EMDR Therapy Anywhere In California
Four EMDRIA trained therapists. Weekly, couples or intensive. Wherever you are in the state.
You don’t have to live near a good EMDR therapist to work with one.
The Trigger Came Out Of Nowhere
Maybe it was a panic attack in a place you were supposed to be happy. A meeting you've run a hundred times. A prenatal appointment. Your own kitchen at 8pm, for no reason you could point to.
And the thing is, your life is good. Work is going well, the people you love are close, and most days you feel fine. Tired, but fine. So the trigger didn't make sense, which somehow made it worse.
We see this a lot. People who keep everything running and feel a little less while they do it, year over year, until they're standing in their own life like a guest. Not sad. Not falling apart. Just far away, and tired of it, and not sure how to explain that to anyone who'd ask. Then one day your body reacts before you’ve found words for any of it.
That's usually what brings someone to EMDR. Something happened, last spring or twenty years ago, and it got filed in a way that still runs in the background. You've probably thought it through already. Thinking hasn't moved it. EMDR goes after the filed version, which is why it works for people who are done thinking their way out.
If you'd like the full explanation of how EMDR works first, our EMDR and trauma therapy page has it. This page is about working with us from anywhere in California, and what that looks like.
A Small Team, One State
Most EMDR therapists in California work alone, often with one specialty and a waitlist. If they turn out to be the wrong fit, you're back to the search, and the search is the part nobody has energy for.
We're a small, tight-knit group of therapists, all trained in EMDR, all licensed or supervised in California. When you reach out, you get matched on what you came in for. Panic that arrived out of nowhere. A childhood that wasn't safe, showing up now that you're the adult in the room. A family that expects a lot. A relationship to your body, or to sex, that has never quite felt like yours. Those are different people, and they should get different therapists.
We're a queer-owned practice, so if you’re in our community, you won't spend the first three sessions explaining the basics of your life. You can get to the point.
And if the fit is off after a few sessions, you move to someone else here. Nobody starts over.
Our licensed therapists are EMDRIA Certified, and our pre-licensed therapists are more than halfway through the certification process.
Our EMDR Therapists In California
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Alexis Harney, LMFT
California LMFT 155293. EMDRIA certified. Alexis works with complex trauma, childhood trauma and attachment wounds, using advanced EMDR protocols for histories that don't fit in one memory. She sees adults, teens and couples. She has experience providing EMDR for people with traumatic brain injuries. Sessions are $235.
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Daniella Mohazab, AMFT
California AMFT 152240, supervised by Laurel van der Toorn. Daniella works where trauma, sex and identity meet, for people whose relationship to intimacy or their own body was shaped by things that happened to them. AASECT member. Sessions are $190.
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Laurel van der Toorn, LMFT
California LMFT 116695. EMDRIA certified. Laurel works with lawyers, executives and founders who are burned out past the point where a vacation fixes it, and who often find the burnout is sitting on top of something older. Sessions are $275.
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Tatevik Sarkisian, AMFT
California AMFT 148590, supervised by Laurel van der Toorn. Tatevik works with people who can't turn it off: anxiety, perfectionism and the weight of being the first in your family to do something. She brings somatic work from her background as a yoga teacher for clients who feel it in their chest before they can name it. Sessions are $175.
Three Ways To Do This
Weekly individual sessions
Fifty minutes a week for as long as the work takes. Most people start here.
Couples work
When something from before keeps showing up between the two of you. Alexis and Daniella both see couples and are trained in the Gottman Method. There's more on our couples therapy page.
Intensives
Longer sessions over a few days or weeks. Good for people who can't hold a weekly slot for a year, or who are on leave or between jobs and want to use the window while they have it, or who have one specific thing they want to work through and be done with. Details on our EMDR intensives page.
All Our Work Is Online
We started online during COVID and stayed on purpose.
EMDR works well on video, and you're home when something hard comes up, so you can close the laptop and lie down after a session instead of driving back to the office activated.
It also fits into a day with no room in it. Fifty minutes between two meetings is doable. A ninety-minute round trip to an office isn't.
And it means where you live in California stops deciding who you get to see. Los Angeles, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, the Central Valley, or a town with no EMDR therapist within an hour of you. You get the same four options either way.
One rule we can’t bend: you need to be physically in a state where your therapist is licensed during your session. That’s a licensing requirement. All of us are licensed in California, and some of us are also licensed in Colorado, Florida, Michigan, Texas or Washington. If you spend a lot of time in any of those states, mention it in your consultation. It can change who we match you with.
Cost and Insurance
Sessions run from $175 to $275, depending on your therapist.
We're out of network, so we don't bill insurance directly. Many clients get part of the fee back through out-of-network benefits, and we give you a superbill to submit. It's worth a call to your insurer before you book to ask what they cover for out-of-network mental health.
The consultation is free. Twenty minutes with the therapist you'd be working with, so you know who you're getting before you commit to anything.
Getting Matched
The best predictor of whether therapy works is whether you and your therapist fit. To do this, we really do need to have a conversation.
You book a free twenty-minute call. We talk about what brought you here. Then we either get started, or we tell you honestly who'd be a better fit, here or somewhere else.
You don’t need the story ready, or to know whether it counts. If you’re tired of it, that’s enough to start.
Training And Credentials
All of our EMDR therapists completed EMDRIA approved training. Laurel and Alexis hold EMDRIA certification, which takes clinical hours, continuing education, and consultation beyond the basic training. Laurel is also an EMDRIA Approved Consultant-in-Training. Daniella and Tatevik practice EMDR under her supervision; pre-licensed clinicians can't be certified until they're licensed.
What People Come To Us For
Panic that showed up somewhere it didn’t make sense
Feeling far away from a life you like, and not knowing why
Burnout that stopped responding to time off
Childhood stuff that shows up in adult relationships and at work
Anxiety with a starting point you can name, even if you have never said it out loud
Sexual assault and what came after, recent or decades old
One event that changed how you move through the world
Perfectionism that stopped being an asset
Grief that has not moved in a long time
Medical trauma, including births, diagnoses and hospital stays
Difficult family, including in-laws
FAQs: EMDR Therapy
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No, but you need to be physically in a state where your therapist is licensed during your session. Laurel is also licensed in Colorado, Florida, Michigan, Texas and Washington, and Alexis in Florida. Daniella and Tatevik see California clients only.
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Yes. We have been doing it this way for years. The bilateral stimulation works on screen, and most clients find it easier to do difficult work from a room they already feel safe in.
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It depends on what you are working on. A single incident can sometimes resolve in a handful of sessions. Complex or childhood trauma takes longer. It is also rarer than people expect for something to be a true single incident, because one event usually connects to earlier ones. We wrote about realistic EMDR timelines here. Your therapist will give you an honest picture after the first few sessions rather than a number on day one.
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That sometimes happens and it is not a sign the work is failing. We wrote about it in detail here, and it is something your therapist will prepare you for rather than let you discover on your own.
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Most of our clients do. Sessions are online and fifty minutes, so they fit in a workday. If you are past the point where fitting therapy around work is realistic, that is worth saying in the consultation. We help people decide whether a medical leave makes sense, and we support them through it.
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We are out of network. Many clients are reimbursed for part of the fee through out-of-network benefits, and we provide superbills.
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Often, yes. We wrote about how that arrangement works here.
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Longer sessions over a compressed timeframe instead of weekly appointments. More on the intensives page.
A Message From Our Director To Anyone Looking For An EMDR Therapist In California
To my fellow Californians,
I became a therapist here. Graduate school and clinical training in Bay Area community clinics, EMDR basic training at JFK University. Something I noticed early was that EMDR therapists tend to cluster. San Francisco and Los Angeles have them, and a decent number in Sacramento and San Diego. Outside those markets, the picture thins out fast. If you live outside a city, or a county where the two EMDR-trained clinicians both have six-month waitlists, you already know this.
That, and COVID, was the reason we went fully telehealth. Our licenses cover the state, not a zip code. If you are physically in California, you can work with a therapist here, whether you are in Santa Cruz, the Central Valley, a coastal town, or twenty minutes from an office you would never have time to drive to.
EMDR asks enough of you. It is structured, and while it is often faster than people expect, it is also an intense and vulnerable process. It works best with real preparation and careful targeting. Anyone promising you a tidy timeline is guessing. What I can tell you is that I have done this work myself, on my own history, and I have watched it give people back something they had given up hope of reclaiming.
Every therapist in this practice is trained in EMDR. I required it, because I wanted anyone who found us to have access to it, regardless of which clinician they were matched with or which part of the state they were sitting in.
Wherever you are in California, I hope you find someone who fits.
Yours,
Laurel
Laurel Therapy Collective offers online therapy across California and Florida. Alongside EMDR, our therapists work in trauma therapy, couples therapy, LGBTQ therapy, Enneagram therapy, burnout and EMDR intensives. We are anti-racist, body positive and sex positive, and we would be glad to talk with you.