West Michigan Trauma Therapy: EMDR, IFS, Somatics & Lake Michigan Healing
My connection to this deep water, these great lakes, goes back to my childhood.
I spent countless hours playing in the sand, swimming through the waters, and gazing at the horizon.
Lake Michigan, in particular, was my calm, perfect place.
And as an adult, I still love it.
I feel a deep, immediate sense of peace when I see the beach, smell the air, feel the sand and wade into the water.
Sometimes we need a strategy that shifts our entire nervous system from the "fight or flight" of stress and loss back to a grounded state of safety.
I've found that the immense, predictable presence of Lake Michigan doesn't just calm me.
It acts as a neurobiological resource that amplifies the effectiveness of the specialized therapies I offer:
Somatics
Brainspotting
IFS
If you are beginning your healing journey here in West Michigan, I want to share the science of why this place matters and how the water supports your peace.
As someone born and raised in Michigan, I’m excited to return with a therapy office in West Michigan.
Serving West Michigan Communities
My office is strategically located to offer compassionate, trauma-focused care and grief counseling to individuals throughout the West Michigan region, including:
Grand Rapids
Holland
Grand Haven
Muskegon
Saugatuck/Douglas
Zeeland
St. Joseph
For those looking for intensive therapy, I welcome clients from around the world to my West Michigan Office.
The Science of Water: Why Blue Space is Necessary
The calming effect of water isn't just a feeling.
It’s a biological fact, backed by research in Environmental Psychology and Blue Mind Theory.
This science tells us that proximity to natural water bodies actively changes our brain chemistry and nervous system function.
Understanding the natural benefit of being near water is the first step toward reclaiming your well-being.
The Neurochemical Reset
When you're coping with grief or carrying the weight of past trauma, your brain is often operating in a state of high alert, what is often called "Red Mind."
Being near the water naturally pushes your brain toward the calmer, more focused "Blue Mind" state.
The presence of the lake is scientifically proven to lower cortisol and adrenaline, directly reducing the physical symptoms of stress, anxiety, and the emotional flooding that comes with grief.
Simultaneously, exposure to the blue space stimulates the production of dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin.
These neurochemicals boost your mood, encourage feelings of connection, and help restore emotional balance.
The Rhythmic Sound of Safety
Think about the steady, consistent sound of the Lake Michigan waves.
There’s a predictable, non-threatening rhythm. The repetitive auditory pattern activates the ventral vagal complex of your parasympathetic nervous system (the "rest and digest" system).
This mechanism sends a signal of immediate safety to your brain, automatically lowering your heart rate and blood pressure.
Being near the sound of waves makes your body more receptive to processing and integration during therapy.
Cognitive Restoration and Awe
When your mind is racing with grief, pain, trauma and rumination, the lake offers a loving, gentle cognitive break.
The effortless way the water captures your attention, the movement of the ripples or the vastness of the horizon, is known as soft fascination.
This allows the part of your brain responsible for intense, demanding focus (the prefrontal cortex) to rest.
Rest restores mental clarity, loosens the grip of intrusive thoughts, and is crucial for healing from mental fatigue. Glimpsing the huge, open horizon can also evoke awe.
The “awe” temporarily shifts our focus away from the intensity of our problems, providing a necessary perspective shift that helps diminish the feeling of being consumed by pain.
Integrated Healing: My Whole-System Approach
My practice intentionally merges the measurable benefits of this "blue space" with gold-standard, evidence-based therapeutic techniques.
EMDR, Brainspotting, IFS, Somatic and Psychedelic Therapy along with creative expression and storytelling are each powerful on their own.
Using these therapies in a healing natural environment can increase their effectiveness, especially for those who find it hard to shift into a healing headspace.
The environment here in West Michigan becomes an extension of the healing container we build together.
Trauma and Nervous System Focused Modalities
Somatic Therapy and Brainspotting
Trauma is stored in the body, not just the mind.
Somatic therapy focuses on tracking physical sensations to complete the natural stress cycles that grief or trauma interrupted. The natural wave rhythm acts as a powerful co-regulator.
Similarly, Brainspotting helps us locate, process, and release trauma stored deep in the subcortical brain. The vast, stable visual field of the lake serves as a stable anchor for this highly focused work.
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing)
This modality helps your brain reprocess traumatic memories to lessen their emotional charge. The immense, stable horizon serves as an external anchor for the mind.
After processing a difficult memory, the unchanging nature of the lake helps your brain solidify the new, resolved narrative.
IFS (Internal Family Systems)
This approach helps you access your core Self, calm, compassionate, and clear, to heal the injured parts of your personality.
The water provides a beautiful metaphor: the deep, quiet, vast center represents your core Self, always present.
The dynamic, changing surface represents the active Parts we work to harmonize.
Expressive and Contextual Healing
Creative Expression and Storytelling
I encourage the use of creativity- whether it's journaling, movement, song, dance, or art- to give voice to emotions that words alone cannot contain.
The sensory richness of the beach environment, from the feel of the sand to the sound of the wind, often unlocks these pathways of expression.
Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy
For those engaging in therapeutic work with psychedelics, the ability to process and integrate powerful experiences in a grounded setting is essential.
The lake's presence offers an awe-inspiring sense of natural stability and safety to help you integrate these often challenging insights into your daily life.
Clinical Settings: Office and Outdoors
I want therapy to feel accessible and customized to your comfort level. You have options for engaging in our therapeutic work:
Office Sessions: Traditional, private, and confidential sessions conducted in my quiet, grounded West Michigan office.
Beach-Based Sessions (Nature Integration): For those who are comfortable with the inherent, beautiful risks of the outdoors, I offer sessions walking on the beach or seated near the water.
While I take every measure to protect your privacy, being outdoors means we accept incomplete confidentiality. For many, the benefit is worth this trade-off.
Expanding the Scope: Moving Through Grief in the Body
Traditional grief counseling often focuses on processing emotions through conversation. However, grief is not just a cognitive process, it's a change that is registered and held deep within the body and nervous system.
Grief often manifests as physical symptoms: a knot in the stomach, tightness in the chest, or chronic fatigue.
Through Somatic Therapy, we gently guide you to notice and track these bodily sensations.
This mindful attention allows the trapped, overwhelming energy of loss to begin moving and releasing, restoring a sense of grounding and equilibrium.
Loss can feel like a part of you is missing, or that you are fundamentally broken. Internal Family Systems (IFS) allows us to work with the "parts" of you that are struggling, the Part that feels angry, the Part that feels numb, and the Part that carries the pain of the loved one's absence.
By accessing Self-energy (your core sense of calm, curiosity, and compassion), you can offer deep healing and acceptance to these burdened parts.
Often, current grief triggers old, unprocessed wounds related to attachment, abandonment, or earlier losses.
Modalities like Brainspotting can be utilized to gently process these underlying emotional points.
This helps ensure that the raw emotional intensity you feel is related to the current loss, and not magnified by decades-old pain.
By working with the brain, the body, and the internal emotional landscape, we help shift from feeling stuck and fragmented to finding a path toward regulation and lasting peace with your loss.
A Note on Cultural Connection
It's important to acknowledge that the therapeutic value of this place is not new.
For the Anishinaabe people, including the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi of the Council of Three Fires, the Great Lakes, or Kitchi-gami ("Great Water"), have long been revered as a living, sacred entity.
Read more about the Anishinaabe here.
I honor the ancient, communal understanding that the power of this water offers purification, stability, and non-isolation, all of which are vital components of emotional healing.
Key Takeaways: Specialized Therapy in West Michigan
As you consider specialized therapy in West Michigan, here are important elements of my offerings:
Brain-Based Healing Approach: We move beyond traditional talk therapy by focusing on established, cutting-edge modalities like EMDR, Brainspotting, IFS, and Somatic Therapy. My goal is to resolve trauma at the nervous system level.
Integrated Treatment for Complex Issues: I thoughtfully combine these methods to safely and effectively treat complex trauma and deep grief, focusing on building the internal resources necessary for lasting emotional regulation and change.
Holistic Grief Support: Grief is a physical and emotional experience. The work here utilizes Somatic Therapy and IFS to gently process loss that is stored in the body, which facilitates true integration and peace.
The Restorative Setting: The West Michigan office provides a calm, restorative environment, with the future option for Nature Integration sessions for grounding and nervous system regulation.
Important Next Step: I am currently not accepting clients, but you can secure your place and be the first to know when scheduling opens by clicking here.
Ready to Start Healing in Michigan?
I know, firsthand, the quiet power of this place.
The lake has been a reliable source of comfort for me since I was a kid, and I believe it can offer the same loving environment for you.
Grief and trauma can leave you feeling isolated and physically drained.
But you don't have to carry that burden alone.
When we combine the depth of evidence-based therapy with the calm offered by our natural environment here in West Michigan, we create a truly healing environment.
