Online infidelity therapy in Washington State

Individual Therapy for Partner Betrayal Trauma in Washington

Heal From Infidelity and Betrayal Trauma, Anywhere in Washington


You keep going back through your relationship trying to figure out where the truth stopped and the lies began. You look at photos from old trips and birthdays and can’t tell whether the person smiling next to you was already lying. After going over the same memories again and again, you don’t trust your own read on any of it.

Your partner’s lying hurts, and losing faith in your own judgment and sense of reality has been even harder.

When your partner’s phone pings, your stomach drops before you have a chance to think, and when they mention they’re at the office working late, you picture the worst case scenario.

The places that used to belong to the two of you, like the restaurant from your first date or the drive you took every summer, now come with the same question about whether they took the affair partner there too. You’ve started avoiding those places, and you resent losing them on top of everything else the affair has taken from you.

You also imagine situations you never actually saw, pieced together from a hidden photo you found, or a few lines of a text thread. You’re left asking what the other person offered that you couldn’t, and whether you were ever enough.

You check your partner’s location, compare the timeline they gave you last week with the one they gave you today, and reread their messages looking for word choices that don’t make sense. Your jaw aches, your stomach hurts, and you wake up in the middle of the night from a nightmare more nights than not.

Like most of my clients, you’ve probably found that knowing the facts about the affair hasn’t made healing from it any easier.

→ Learn more about how I work with betrayed partners after infidelity.


Find out if betrayal trauma therapy is right for you by watching the video here…

Talk Therapy Falls Short for Infidelity and Betrayal Trauma

Accelerated Resolution Therapy is a body-based trauma modality.

The reason it works is because the effects of betrayal “live” in different parts of the brain than insight, skills, and understanding.

Having a clearer understanding of the affair, talking it through, or building better coping skills can be useful, but those don’t fundamentally change how your body responds when unwanted thoughts of the infidelity pop up in your day-to-day life.

What makes ART different from most therapy is the pace. Change happens within a session rather than across many months, and my clients tend to describe the memories and images becoming more dull and losing their emotional intensity.



What Life Looks Like After You Heal Betrayal Trauma at the Root

  • Your body stops being on high-alert for more bad news. The jaw clenching, the stomach problems, the tension headaches, the 3am wakeups with your heart pounding stop being your “new normal”. You sleep through the night and your appetite returns. You wake up thinking about the day ahead, not about what your partner did. The normal grief and sadness about what happened is still there, but it becomes possible for you to concentrate at work and show up for your children.

  • The images stop popping up. The scenes that have been showing up in your head when you’re trying not to think about them — the texts you found, the moment your partner admitted to the infidelity, the bank statements that didn’t make sense — stop coming up randomly. And when you do think about them, they feel dull. After the intensive, clients describe the thoughts and images as feeling distant, like something that happened in the past, instead of something that keeps happening to them now. This means the anxiety and rumination stop on their own, without you having to “try.”

  • You stop measuring your worth by what your partner did. When you think about the affair now, you think of it as something your partner decided to do, and you stop asking what’s wrong with you every time the memory comes up. You feel sad that this is what your partner chose, but it no longer reflects on how “good enough” you are. Whether or not your partner chooses you going forward, you know you’re worth choosing.

  • You trust your own judgment again. You make a decision about your relationship, your finances, or your living situation, and you don’t need to run it past three friends and your sister to make sure you’re not crazy. You stop wondering, in the back of your mind, whether you’re wrong about everything else, too. The intrusive thoughts that have been telling you not to trust your partner, not to trust yourself, that you’re going to make a permanent mistake, lose their intensity. You can recognize them as betrayal-driven, not as truth.

  • You have bandwidth to spend on the people you love. Your daughter tells you about her math test on Friday afternoon, and instead of “how was it, mm-hm, that’s great,” you’re listening. As she’s talking, you notice she’s gotten taller. If you’re rebuilding your relationship, you can sit across from your partner and have the hard conversation without feeling like you’re going to throw up. If you’re leaving or if your partner left, you can sleep through your first night in the new place without staring at the ceiling, mentally replaying every sign you missed.

The facts of the betrayal don’t disappear, and you’ll still remember what happened. You’ll think about the discovery, the texts, or the affair partner as something that happened in the past instead of something that keeps happening to you.

If you’re ready to learn about pricing and scheduling, see the rates page.

How We Heal Partner Betrayal Trauma at the Root in One Half-Day

Accelerated Resolution Therapy is an evidence-based trauma therapy. It uses back-and-forth eye movements.

You don’t talk about the betrayal in detail. Instead, you visualize the situation in your mind, as if you’re watching a scene of a movie.

During the session, we work to change the images and physical sensations your brain has stored, so that they stop intruding the way they have been.

In ART we say, “keep the knowledge, lose the pain.” By the end of the session, you’ll still know what happened and remember all of the facts. What you’ll lose is the uncomfortable bodily sensations, the unwelcome thoughts, and other symptoms that have been part of your daily life.

→ For more details about how ART works for betrayal trauma and what to expect, please read my brief article here.


A smiling woman with blonde hair in an updo, wearing a burgundy button-up shirt and black pants in front of a wall covered in green ivy.


About Allyson Clemmons, LICSW
Washington Partner Betrayal Trauma Therapist

My specialization in partner betrayal trauma emerged from years of treating infidelity as a couples therapist.

While couples work was essential for the relationship, I noticed betrayed partners also needed specialized individual therapy that wasn’t available.

Now, I work with betrayed partners in a half-day intensive format so that they can keep the knowledge of what happened and lose the pain that came with it.

You don’t need to manage infidelity trauma indefinitely. You can actually heal it.

Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker in Washington
LICSW #LW61398886

FAQs

Frequently asked questions

Don’t see your question asked and answered? Check out the FAQ page.

Get in touch

Self-Schedule or Contact Me Below

If you already know you would like to get scheduled, please do so using my secure, HIPAA-compliant calendar below. No need to contact me first unless you want to.

You’ll choose your preferred day and time for your intensive and pay your booking deposit. Within 24 hours, you’ll receive an email invitation to complete your new client forms. Then we’ll meet on your scheduled day!

Have a question about logistics before scheduling?

See my FAQ page, or use the contact form to ask me directly (scroll down to use the form). I respond within 1-2 business days, but usually much faster.



For questions, please contact me using the secure, HIPAA-compliant form below.

Online therapy via secure, HIPAA-compliant telehealth

Online Partner Betrayal Trauma Therapy in Washington State


I provide online partner betrayal trauma therapy to clients anywhere in Washington.

Seattle and King County: Seattle • Shoreline • Burien • Renton • Kent • Federal Way • Auburn

The Eastside: Bellevue and the Eastside • Redmond • Kirkland • Sammamish • Issaquah • Mercer Island • Woodinville

North Sound: Everett • Edmonds • Lynnwood • Mukilteo • Mount Vernon • Anacortes • Bellingham

South Sound: Tacoma • Lakewood • University Place • Gig Harbor • Puyallup • Olympia • Lacey

Kitsap, the Olympic Peninsula, and the Islands: Bainbridge Island • Bremerton • Poulsbo • Port Townsend • Whidbey Island • San Juan Islands

Southwest Washington: Vancouver • Camas • Battle Ground • Longview

Central Washington: Wenatchee • Ellensburg • Yakima

Eastern Washington: Spokane • Spokane Valley • Tri-Cities • Walla Walla • Pullman

Independently licensed in Washington, LICSW #LW61398886

Sources

  1. Kip et al. "Accelerated Resolution Therapy for treatment of pain secondary to symptoms of combat-related posttraumatic stress disorder." European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 2014.
  2. Kip et al. "Randomized controlled trial of accelerated resolution therapy (ART) for symptoms of combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)." Military Medicine, 2013.
  3. Multiple studies systematic review. "Accelerated Resolution Therapy: A systematic review of effectiveness and mechanisms." Journal of Traumatic Stress, 2024.
  4. Buck et al. "Accelerated Resolution Therapy: Randomized Controlled Trial of a Complicated Grief Intervention." American Journal of Hospice and Palliative Medicine, 2021.
  5. International Society of Accelerated Resolution Therapy. "Research and Evidence Base in ART." 2024.
  6. "Accelerated Resolution Therapy for Cancer Distress and Post-Traumatic Stress Symptoms: Results of a Pilot Study." PubMed, 2024.
  7. Multiple studies systematic review. "Accelerated Resolution Therapy effectiveness across populations." Journal of Traumatic Stress, 2024.

freedom from partner betrayal trauma

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freedom from partner betrayal trauma —