Online Therapy Across Massachusetts, Washington State, and Oregon
Therapy for Healthcare Providers: Rapid Relief from Secondary Trauma, Compassion Fatigue, & Burnout
For physicians, nurses, and other medical providers…
There Are Some Cases That Follow You Home…
You did everything right: textbook technique, flawless decisions. But the 34-year-old father of two still died on your table, and his wife’s scream replays in your mind every day.
Or maybe it was that medication error. You caught it, the patient survived...but you can’t stop seeing their face turn blue.
Somewhere along the way, these experiences stopped being just “difficult cases.” They’ve rewired your nervous system.
At work, you step into the trauma bay and smell blood from the motorcycle accident three months ago, your hands trembling before you even see the patient. You find yourself avoiding certain units or procedures that used to be routine.
At home, you pour that second or third glass of wine to quiet the thoughts and images. You lie awake with 3am replays of monitors going flat, your body exhausted but unable to truly rest, even on days off.
The patient who would have moved you to tears during residency now feels like just another case number. Your family has stopped asking about your day because your answers have become too heavy.
Your colleagues are starting to notice that you have become more withdrawn, less quick with clinical insights, and people are asking if you’re okay.
Here are some common ways secondary trauma, compassion fatigue, and burnout show up in the lives of healthcare professionals…
A persistent sense of dread when your pager goes off or you see certain types of cases on the schedule
Getting sick more frequently than your colleagues
Calling in sick more often, especially when you know challenging cases are scheduled
Finding it nearly impossible to engage in conversations that aren’t about work
Feeling disconnected from family members who just don’t understand the weight of medical decision-making
Making medication ordering errors or missing details that you would have caught easily before
Feeling your clinical judgment is "off;" second-guessing decisions that should be routine
Colleagues are starting to notice you seem withdrawn, less collaborative, or slower to respond in critical situations
And, maybe the worst of all, losing the ability to feel empathy for patient suffering
Being a medical professional, you’ve applied the same methodical approach you would use with any patient…
You’ve tried talk therapy, spending months rehashing details that only made memories more vivid.
Medication helped with sleep but didn’t touch the flashbacks, or you’ve avoided psychiatric medications entirely because you know too much about their limitations.
Time off felt helpful… until everything flooded back the moment you returned to the hospital.
…But here’s the problem: Traditional approaches treat trauma like it's a thinking problem that can be solved with logic, time, or medication adjustments.
Trauma gets stored in the primitive parts of your brain: areas that don’t respond to rational thought or willpower. Your amygdala doesn't care that you have an MD or understand PTSD pathophysiology. When triggered, your prefrontal cortex goes offline and you're operating from survival mode. While medication can help stabilize your nervous system, traditional approaches often can't fully process and resolve the traumatic imprints that keep triggering you.
This is where Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART) comes in.
Process Upsetting Memories Without Reliving Them in Detail
Introducing Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART): The Trauma Treatment That Works as Fast as Trauma Happened
Remember how quickly your brain learned to fear? ART helps it learn safety just as fast.
Think of your brain like your hospital’s filing system. Most memories get filed like routine patient charts: organized, accessible when needed, properly filed away when done.
Traumatic memories get filed like emergency alerts that stay active, constantly flagged as urgent and triggered by sounds, smells, or situations that pull your attention from current patients.
ART works like a comprehensive chart review and proper refiling system. Your brain reprocesses traumatic memories and files them as completed cases from your past, not ongoing emergencies.
You retain all the facts and clinical learning from these cases, but they stop hijacking your nervous system during patient care.
Here’s what makes ART different from talking about your trauma for months or years:
Speed and efficiency that matches your life — Most clients see significant relief in 1-5 sessions. Not 1-5 months. 1-5 sessions. Imagine coming to your first appointment on Monday and feeling different by Friday.
Privacy and discretion — You don’t have to describe the painful details. Keep the parts that feel too raw to share. Your brain knows what happened; we just help it file the memory differently.
Impressive research findings —
94% of people complete ART treatment (compared to 60% for traditional therapy)⁴
Veterans with combat PTSD: 61% showed major improvement⁵
Effect sizes 2-4 times stronger than traditional therapy (1.12 to 3.28 for the research-minded)⁶ — traditional evidence-based therapy scores around 0.8 (which is considered good)
Healing through ART is like the difference between looking at an old photo versus being trapped inside it.
How your brain heals itself (with a little guidance)…
Step 1 — Pick a specific memory or feeling. The car accident. The diagnosis. The moment you found those texts.
Step 2 — Hold the memory during bilateral stimulation, like watching scenery from a train window while your brain sorts through its filing system.
Step 3 — Choose new images to replace the painful ones. Your brain keeps the facts but drops the emotional charge.
What Research Shows About ART’s Effectiveness
The Evidence is Clear: ART Creates Profound Change
Military Veterans Study (2013)⁷ — A randomized controlled trial with combat veterans showed 61% response rate for PTSD symptoms. These are veterans who often struggle with traditional therapies, yet over half experienced significant improvement with ART.
Complicated Grief Research (2021)⁸ — Effect sizes reached 2.13 for PTSD symptoms and 1.79 for grief symptoms. To put this in perspective, an effect size over 0.8 is considered “large.” ART’s numbers are extraordinary.
Treatment Completion Rates⁹ — 94% of clients complete ART treatment. Compare this to 60-65% completion rates for traditional PTSD therapies. People stick with ART because they feel better quickly.
Recent Cancer Survivor Study (2024)¹⁰ — Preliminary results show promising outcomes for medical trauma, expanding ART’s applications beyond traditional PTSD.
Systematic Review Findings¹¹ — Across multiple studies, ART consistently shows effect sizes ranging from 1.12 to 3.28; results so strong that researchers double-check their calculations.
Your Professional Experience Can Change After Just a Handful of Sessions…
Through our work together using Accelerated Resolution Therapy, you’ll integrate your professional and personal life again. Not compartmentalizing trauma to get through the day, but showing up fully: as a skilled clinician at work and a present partner, parent, and person at home.
What changes after our work together…
After ART sessions, many healthcare workers report changes like:
Instead of avoiding the trauma bay, you’ll walk in focused on the patient in front of you — not the ghost of the patient from six months ago. The smell of antiseptic will just be antiseptic again, not a trigger.
You’ll make clinical decisions based on current evidence and assessment — not through the filter of that case where everything went wrong despite doing all the right things. Your medical judgment will be sharp and confident again.
During codes, you’ll be fully present — leading the team with the clarity and decisive thinking that made you good at this job in the first place, instead of fighting flashbacks while trying to save someone’s life.
Sleep will return to being restorative — not interrupted by vivid replays of monitors flatlining or the sound of families receiving devastating news. You’ll wake up refreshed, not exhausted from processing trauma all night.
Family dinners will be about your family — not silent processing of hospital horrors. You’ll be mentally and emotionally available for the people you love, not trapped in your own head.
You’ll reconnect with why you chose medicine — finding meaning in patient care again instead of feeling like you’re just surviving each shift. The compassion that drew you to healthcare will feel natural, not forced.
ART doesn't erase your experiences or change who you are. You’ll always have the knowledge and the facts. ART simply helps your brain file those difficult memories in a way that doesn’t keep hurting you.
A 90-minute Accelerated Resolution Therapy session is $500.
While this is a significant investment, the average ART treatment length is 3.7 sessions. This makes ART not only one of the most effective trauma treatments available, but also one of the most efficient, saving you both time and financial resources in the long run.
ART is an investment in your freedom and well-being.
About Allyson Clemmons, LICSW
Real healing happens in the nervous system, not just in conversation.
After 15 years in traditional talk therapy, I now specialize in helping people who have tried multiple approaches but aren’t finding lasting change. Using ART's bilateral eye movements (similar to what happens naturally during REM sleep) we’ll work directly with how traumatic memories are stored in your brain. Most clients experience their breakthrough in 1-5 sessions instead of months or years.
If you’ve hit a wall with other approaches and want freedom from symptoms (not just management), you’re exactly who I work with.
Licensed in Massachusetts, Washington State, & Oregon
100% Online
Contact Me or Self-Schedule Your ART Session Below…
If you already know you would like to get scheduled, please do so using the button below. No need to contact me first unless you want to.
The link will take you to my secure, HIPAA-compliant scheduling tool where you can choose a day and time and pay for your session to reserve it. Within 24 hours, you’ll receive an email invitation to complete your new client forms. Then we’ll meet on your scheduled day!
For questions, please contact me using the form here.
FAQs
Frequently asked questions
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ART works best for people who are genuinely ready to resolve their problem. If there are secondary benefits to keeping the problem (like avoiding certain responsibilities or getting extra attention/care), or if someone isn't fully committed to change, ART may not be effective.
ART is most successful when clients are motivated to put the issue behind them. -
Great question! You don’t need to be a strong visualizer for ART to work. The three things needed for a successful session are: the ability to move your eyes comfortably left and right, the ability to hold a thought or image (even a vague one), and motivation to resolve the issue.
Many clients worry about this, but you can “think your way through” the problematic scene or thought, rather than needing vivid mental pictures. ART works with whatever way your mind naturally processes information.
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I'm so glad you're interested in working together!
I don't offer consultation calls due to my scheduling constraints.
Instead, I've included comprehensive information about working with me on my website so that you can get all your questions answered immediately.I am also in the process of adding video content to my Therapy Service pages as an alternative way of consuming the information (and so that you can get a feel for what it's like to work with me on video!).
Of course, there will always be unique circumstances. If you don't know which service best fits your situation, or you have a question that isn't answered on the Therapy Service pages, please feel free to reach out via the Contact Form below.
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Unfortunately, no. I live in Mexico, and therefore ALL of my work is 100% online. I use HIPAA-compliant video software to meet with clients, so we’ll be able to see each other during the session.
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My fee is a flat $500 for an ART session.
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Most issues are resolved in just 1-5 sessions, depending on complexity. Simple issues like needle phobia or a single traumatic incident typically only need 1 session, while more complex issues like complex PTSD, social phobia, addiction, or OCD may take 4-5 sessions.
Session length is typically between 60-90 minutes. This gives us enough time to complete the full ART process without feeling rushed.
For most issues, weekly ART sessions will suffice. The exception to that is addiction, in which case we will need to meet 2x a week for 2-3 weeks.
For clients who want faster results, ART intensives are also available. An intensive is 4+ hours in one day and can address multiple "scenes" or complex issues all at once. There is a cost difference for intensives, but they allow you to complete your entire treatment in a single day or a weekend, rather than spreading it across several weeks.
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ART sessions are 90 minutes to ensure we have enough time to complete the full process without feeling rushed. While some sessions may only take 60-75 minutes, others require the full 90 minutes if we discover additional “scenes” or underlying issues during the process.
This longer timeframe allows for thorough resolution rather than having to stop mid-process and continue in another session. You'll only be charged the flat $500 fee.
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No, I am not in network with any insurance company. (You may sometimes see my name on outdated provider lists, but I left insurance networks in 2022.)
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Yes, but please be aware that insurance reimbursement varies significantly by plan, and my 90-minute sessions does not fit standard insurance session length expectations (typically 53 minutes).
You are responsible for paying at the time of service, and my record system will email you a Superbill automatically once per month (by request only).
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When you schedule a session, payment is required at the time of booking to hold your spot. For any additional sessions I schedule for you, your card will be automatically charged within 24 hours before the appointment time. Credit cards are securely stored in your private client chart.
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I am currently seeing ART clients on Thursdays from 6am to 4pm Pacific Time. I will be opening additional session options as they become available.
ART intensives are available outside of my typical Thursday schedule but will need about 2 weeks' notice to arrange. -
Once you request a session either via email or using the self-scheduling widget above, I will send you your new client forms. (These forms come from my electronic record system, not my email.)
You are responsible for reviewing and digitally signing them at least 72 hours in advance of your scheduled appointment to avoid an auto-cancellation.
If you don’t receive these forms, please reach out to me at allyson@allysonclemmonslicsw.com.
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Please use my self-scheduling link HERE to schedule your first session.
heal the root cause in 1-5 sessions
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heal the root cause in 1-5 sessions —