Evidence-Based Methods for Trauma, Relationships, and Recovery
EMDR and Relational Life Therapy (RLT) for individuals, couples, and people in recovery — in West Seattle and online.
Evidence-Based Methods
Thatcher Dynamic Counseling is built around two specialties: EMDR for trauma, and Relational Life Therapy for couples. I also draw on integrative approaches as needed, but these two are where my deepest training and focus are.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
If you've done years of talk therapy and can explain exactly why you react the way you do — but still find yourself flooded, shut down, or blindsided by the same reaction anyway — that's not a failure of insight. Talk therapy is powerful for understanding a pattern; it doesn't always reach the nervous system response underneath it, which lives in the body, not just the story.
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) works directly with that layer. Using bilateral stimulation (guided eye movements or tapping), it helps the brain reprocess distressing memories so they stop firing the same alarm response. As an EMDR therapist in West Seattle, I use it to reduce the emotional charge behind flashbacks, hypervigilance, shame spirals, and reactions that feel bigger than the moment calls for — including trauma connected to addiction, whether it's your own experience or a loved one's. I offer EMDR both in-person in West Seattle and online across Washington State, and I'm trained through the EMDR International Association (EMDRIA), the field's credentialing body.
Relational Life Therapy (RLT)
If you and your partner can recite the "right" communication tools — use "I" statements, take a time-out, reflect back what you heard — but still end up in the exact same fight the moment things get heated, that's not a failure to learn the material. Most couples already know what they're "supposed" to do. The problem is that under stress, you don't reach for the skill — you reach for the strategy that kept you safe long before this relationship existed.
Relational Life Therapy (RLT), developed by Terry Real through the Relational Life Institute, works directly with that gap. RLT names the specific "losing strategies" partners fall into under stress — being right, control, withdrawal, unbridled self-expression, and retaliation — and builds your capacity to catch yourself mid-pattern, in the moment, and choose "full-respect living" instead of just knowing about it afterward. It's direct, sometimes confrontational, and built for couples who are ready to stop circling the same fight and actually change it.
RLT is especially suited to couples navigating trust ruptures, recovery from addiction, and the relational fallout that often lingers long after the drinking or using has stopped. I offer RLT-based couples counseling in West Seattle and virtually across Washington State, trained through the Relational Life Institute.
Integrative Approaches
Alongside EMDR and RLT, I draw on person-centered, cognitive-behavioral (CBT), and existential approaches as needed — the relational and emotional threads that run underneath most effective therapy, regardless of modality. These aren't separate "tracks" so much as the tone and structure I bring to every session: curious, direct, and grounded in what actually helps you change.