person. He spoke about how transference is encouraged to be shared directly with the therapist, and discussed using metallization, rather than using the therapist to provoke transference and letting it build up and then be worked through. We also discussed his work with psychedelics and its ability to help clients to integrate experiences in a different interpretive map. Nigel Denning, M.Psych, MA is a Counselling Psychologist and Director of Integrative Psychology and Medicine in Melbourne, Australia. Nigel is Research Fellow at Australian National University. Nigel has been involved in developing the Three Pillars of Attachment Repair and Integrative Attachment Therapy with David Elliott and Traill Dowie and developing the IAT Training Program. Nigel is a nationally recognized expert in family violence, institutional abuse, trauma and attachment-focused practice. Nigel is also clinical lead in several psychedelic medicine trials and a trainer in psychedelics and holotropic breathwork, having studied under Stanislav Grof. In addition, Nigel is a long-term meditation practitioner and teacher in the Tibet Bon Dzogchen tradition. Nigel has a profound understanding of how Eastern practices affect the mind and their subsequent connection to psychotherapy. Nigel is a jovial and kind person who is passionate about improving the world one mind at a time.

In this engaging discussion, Peter Fraenkel, an Associate Professor of Psychology and expert in last-chance couples therapy, shares insights from his extensive experience working with couples on the brink of separation. He delves into the Creative Relational Movement approach that breaks cycles of conflict by fostering vulnerability and addressing gender dynamics. Peter outlines key principles for effective therapy, suggests actionable strategies for couples, and explores common scenarios they face. His expertise shines as he offers hope for transformative change in strained relationships.

In this episode, I speak with Chandra about her path into trauma-informed work with young children and their caregivers. Raised in San Francisco by parents who worked in child welfare, Chandra was exposed early to stories of trauma and healing. Before age 7, several of her friends lost their parents to cancer, which inspired her to become a doctor. In high school, during an internship on a pediatric oncology ward she noticed that while physical health was prioritized, children’s emotional needs were often overlooked. This realization led her to study psychology. After college, Chandra worked at a residential program with children aged 6–12. She found the children often opened up about trauma during informal moments—car rides, bedtime, or watching TV—highlighting the need to involve caregivers in the healing process. In 1998, Chandra interned with Dr. Alicia Lieberman at UCSF’s Child Trauma Research Program, where she trained in Child-Parent Psychotherapy (CPP), an evidence-based treatment for young children under age 6 who have experienced trauma. She later developed the CPP fidelity framework and co-authored the second edition of the manual. Chandra noted a key challenge: although many parents recognize their child’s trauma, few clinicians are trained to work effectively with young children. Many therapists also avoid discussing trauma directly with young children, which can leave them alone with their experiences. CPP begins with the therapist meeting alone with the caregiver to supportively explore the child’s symptoms, experiences of trauma, the caregiver’s own history, including how past experiences may shape the parent's responses. Then the therapist and caregiver gently acknowledge past traumatic experiences to the child—“speaking the unspeakable”—and help the child process their experiences using developmentally attuned pacing and modalities, including play and art. As children process their experiences they sometimes shift topics or activities or seek physical comfort when they begin to move outside their window of tolerance. Therapists help parents understand this process, attune to their child’s needs, and support their child. CPP has a strong evidence base, including five randomized controlled trials. It has shown positive outcomes for preschoolers exposed to violence and infants and toddlers who experienced maltreatment. Notably, a recent study found CPP is associated with lower epigenetic age acceleration in trauma-exposed children aged 2–6—suggesting a measurable impact at the biological level. Chandra Ghosh Ippen, Ph.D. is a child trauma psychologist specializing in working with families with children under age 6. She is co-developer of Child-Parent Psychotherapy, the associate director of the Child Trauma Research Program at the University of California, San Francisco, and a member of the Board of Directors of Zero to Three. She has spent over 30 years conducting clinical work, research, and training in the area of childhood trauma and diversity-informed practice. She is also an award-winning children’s book author and has written 5 children’s books as well as the free Trinka and Sam disaster series, which has been translated and distributed to over 400,000 families around the world.

In this episode, Heather discusses her background and how she came to working with couples in therapy. She discussed how usually, when a partner in a couple has significant PTSD, it is recommended that each do individual therapy, but as she discussed, that doesn’t mean the couple doesn’t continue to struggle in their relationship. She shared how in her research with couples, where one person was a child sexual abuse survivor, the Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy approach was helpful, but it was difficult to complete Deescalation Stage, since there was a great deal of emotional dysregulation and difficulty with mentalizing. Heather discussed her conceptualization of Complex PTSD and how she began starting with cognitive-based interventions to help clients understand trauma, their reactions to trauma, and learn skills for emotional regulation and mentalizing, which is being able to reflect on one’s own perceptions of the other, what the other may be experiencing/thinking, and how one might be being perceived. She explained how helping improve these skills helps to couple to address the effects of the trauma together and then allowing for the couple to do the relationship work. She talked about refining her Developmental Couples Therapy for Complex Trauma approaches, trained other clinicians, writing a treatment manual and conducting research. Heather also shared that she had recently published a workbook for clients, “Healing Broken Bonds: A Couple's Workbook for Complex Trauma” which goes through Developmental Couples Therapy for Complex Trauma step-by-step from a client’s perspective. She describes how it’s being used not only alongside treatment, but independently by couples and individuals. It can be paired with episodes of her podcast Healing Broken Bonds that help walk people through the concepts. ​ Heather MacIntosh, Ph.D., CPsych is a clinical psychologist, Associate Professor, and Director of the Couple and Family Therapy Clinic at McGill University where she is the recipient of the H. Noel Fieldhouse Award for Distinguished Teaching. Heather is author of Developmental Couple Therapy for Complex Trauma a Manual for Therapists and Healing Broken Bonds: A Couple's Workbook for Complex Trauma. She is also the developer and host of Healing Broken Bonds, a podcast featuring couples dealing with the impacts of complex trauma in their relationships. Developmental Couple Therapy for Complex Trauma is an evidence based, psychoanalytically informed treatment approach, developed by Heather, for working with couples dealing with the impacts of complex trauma. Heather is the author of over 60 peer reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and treatment manuals. She is in demand as a speaker at international conferences and workshops as well as a resource for local and national media in the areas of trauma, couple and family relationships and issues, and queer and trans wellbeing. She leads an active funded research program having been principal researcher on over $500,000 in peer reviewed research grants and an active co-investigator on over $7,000,000 more with other internationally recognized colleagues. Heather’s research primarily examines the impact of early life trauma on the process and outcome of couple therapy. In addition, she studies the experiences of 2SLGBTQIA+ trauma survivors in therapy, in healing their sexual selves, adapting and integrating models of treatment to ensure accessibility and inclusion of Indigenous, racialized, queer, and trans, graduate student therapist trainees and clients. Heather lives and works on land of the Crawford Purchase Mohawk territory “purchased” for settlement by United Empire Loyalists at the end of the American Revolutionary War. MerryMac Farm is in Eastern Ontario, Canada, where she strives to live with the land in peace, and to bring healing through therapy offered in relation with her Icelandic horses, her retired RCMP Musical Ride Horse, three Ojibwe Spirit Ponies, and a cadre of other creatures who bring joy, hilarity, and love to life.

In this episode, I speak with Karen Sprinkel Ancelet about her path to integrating trauma-informed, psychedelic-assisted therapy into her clinical practice. Karen shares how, early in her career, she worked with families whose loved ones had been murdered by a serial killer. She found that the models she had been trained in were not enough to address the profound spiritual trauma her clients experienced as they struggled to make sense of such horrific loss. This realization led Karen to begin practicing Buddhism and eventually to live in Asia, where she deepened her understanding of human suffering. While working with people from Thailand and Tibet who had endured trauma, she witnessed how cultural perspectives shape the ways we make meaning out of tragedy and resilience. She also facilitated group therapy for child sexual abuse survivors, where she discovered that while some approaches were effective for certain individuals, they were not universally helpful. From these experiences, Karen came to conceptualize trauma as impacting the mind, body, and spirit, all of which must be addressed in healing. She describes her initial skepticism toward psychedelic therapies, coming from a place of purism, but shares how her perspective shifted as she learned more about their effectiveness. Immersing herself in advanced training and certification, Karen began working with clients using psychedelics in therapeutic contexts. Karen also discusses the breadth of her training across multiple trauma-healing approaches. She highlights Somatic modalities such as Somatic Experiencing, Hakomi, and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy; Desensitization-based methods like Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) and Brainspotting; and Parts models including Internal Family Systems (IFS), Voice Dialogue, and Ego State Therapy. She explains how client factors often determine which approach is the best fit for a given individual. Throughout our conversation, Karen emphasizes her commitment to helping clients heal from PTSD as efficiently as possible. This integrative vision inspired her book, The Thriving Self: A New Paradigm for Healing the Mind, Body and Spirit and Moving Beyond It, which offers clients a framework to move toward healing without spending years in therapy. Karen Sprinkel Ancelet, LMFT is a licensed psychotherapist with more than 30 years of clinical experience, practicing in California, Colorado, Oregon, Washington, and Michigan. She specializes in trauma-informed care and integrates a broad range of evidence-based modalities, including EMDR, Brainspotting, Somatic Experiencing, Internal Family Systems (Level 3), and HeartMath. Karen is also a Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP) provider with advanced psychedelic training through MAPS, Fluence, and Three Cups. She graduated with a Certificate in Psychedelic-Assisted Therapies and Research from CIIS. In addition to her clinical practice, she serves as a consultant, educator, Certified Clinical Trauma Professional, and Continuing Education provider. A pivotal chapter in Karen’s life was her time living in Asia, where she conducted her master’s research on trauma healing following violent crimes in Tibet, Southeast Asia, and the United States. Deeply impacted by these findings, she returned to Asia for several years to further her exploration. Today, Karen weaves together the ancient wisdom of meditation and mindfulness with contemporary approaches such as EMDR, Brainspotting, Flash, EFT, IFS, and Somatic Experiencing to guide and support her clients in their healing journey.

In this episode, I speak with Sam about his career and what lead him to become an Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy trainer, teaching EFT in The United States and throughout Latin America, S​pain and the Caribbean. Sam discussed how his clients lead him to EFT when, although he had trained in multiple models of couples therapy, his clients were saying they felt like the therapy wasn’t going deep enough for them. He shared that he had been reading about attachment theory and John Bowlby’s work, and then took a workshop in EFT from Sue Johnson, Ph.D. He said he fell in love with the model and explained how it helped him see the struggles of couples he was working within a different light, and through the lens of attachment, he could see beyond their conflicts and struggles and see their protests at disconnection as longing for connection. We discussed how Sue asked him to become a trainer in EFT, and asked him to bring EFT to Spanish-speaking countries, as he was originally from Mexico City and spoke Spanish fluently. Sam shares about the countries he has provided trainings in and we discussed cultural nuances that he has found in Latin American cultures and with other cultures. He discussed how the expression of love and the expectations of closeness are influenced by culture, and also how all human beings, regardless of culture, have the fundamental need for connection and safety. We discussed dynamics in Latin American culture that relate to gender, socioeconomic status, relation to family, collectivism and individualism, and how these may appear in couples therapy. In addition to Sam’s cross cultural work, we also discussed his work on Forgiveness, and a training he had first done with Dr. Michelle Gannon on apologies and how important they are to healing Attachment Injuries. Sam now teaches Master Classes on Attachment Injuries and Forgiveness with fellow Argentinean Trainer Natalia Gilabert. We left off commenting on the book Sam coauthored for the APA called Deliberate Practice in Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy, and trainings he is offering in-person this September in San Diego with Dr. Lisa Palmer Olsen, and online in 2026. Sam Jinich, Ph.D. is a Clinical Psychologist in private practice, licensed in California since 1995, and currently based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He is an internationally recognized Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) Trainer, Supervisor, and Certified Couple Therapist, endorsed by the International Centre for Excellence in Emotionally Focused Therapy (ICEEFT). Sam teaches EFT to therapists across the globe in English and Spanish. In North America, his trainings feature English-language didactic presentations with the option of bilingual experiential role plays—reflecting his belief that Latinx bilingual therapists should learn in the language they are most comfortable with, while deliberately practicing in the language they use clinically. A respected leader in the EFT community, Sam co-founded the Northern California Community for EFT (NCCEFT) and served as its EFT Trainer until 2025. He is also a past president of the San Francisco Psychological Association. Over nearly three decades, he has trained thousands of therapists, taught at multiple universities, published scientific research on trauma and family dynamics, and coauthored the APA book Deliberate Practice in Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy. Sam is the Clinical Director of the San Francisco Consultancy in Emotionally Focused Therapy (SFCEFT). Sam will be co-leading an EFT Externship in San Diego in September 2025, and an online EFT Externship in May 2026. Learn more at www.drsamjinich.com or on the ICEEFT website.

In this episode, I sit down with Zenobia Morrill, Ph.D., who shares her journey into psychotherapy—from a personal confrontation with existential truth to navigating her family’s intergenerational pain. Dr. Morrill reflects on her early experiences as a therapy client, where she encountered traditional frameworks that often fell short, approaches that pathologized pain while ignoring the broader systemic and historical forces at play. Grounded in liberation psychology and critical theory, Dr. Morrill offers a compelling critique of mainstream psychological models that individualize suffering and overlook the impact of power, politics, and culture. We explore how psychotherapy can become a tool for liberation, not by reinforcing institutional norms, but by creating space to challenge and reimagine them in service of opening up possibilities for personhood. Dr. Morrill shares how critical-liberation psychotherapy offers practitioners a framework to question how therapeutic practices may either reinforce alienation or open new paths toward freedom, healing, and fuller participation in society. She reflects on the importance of broadening our range of being, reclaiming repressed parts of the self, and bridging individual pain to collective emancipation. Therapy, she argues, must move beyond static formulations and recognize that social, political, and cultural forces are already present in the room—they are not “add-ons” but essential to the client’s lived experience. This approach does not suggest liberation occurs solely within the therapy room, but asks how the institution of therapy itself—its theories, method, and practices—can be used to support liberatory outcomes. Ultimately, Dr. Morrill calls on therapists to resist objectification of clients and of therapy itself—and to reimagine psychotherapy as a dynamic, relational, and contextually grounded space for transformation. Zenobia Morrill, Ph.D., is a critical-liberation psychologist and psychology professor at William James College. She received her doctorate from the University of Massachusetts Boston and completed her pre- and post-doctoral fellowship at the Yale School of Medicine and at Yale Health, Mental Health & Counseling, respectively. Inspired by her personal and professional experiences with the mental health system, Dr. Morrill emphasizes the power in psychological frameworks as the stories we use to understand ourselves, and the risks presented when these frameworks cannot capture the complex existential, sociocultural, familial, physiological, and tacit dimensions of humanity. Her work centers on the belief that psychological healing must account for these broader meaning systems and political structures that shape individual experience. Her research and clinical interests include psychotherapy process, global mental health, qualitative methodology, theory and philosophy, and critical and liberation psychologies. A recipient of the American Psychological Association’s Sigmund Koch Award for Early Career Contribution to Psychology, Dr. Morrill’s work and Critical-Liberation Psychotherapy model have been recognized and presented internationally.

​In this episode, Laney discusses her experience learning about eye movements from taking a training in Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR). After trying it one time she then found a way to be as direct and quick as possible, which she called Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART). She discusses her approach to utilizing ART to help clients rescript past negative images and narratives. With a background in Gestalt therapy, Laney incorporates rapid eye movements and guided associations to support clients in transforming adverse cognitions into more positive, empowering perspectives. She discovered a way to have the clients brain erase negative images, which cause triggers. Laney has developed this accelerated, directive therapeutic method to address conditions such as ADHD, OCD, eating disorders, generalized anxiety, and depression. She emphasizes the efficiency of ART, noting that clients often experience significant breakthroughs in just a few sessions—sometimes even in a single session. Laney likens the process to a dental procedure: identifying and removing emotional “decay” and replacing it with a metaphorical filling. When clients become emotionally stuck, therapists may employ a technique called Scene Matching, which connects current emotions to past experiences with similar emotional tones, facilitating healing and insight. Much like Fritz Perls’ empty chair technique in Gestalt therapy, ART utilizes metaphorical visualization to allow clients to process unresolved experiences internally. Laney distinguishes ART from EMDR by highlighting its structured, therapist-directed approach, as opposed to EMDR’s emphasis on building a longer-term client-therapist relationship and a free association approach. ART’s clinical precision and efficiency are key to its growing popularity. She explained how today, over 16,000 clinicians have been trained in ART. She discussed research in ART and how in July 2025, Laney and a team of professionals from Yale will begin training clinicians in Kenya. Laney Rosenzweig, MS, LMFT is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist who has been in the mental health field since 1989. Laney is the Founder/Developer of Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART) developed in 2008. She is the CEO of Rosenzweig Center for Rapid Recovery, which trains clinicians in ART. ART has a treatment protocol that is directive, standardized and easy to apply using. It is an eye movement therapy. Her introduction of the Voluntary Image Replacement (VIR), which guides clients to erase negative images from view in their mind, is a unique and powerful way to quickly eliminate triggers and eradicate symptoms. Laney has traveled the globe training licensed mental health professionals in ART and has over 65 ART trainers. Yale University has trained clinicians and in the process of doing a study as well as Mayo Clinic and the Canadian Military. She is available for presentations to civilian and military groups who are seeking an alternative to longer, less effective treatments for trauma and other mental health problems. The website is www.ARTworksNOW.com. There is an intro to ART every 4th Wednesday of the month at 6 pm Eastern and the link can be found on the top of the website.

In this episode, I speak with Alex about his career working with addiction. While there are countless resources for substance-related issues—such as drug, alcohol, and sex addiction—he noticed a striking lack of support when it came to process addictions related to technology use. He shared how he connected with and learned from Dr. Hilarie Cash, founder of reSTART, a pioneering treatment program for technology addiction. Alex discusses his work with parents, helping them implement comprehensive behavioral strategies to support children and adolescents in developing a healthy relationship with technology. In an age where digital exposure is unavoidable and children grow up as digital natives, he explains how we can encourage balance and moderation from an early age to prevent problematic or addictive behaviors from forming. He delves into the unique challenges of treating process or behavioral addictions, which can involve greater complexity than substance-related ones. Alex emphasizes the difficulty of establishing structures that foster intrinsic motivation for self-regulation in children and young adults. He highlights the importance of helping young people connect with their values, become more intentional with their screen time, and take a holistic approach to balance—not just with technology, but across all areas of life. The conversation also explores how parents can coordinate across households to create consistent expectations around technology use and how they can impose meaningful limits even when school-issued laptops have minimal built-in safeguards. Alex concludes by discussing how screen use can become a mechanism for emotional avoidance, which can significantly block personal growth. He underscores the need to prioritize self-care and emotional awareness to prevent this from becoming a long-term negative coping strategy. Alex Basche, LMFT is a psychotherapist based in the SF Bay Area. He works mainly with adolescents and young adults, specializing in the treatment of tech-related behavioral addictions such as gaming, social media, pornography, online gambling & shopping in addition to substance use disorders, as well as frequently co-occurring conditions such as anxiety disorders, ADHD, depressive disorders, OCD, Autism Spectrum, and identity formation issues. In 2017, Alex helped create and found the first in-network Intensive Outpatient Program in the state of California treating technology addiction in adolescents. He has written many therapy groups’ curricula and leads trainings and workshops on topics related to Assessment & Treatment for Process Addictions, Parenting in the Digital Age, Adolescent Anxiety & Depression Treatment and more. Alex serves as a Subject Matter Expert (SME) on the Mental Health Workgroup Advisory Board for Fairplay’s Children’s Screentime Action Network and on the Board of Directors for local nonprofit Adolescent Counseling Services. He continues to co-author and present research on digital addictions and related topics.