Pain is a Portal
You’ve been living on the surface of yourself. It’s time to go home.
Most people feel this and keep moving. You stopped. That’s not nothing.
You didn't come here because something broke. You came because something opened.
Something shifted recently, or maybe it's been shifting for a long time, quietly, underneath everything. You've been holding it together on the outside while something inside has been asking, no, insisting, that there is another way to live.
You're right. There is.
Trauma isn't just something that happened to you. It's something that lives in you, reshaping the way you move through the world in ways you might not even recognize yet.
It lives in your body — chronic tension, pain, or fatigue that has no clear medical explanation. A nervous system that feels permanently switched on, or permanently switched off. Difficulty sleeping, or sleeping too much and never feeling rested. Feeling disconnected from your own body, like you're watching yourself from a distance.
It lives in your emotions — reactions that feel bigger than the moment seems to warrant. Numbness, flatness, a sense that you've lost access to joy. Shame that lives so deep it feels like identity rather than feeling. Grief that has nowhere to go.
It lives in your mind — intrusive thoughts or memories that arrive uninvited. Hypervigilance, always scanning for what might go wrong. A harsh inner critic that never quiets. Beliefs about yourself that you know aren't true but can't seem to shake.
It lives in your relationships — pushing people away before they can leave. Staying in dynamics that confirm what trauma taught you about yourself. Cycles that repeat across different people, different contexts; the same wound in a new face.
It lives in your finances — self sabotaging with money, underearning, overspending to numb or distract yourself, playing small in your career. There is a complicated relationship between worthiness and what you allow yourself to receive.
If you read this and felt seen across more than one category, that's not coincidence.
Trauma is a full-body, full-life experience. So is healing.
WHAT TRAUMA ACTUALLY FEELS LIKE
The body keeps the score. But it can also set you free.
There is a version of therapy that teaches you to manage your symptoms. To develop strategies. To cope better with a life that still fundamentally feels like a struggle.
That is not what we do here.
At Ebb and Flow, the work is about getting underneath the symptoms entirely — to the place where the original wound lives, and clearing it at the root. Not managing. Not surviving. Crossing.
The modality at the centre of this work is Brainspotting, a brain-body approach that accesses and processes trauma at a neurological level, in the places talk therapy alone can't reach. Where words run out, Brainspotting begins.
This is not about coping. It's about crossing.
THE WORK
For the ones who are done pretending this is just how life is.
WHO THIS IS FOR
My clients don't come to me because life is hard and they need help coping. They come because they fundamentally refuse to believe that this is as good as it gets.
They are the ones who have done enough work to know that something is still there, underneath, unresolved. The ones who are tired of being functional but not free. The ones who sense, even on the hardest days, that they were built for something that feels nothing like this.
I work with both men and women who are ready to stop managing their trauma and start moving through it. Men especially often arrive here having spent years being told to push through, toughen up, keep moving.
The Threshold was built for the moment you decide that's no longer enough.
THE THRESHOLD
My signature two-day intensive for trauma, shame, and the life waiting on the other side.
Some wounds need more than a fifty-minute hour. Some things have been carried so long, and so silently, that they need space, depth, and complete uninterrupted immersion to finally move.
Day One: The Clearing
This is the deep work. The day we go into the wound, the shame, the story that trauma wrote about who you are. It is not easy. It is not meant to be. But you will not be alone in it for a single moment, and you will not leave carrying what you carried in.
Day Two: The Expansion
This is the day the light comes in. With the weight cleared, we turn toward what's possible — who you are without the wound defining you, what your life looks like when you're no longer building it around what happened to you.
Comprehensive Intake Session
Before we begin, we spend dedicated time mapping where you are, what you're carrying, and how to shape the two days specifically around you.
Immersive Brainspotting Work
Both days center on deep Brainspotting sessions — a brain-body approach that accesses and processes trauma at a neurological level, in the places talk therapy alone can't reach.
Follow-Up Integration Session
After you cross, we meet again to integrate what moved, anchor what shifted, and support the version of you that emerged.
Personalized Workbook
A workbook designed specifically for your journey — something to hold the work between sessions and beyond.
A Carefully Chosen Gift
A tangible marker of the crossing. Something to hold in your hands that says: you were here, and then you weren't the same.
INVESTMENT
The Threshold
TWO DAYS. ONE CROSSING. THE WORK THAT CHANGES EVERYTHING.
Weekdays: $3,675 —
Weekends: $3,905
Available in-person in Lynnwood, Washington, with a virtual option available for the right client. Spaces are extremely limited. If you feel the pull toward this work, trust it.
You arrive at The Threshold as one version of yourself. You cross it as another.
A settling. A spaciousness. A sense of coming home.
WHAT’S POSSIBLE ON THE OTHER SIDE
Clients who cross The Threshold describe something that is difficult to put into words and impossible to unfeel.
They describe relationships that finally feel safe. A body that finally feels like home. A nervous system that knows, perhaps for the first time, what it feels like to simply rest.
They describe looking back at the life they were living before and understanding, with complete clarity, that they were never broken. They were just carrying something that was never theirs to carry forever.
"Old soul, sacred warrior, healer and guide. She honours your deepest struggles with love and integrity and brings you into your own truth and freedom."
You've been waiting long enough.
READY TO BEGIN
This work is not for everyone. It's for the ones who are ready — who feel the pull, who know at some level that what they're looking for isn't more coping strategies but a genuine crossing.
If that's you, I'd love to meet you.
The first step is a consultation — a conversation where we explore where you are, what you're carrying, and whether this work is the right fit. There's no pressure, no script. Just two people deciding together if this is the right door.
In-person in Lynnwood, Washington. Virtual available. Licensed Mental Health Counselor. Brainspotting Practitioner.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Intrusive Memories, avoiding talking about the trauma or avoiding anything that reminds you of the trauma (like location, people, etc), negative changes in thinking and mood, changes in physical and emotional reactions called arousal symptoms such as being jumpy, having nightmares, self destructive behaviors and problems with concentration and memory.
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It’s normal for people to doubt they have trauma if they haven’t been through what we call a Big T Trauma (such as being a combat veteran). Little T Traumas are traumas that override our ability to cope and affect our emotional functioning. Little T Traumas are everyday traumas that impact us such as
Interpersonal conflict
Infidelity
Divorce
Abrupt or extended relocation
Legal trouble
Financial worries or difficulty
Loss of a Pet
Emotional abuse, harassment or neglect
Ongoing criticism or feeling unworthy
Chronic Stress
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I often work with clients who have had childhood traumas without necessarily even labeling them as such. It’s common for people to minimize painful events in their childhood, so I always do an assessment looking for the 7 most common childhood traumas:
Physical, sexual, or emotional abuse
Physical or emotional neglect
Witnessing domestic violence
Living with someone with a mental illness
Substance use/abuse
A relative being incarcerated
Parental separation/divorce
We do a thorough intake assessing traumas. This assessment is one part of a comprehensive review.
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Great Question! In combination with my general intake form and diagnostic assessment form, we will sit down and work through 5 pages together:
Setting goals: it’s very important in trauma therapy, or therapy in general, to come up with goals together. This helps keep us on track and also is very rewarding and motivating when you start to see and experience meeting each goal
ACES questionnaire: also called the Adverse Childhood Experiences Survey. This is a short assessment of childhood traumas listed in the question above.
Listing all traumas from both childhood and adulthood. This can be challenging for people, so we can take our time on this so that you feel supported and safe. This is not only valuable for me as the therapist, but for you the client as well because it shows you a timeline of the adverse events in your life and can increase awareness into the impact they have had on you.
Limiting thoughts and beliefs: this is by far one of the most impactful tools that I use with clients where we go through a list of limiting beliefs and you share which are true to you and how true they feel. Examples include: I’m not good enough, I have to be perfect, I don’t trust myself, and I am weak.
We end on a positive page with listing all the positive influences you had in childhood and now. Who or what makes you feel safe, loved, or seen? It can be people, places, pets, etc.
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Acute Trauma: results from a single incident like a car crash or other injury. This results in what most people commonly refer to as PTSD.
Chronic Trauma: repeated and prolonged trauma such as trauma from being in an abusive relationship or being at war. Chronic trauma affects people more deeply than acute because it can create shame, distrust in others, emotional dysregulation and identity issues in addition to common PTSD symptoms.
Complex Trauma: prolonged, repeated and invasive traumatic events that are often interpersonal in nature. This form of trauma affects core aspects of self, emotions, body and relationships. It’s important to note that children and adults can be affected by complex trauma.
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I use two different modalities primarily when helping clients heal from trauma.
Brainspotting: similar to EMDR but with more ability to be intuitive and creative, is a brain based trauma approach that lives in the principle of “where you look affects how you feel.” This is called a Brainspot. With trauma and other adverse events and beliefs, our midbrain has “housed” them into capsules (Brainspots), and by using brainspotting, we access those capsules and process them out so that your brain can integrate them in a healing way rather than keeping them trapped. You can learn more about brainspotting on my Brainspotting page: https://ebbandflowseattle.com/brainspotting
Accelerated Resolution Therapy: a unique approach to trauma treatment where I use hand movements to help you erase painful memories and feelings associated with the trauma. In ART we say “keep the knowledge, lose the pain.” People can feel relief from a traumatic memory in 1-5 sessions! Learn more here: https://ebbandflowseattle.com/accelerated-resolution-therapy
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Research shows that talk therapy is not suitable for trauma because trauma does not live in the part of our brains where language and reasoning live (the prefrontal cortex). Instead, trauma lives in the midbrain and body. The midbrain houses our amygdala, limbic system, neurotransmitters, superior colliculi and Periaqueductal Gray (PAG). Simply put, the midbrain is where emotions, memories, threat, and visual orientation and eye movements live.
The midbrain is older than the frontal lobe/prefrontal cortex and is most interested in avoiding harm, pain, or death. When we perceive threat, our bodies tell our brainstems and our midbrains to react in order to survive. This process does not make it to the frontal lobe where we have executive functioning abilities like problem solving, reasoning, and abstract thought. This is why traumatic memories live in the midbrain and body. Talk therapy focuses on the frontal lobe and can’t access the midbrain.
My analogy is this:
Trauma lives in the kitchen and your trauma is making pancakes. We have to be IN the kitchen to make the pancakes so the pancakes get made (processing trauma). We can spend months and years in a bedroom TALKING about the pancakes, the but they can’t get made because we are in the wrong room of the house.
Talk therapy can actually end up doing harm for clients with trauma because you are circling the drain and not getting better, but instead can be getting re-traumatized instead.
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I believe in treating the whole person, not just the brain. My holistic model of treating trauma includes brain based modalities like brainspotting and accelerated resolution therapy (ART) in addition to:
Reiki for energy healing
Spirituality for healing the Soul and Higher Self
Body focused behaviors such as nutrition, supplements, sleep
Values work to help bring yourself back into living alignment with what matters to you
And “Expansion work,” which is apart of brainspotting where we access your limitless potential, the highest and greatest good and possibility, and your creativity
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I offer both regular sessions and Therapy Intensives. Please set up a consultation if you want to discuss both options to see which one is right for you.
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While the normal session time is 53 minutes, which is the time that insurance companies have said is “adequate,” trauma therapy and appropriate modalities are most effective when there is more time. I offer 90 minute sessions, 2 hour sessions and therapy intensives (anywhere from 4-8 hours in 1-2 days). Brainspotting, ART, and reiki all require more than 53 peoples to really allow the brain and body the space and time they need to dig deeper and access where the trauma is stored. While we can have regular sessions, the healing time for trauma will be longer because the amount of time we are giving your brain and body to do the deep work is cut short.
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There are many ways to set up a consultation. You can use the automatic scheduling option at the bottom of the page or you can complete the Contact Form. You are also welcome to text or call me at (206) 852-3581.
I offer FREE 15 minute consultations. I also offer 30 minute consultations for $60 and 45 minute consultations for $90. If you are someone who has a lot of questions, doesn’t want to feel rushed and wants more time to feel if we are a good fit, please consider the longer consultation appointments.
Located in Lynnwood, WA, Ebb and Flow Counseling is a dual-focus practice combining mental health therapy and nutrition counseling. Specializing in trauma, anxiety, and eating disorders, provider Brooke Brandeberry employs a variety of modalities including Brainspotting, ART, and Reiki. The practice caters to those seeking deep, structural change, offering unique services such as "Therapy Intensives" for rapid recovery, specialized support for therapists, and group therapy, all available in-person or via telehealth. Brooke also offers couples therapy for those who are ready for secure attachment in their relationship.