Specialized Services
Accelerated Resolution Therapy®
Understanding ART
Accelerated Resolution Therapy®(ART) is a brief, structured form of psychotherapy that helps people process distressing memories and symptoms by changing how those memories are stored in the brain. ART removes triggers by erasing negative images from view. ART uses guided eye movements and visualization techniques to reduce emotional and physical reactions to past experiences while allowing you to stay fully in control. Many clients report significant relief in just a few sessions. Trauma and many other issues can often be resolved in just one session.
What to Expect
ART sessions are typically 90 minutes and follow a step-by-step process guided by a trained clinician. You do not need to describe your trauma in detail to benefit. The therapist will guide you through visualization and gentle eye movements to help your brain reprocess distressing images or sensations safely and effectively.
How ART Helps
Clinical studies have shown ART to be effective for trauma-related symptoms, anxiety, depression, grief, phobias, and more. It may be especially useful for those who have not experienced relief from other therapies, such as Cognitive Processing Therapy or Prolonged Exposure.
Key Benefits
• Brief and focused; many clients experience relief within one session.
• No detailed retelling of trauma is required; making it easier for both therapist and client.
• Clients remain in control throughout the session.
• Can address a wide range of emotional and physical symptoms.
• Evidence-based and trauma-informed.
How ART Differs from Other Therapies
Other trauma therapies rely on exposure to create desensitization. This means a client will have to relive the memory of their trauma in a controlled environment as they rehash painful details. With ART, clients don't have to recount their trauma in detail to their therapist, making it a safer, more comfortable process. Plus, there's no homework. ART uses targeted techniques that help you process and resolve trauma effectively, focusing on how memories are stored and experienced without reliving the pain.
ART shares some mechanisms with EMDR, particularly the use of bilateral eye movements and the aim of reducing distress associated with traumatic memories. However, ART differs in its structure and focus: sessions are more directive and include scripted interventions that actively guide the client to replace distressing images. ART is also briefer in format and many issues are commonly resolved in only one session—many clients complete treatment in fewer sessions than traditional trauma-focused therapies such as EMDR, Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) or Prolonged Exposure (PE).
Importantly, ART is not hypnosis. Clients remain fully alert, oriented, and aware throughout the process. Nor is ART a “band-aid” fix; while it can produce rapid relief, the method works through recognized neurological processes of memory reconsolidation supported by emerging research in affective neuroscience.
To learn more about ART, visit the official website at www.acceleratedresolutiontherapy.com for educational videos, research summaries, and training information.
Somatic Experiencing (SE™)
Understanding SE
Somatic Experiencing (SE™) aims to resolve symptoms of stress, shock, and trauma that accumulate in our bodies and nervous systems. Trauma, from an SE lens, is focused on how it shows up in the nervous system and how that dysregulation impacts life. When we are stuck in patterns of fight, flight, or freeze, SE helps us release, recover, and become more resilient. It is a body-oriented therapeutic model applied in multiple professions and professional settings—psychotherapy, medicine, coaching, teaching, and physical therapy—for healing trauma and other stress disorders from a nervous system lens within a practitioner’s scope of practice. It is based on a multidisciplinary intersection of physiology, psychology, ethology, biology, neuroscience, indigenous healing practices, and medical biophysics and has been clinically applied for more than four decades. It is the life’s work of Dr. Peter A. Levine.
The SE approach releases traumatic shock, which is key to transforming patterns that get stuck and impact people’s daily lives. It can be used to support the resolution of PTSD and developmental attachment trauma. It offers a framework to assess where a person is “stuck” in the fight, flight, or freeze responses and provides clinical tools to resolve these fixated physiological states.
How It Works
The Somatic Experiencing approach facilitates the completion of self- protective motor responses and the release of thwarted survival energy bound in the body, thus addressing the root cause of trauma symptoms. This is approached by gently guiding clients to develop increasing tolerance for difficult bodily sensations and suppressed emotions and working to complete defensive responses previously thwarted from bringing resolution to the nervous system and, therefore, to the individual.
Dr. Levine was inspired to study stress on the animal nervous system when he realized that animals are constantly under threat of death yet show no symptoms of trauma stuck in their systems. What he discovered was that trauma has to do with the third survival response to a perceived life threat, which is freeze. When fight and flight are not options, we freeze and immobilize, like “playing dead.” This makes us less of a target. However, this reaction is designed to be time-sensitive, in other words, it needs to run its course, and the massive energy that was prepared for fight or flight gets discharged, through shakes and trembling. If the immobility phase isn’t complete, that charge stays trapped, and, from the body’s perspective, it is still under threat. The Somatic Experiencing method works to release this stored energy and turn off this threat alarm that causes dysregulation and dissociation. SE helps people understand this body response to trauma and work through a “body first” approach to healing. Within their scope of practice, SE Practitioners work with these responses in a way that supports their ongoing work with clients.