When Did You Stop Asking Yourself What You Needed?

The First Time I Learned to Abandon Myself

The first time I learned to abandon myself was when I was 4 years old. I can still hear the inflection in my mother’s voice telling me not to be too loud. This was my indoctrination into patriarchy. My dad was just home from work and he needed time to wind down. In our house his energy was protected above everyone else’s and my mom ran interference keeping me and my brother quiet while he napped, worked, or watched TV.

My mom also worked outside of the home, and on Wednesday evenings she worked late and my dad took care of us. He picked us up from daycare, fed us dinner, bathed us when we were little, and put us to bed. Looking back now, I remember that my mom always left a meal that she prepared on her day off in order to make his life easier.

She did a lot of things to make his life easier which taught me that men’s lives should be made easy by the women that love them. I carried a lot of those things with me into the early years of my marriage. I prepared all the meals, did all of the household chores and shopping. I planned most of our social activities and made sure we spent an equal amount of time with each set of parents. I also worked full-time.

When Being a “Good Wife” Meant Taking It All On

When we had kids and I felt weighed down by postpartum anxiety and OCD, I finally began to realize how much of what I was doing was never discussed. I had unconsciously taken on the brunt of the responsibility in my home while my husband had meals ready, clothes ironed, and lunches prepared for him. This was how women showed love in my family and this type of love was passed down several generations.

When I started to do my own healing work it became obvious why adding a baby into our lives was so challenging. Even if I hadn’t been struggling mentally - I was already working 40+ hours a week, handling all of the household responsibilities with very little outside support. Going back to work while still sleep deprived hit me like a tidal wave. Not only was I drowning in intrusive thoughts and panic, but I had set myself up to fail by trying to be a “good wife.” Taking it all on was what I learned to do in order to be loved.

When Did I Stop Asking Myself What I Needed?

By allowing the part of me to take over that believed she needed to earn love through self-sacrifice, I was held captive by the wants and needs of others. I would try to anticipate what they needed and then use up what little energy I had left to show up for them. I rarely stopped to ask myself what I needed. This made me feel frustrated and resentful.

What I know now is that I was taught to self-abandon from a very young age. I was taught to be a “good girl” and to sacrifice myself for others. It took a while to finally meet myself and begin showing up in the world as my true self - not who others wanted me to be. I was deathly afraid of losing people that I loved through the process.

I did lose a few who were only there to benefit from my over-giving, but I also gained an entire community of people who love the real me. Not for what I can do for them, but because they can trust me to say no when I’m too depleted. They honor and appreciate not having to guess or wonder if what they might ask for is too much, and I love knowing the same about them.

What Parts of Yourself Did You Leave Behind?

I sometimes wonder how different our lives might be if, instead of teaching little girls to be good, we taught them to know themselves.

What if we taught them that the discomfort of someone they love does not automatically mean they have done something wrong? That they are allowed to have needs that inconvenience other people. That love does not have to be earned through usefulness, sacrifice, or making themselves smaller. That saying no does not make them selfish. That their anger, desire, intuition, pleasure, grief, and longing all carry information worth listening to.

Many of us weren't taught those things.

Instead, we became incredibly skilled at reading the room. We learned to notice the subtle shift in someone's voice, anticipate what would make things easier, and adjust ourselves accordingly. Eventually, we became so fluent in everyone else's needs that we stopped speaking the language of our own.

And then one day, we find ourselves asking: What do I actually want? What do I need? Who am I when I'm not trying to be good for everyone else?

Those questions have become some of the most important questions of my own healing.

Because healing self-abandonment hasn't meant that I stopped caring for other people. I still love deeply. I still give. I still take care of the people I love. The difference is that I no longer believe I have to disappear in order to do it.

I get to belong to myself, too.

Group Therapy in San Diego: An Invitation to Becoming

Maybe that's where the work begins—not by becoming someone new, but by remembering the woman who existed before she learned who she needed to be in order to belong.

This is part of the work we will explore in Becoming, my 8-week online healing circle for women. For women looking for group therapy in San Diego, Becoming offers a space to do this work in community from the privacy of your own home.

This isn't a group about becoming better at meeting everyone else's needs. It's a space to begin turning your attention back toward yourself—to explore the patterns you've inherited, the roles you've learned to play, and the parts of yourself you've quieted along the way.

Together, we'll practice listening beneath all the noise of who you should be so you can begin hearing your own knowing again.

You don't have to blow up your life or stop loving the people in it.

You may simply need to stop leaving yourself out of it.

If something in you recognizes herself in these words, I would love to welcome you into Becoming.

Alicia Taverner, LMFT, is a licensed marriage and family therapist who helps couples heal after infidelity, years of resentment, and the exhaustion of feeling stuck in the same painful patterns.

Her work helps partners begin to understand each other again, rebuild appreciation, and create lasting change with a focused, supportive approach. Alicia uses brain based techniques, including Brainspotting and ketamine assisted psychotherapy, in an intensive format that gives couples more room to heal without the start and stop of weekly sessions.

Learn more about Alicia’s work with affair recovery intensives, relationship therapy, and ketamine therapy, or visit her About page.

Trauma Therapy for Women: Why You Keep Repeating the Same Relationship Patterns

She enters into relationships quickly - you’re either in her inner circle, or you’re out. There is no in-between. Romances begin over drinks in an evening and it’s not until the end of the next week that he’s going back to his place for the first time since they met. 

They quickly become inseparable and everything feels so good. 

They ask little about each other’s past. She’s captivated by his charm and infatuation with her. It's months before she meets any of his friends, learns more about his background, and starts putting a full picture together about who he really is. 

She slowly begins to forget about the life she had before him. It feels good to be wanted in this way - she feels like she’s his everything and he tells her as much. 

A few months later his rage spews onto someone who snags a parking spot from him, she feels afraid but since his anger wasn’t directed at her, she reminds herself of all the fun they’ve been having and how he's probably just stressed about work. 

Over the next few months she starts to see the anger surface more and more. Work has been really busy and he just wants to keep seeing her as much as possible. Of course this is why he’s short. She continues to find ways to excuse his outbursts which are now starting to happen more frequently. 

Fast forward 5 years later… 

She is now on my couch. They’ve had a child together and the last couple of years have been hell. He goes from blowing up at her to telling her she’s the greatest thing that’s ever happened to him. She’s tired of being devalued, insulted, manipulated, and gaslit. 

She’s ready to end the relationship but constantly wavers in her decision. He’s never hit her, and when things are good, they’re really good but she’s worried that their child will grow up thinking this is normal. 

Bending over backwards to keep him happy feels like a full-time job on top of her own work and caring for their child. She feels trapped and she can see the cycle very clearly. 

She’s read all the books, she’s listened to the podcasts, and by the time she comes to see me she can also identify that this pattern comes from her childhood. She can clearly see that life in her family of origin was traumatic and that was where she learned to fawn and shapeshift into who her caregivers needed her to be in order to avoid their abuse. 

This was also where she learned that relationships are supposed to be hard. 

“If I know better, then why do I keep doing the same thing?” 

Why Trauma Therapy for Women Looks Beyond Thoughts

This is one of the most common questions I hear from women who walk into my office.

They've done everything they know to do. They've read the books, listened to the podcasts, journaled, meditated, and spent years trying to understand themselves. Many have already been in therapy and can clearly identify how childhood experiences shaped the way they relate to others.

Yet they continue to find themselves in relationships that feel painfully familiar.

This is one of the reasons I believe trauma therapy for women has to go beyond insight alone.

Understanding your story matters. Naming what happened matters. But healing doesn't happen simply because you know where your patterns came from.

Our nervous systems don't speak the language of logic.

They speak the language of experience.

Trauma Lives in the Body

One of the biggest misconceptions about trauma is that it only refers to catastrophic events.

Trauma can certainly include abuse, violence, or neglect, but it can also develop from growing up in a home where love felt unpredictable, emotions weren't safe to express, or your needs consistently came second. This is known as complex trauma. 

When this happens, your nervous system adapts to perceived threats.  In order to regain homeostasis and create a feeling of safety within the body and the environment you can take on various roles. 

Maybe you learned to become the peacemaker.

Maybe you became hyper-independent.

Maybe you learned to anticipate everyone else's needs while ignoring your own.

These are brilliant survival strategies and they likely worked for a very long time. 

The problem is that what once protected you as a child often becomes the very thing that keeps you stuck as an adult.

Why Women Stay in Relationships That Hurt

One of the questions women ask themselves most is:

"Why didn't I leave sooner?"

The answer has little to do with how strong they are and everything to do with the confusion they’ve felt in their nervous systems. They often confuse familiarity with safety. 

If chaos was familiar growing up, calm can actually feel uncomfortable.

If love had to be earned, relationships requiring constant proving may feel strangely normal.

These are trauma responses and while there are various ways to heal and change these responses, the most important approach is one that comes from a place of self love, self-compassion and understanding. 

Trauma therapy for women isn't about convincing yourself to make different choices through willpower, shame, or by just trying to change thought patterns alone. 

It's about helping your body experience safety in a completely new way.

Healing Requires More Than Talking

Traditional talk therapy can be incredibly helpful because it creates awareness, offers language for your experiences, and helps make sense of your story.

But after a certain point many women reach a ceiling when it comes to awareness. 

You understand your patterns.

You just can't seem to stop repeating them.

This is where somatic approaches become so powerful.

In my work, I often integrate Brainspotting, Internal Family Systems (IFS), and somatic therapy because these approaches help us access the places where trauma is actually stored.

Instead of trying to think our way into healing, we begin listening to what the body has been trying to communicate all along.

As new experiences of safety emerge, the nervous system begins creating new neural pathways and the old patterns no longer feel like the only option. 

You Are Not Broken

If you've ever looked back at your relationships and wondered how you ended up there, I want you to hear this: You are not broken.

Your nervous system adapted in exactly the way it believed it needed to in order to survive. And while those adaptations are no longer useful, they also don’t have to define the rest of your life. 

Healing isn't about becoming someone new.

It's about remembering who you were before survival became your full-time job.

Ready to Begin Healing?

If this story felt familiar, know that you don't have to continue navigating these patterns alone.

I offer trauma therapy for women through individual therapy and Becoming, my experiential healing circle for women. Together we'll explore the protective patterns that once kept you safe, reconnect with the wisdom held in your body, and begin creating relationships rooted in safety rather than survival.

If you're ready to stop repeating the same story and begin writing a different one, I'd love to support you.

→ Schedule a free consultation
→ Learn more about Becoming

Alicia Taverner, LMFT, is a licensed marriage and family therapist who helps couples heal after infidelity, years of resentment, and the exhaustion of feeling stuck in the same painful patterns.

Her work helps partners begin to understand each other again, rebuild appreciation, and create lasting change with a focused, supportive approach. Alicia uses brain based techniques, including Brainspotting and ketamine assisted psychotherapy, in an intensive format that gives couples more room to heal without the start and stop of weekly sessions.

Learn more about Alicia’s work with affair recovery intensives, relationship therapy, and ketamine therapy, or visit her About page.

Therapy for Therapists: Why Mental Health Professionals Need Their Own Healing Space

You spend your days helping other people untangle their lives.

You sit with grief that has no words. You witness betrayal, trauma, childhood wounds, anxiety, depression, and heartbreak. You help your clients regulate their nervous systems, understand their attachment patterns, and reconnect with parts of themselves they have spent years avoiding.

You hold hope when your clients have lost it. You pour your heart into meaningful therapeutic relationships. You create safety for people who have rarely experienced it, holding space hour after hour, day after day.

And then you close your office door and go home.

Who holds space for you?

As therapists, we become so accustomed to being the helper that we can forget we are human first. We know the theories. We understand the interventions. We can recognize attachment patterns, defense mechanisms, and protective parts from across the room. We spend years studying human behavior and helping others heal.

But there is a difference between knowing the path and walking it.

One of the greatest misconceptions in our profession is that because we understand psychology, we should somehow be immune to the struggles our clients experience. We tell ourselves we should know better. We should have figured this out by now. We shouldn't still feel anxious, overwhelmed, reactive, insecure, or uncertain.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Therapists experience loss. We experience trauma, navigate difficult marriages, parenting struggles, health concerns, perfectionism, burnout, grief, and seasons of questioning who we are. Our own attachment wounds continue to emerge in new ways as life unfolds, inviting us back into our own healing again and again.

Healing isn't something we complete after graduate school or even after years of practicing therapy. It isn't another certification to earn or another training to attend. Healing is a lifelong relationship with ourselves—a willingness to remain curious about the places we've protected, avoided, or explained away.

That's why therapy for therapists isn't a luxury.

It's an ethical investment in both ourselves and the people we serve.

When we continue doing our own work, we become more emotionally available, more grounded, and more capable of sitting with our clients' pain without becoming overwhelmed by it. We become less reactive, less defensive, and more present.

Most importantly, we become safer therapists.

Why Therapists Need Therapy Too

One of the most common questions I hear is,

"Do therapists really need therapy?"

My answer is always the same.

Absolutely.

Not because we're more broken or less capable than our clients. 

But because of the unique emotional demands our profession asks of us.

Every week we invite people into the deepest and most vulnerable places of their lives. We ask them to trust us with memories they've never spoken aloud. We witness the impact of childhood abuse, infidelity, neglect, addiction, loss, trauma, and profound loneliness. We become emotionally attuned to dozens of nervous systems every single week.

That level of presence asks something extraordinary of us.

Our nervous system is one of the primary tools we bring into the therapy room. Clients don't simply hear our interventions, but they experience us. They sense when we're grounded, curious, regulated, and emotionally available.

They also sense when we're distracted, overwhelmed, rushing, or carrying something unresolved ourselves. Even if they never mention it, therapy has a way of slowing down when our own unfinished work quietly enters the room.

I often tell therapists that we cannot take our clients deeper than we've been willing to go ourselves.

I’m sure you’ve had a day where every client that walks through your door ends up bringing up the thing you are right in the middle of processing yourself. Those days are the medicine we need to remind us to do our own work. 

Clients eventually arrive at the edge of our own healing. When they do, it isn't our education that determines what happens next.

It's our nervous system.

It's our capacity to remain present without rescuing, avoiding, intellectualizing, or becoming overwhelmed ourselves.

This doesn't mean we have to be perfectly healed before helping others. None of us ever will be.

It does mean we have a responsibility to remain committed to our own healing.

Without intentionally creating space for our own work, we begin accumulating emotional residue. Experiences that seem manageable at first slowly build over months and years until they begin influencing how we show up—not only with our clients, but also with our partners, children, friends, and ourselves.

Judgment toward ourselves slowly becomes judgment toward our clients and we trade curiosity for certainty. Compassion has the ability to shift into irritation and instead of listening deeply, we find ourselves reaching for interventions because sitting with uncertainty has become uncomfortable.

These changes rarely happen overnight. They are gradual and quiet, which is why they are easy to miss. 

Before long, you find yourself scrolling therapist Facebook groups wondering why you're suddenly dreading sessions, feeling resentful toward clients, or asking colleagues if burnout is simply part of the job. But instead of looking for an echo chamber, this is an invitation back to your own work. 

The Hidden Emotional Burden of Being a Therapist

Most professions allow people to leave work at work, and even though we’d like to think that we can just close the door to our office and start the weekend without taking any of the residual energy leftover from clients, we don't have that luxury.

Every day we absorb pieces of other people's lives.

The couple navigating the aftermath of an affair.

The teenager who was abused by someone they trusted.

The veteran living with PTSD.

The woman grieving a miscarriage.

The executive silently battling depression while appearing successful to everyone around him.

The child caught in the middle of a painful divorce.

These stories don't simply disappear when the session ends.

Even when we've learned excellent boundaries, our nervous systems have still spent hours co-regulating with people who are suffering.

Over time, that takes a toll.

One of the unique challenges of being a therapist is that confidentiality often limits how much we can process our work with others. We can't come home and tell our spouse about the heartbreaking session we just had. We can't call a friend and describe the details that have been weighing on us all afternoon.

Unless we have a quality consultation group where we can talk openly and honestly about what we’re carrying, much of what we carry remains part of our internal world. 

The public often imagines therapists sitting comfortably in a chair, asking thoughtful questions, and offering helpful advice.But what they don't see is the emotional labor happening beneath the surface.

The constant attunement, careful monitoring of body language and shifts in breathing.

We watch closely for the subtle signs that our client’s protective parts are becoming activated in the room and the dissociation that is almost imperceptible. 

There are also the moments when we recognize our client's pain because we've lived something similar ourselves.

Therapy isn't emotionally exhausting because we care too much. It's exhausting because all of this genuine presence and attunement requires enormous emotional energy.

And unlike many helping professions, our work often happens in isolation.

There is no team huddle after a difficult session. We often don’t have time to debrief after hearing devastating news because we have 10 minutes between sessions to write a quick note, use the restroom, and take a drink of water. 

There is no opportunity to release the emotional weight we've been carrying throughout the day.

Instead, we take a deep breath, glance at the clock, and welcome the next client into the room.

Over months and years, those experiences accumulate and without a place to process them, they don’t just disappear. 

They settle into our bodies.

When Unhealed Parts Begin Showing Up in the Therapy Room

One of the greatest gifts therapy offers therapists is helping us recognize our own blind spots.

No matter how experienced we become, every one of us has shadows, or parts of ourselves that remain outside our awareness.

These parts don't disappear because we've read the research or attended another training.

If anything, our knowledge can sometimes make them even harder to recognize.

We can explain our attachment style and we understand our internal family systems. 

We recognize our protective strategies and know exactly why we are reacting.

But knowing isn't the same as healing.

Our unprocessed experiences often emerge in subtle ways.

Perhaps you notice yourself becoming unusually protective of one client.

Maybe another client's story leaves you feeling defensive, impatient, or emotionally flooded.

Perhaps you find yourself pushing a client toward a decision because sitting with their uncertainty feels too uncomfortable for you. 

Sometimes our own unresolved grief makes it difficult to stay present with someone else's, and we find ourselves avoiding further exploration because we don’t want to inadvertently expose our own grief. 

Sometimes our fear of conflict causes us to avoid challenging clients when they most need honesty.

Sometimes our perfectionism leads us to believe we're responsible for every outcome.

These moments aren't signs that we're bad therapists.

They are invitations.

They point toward places within ourselves that still deserve attention, compassion, and healing.

Without our own therapeutic space, these patterns can quietly evolve into countertransference that shapes the work without us realizing it.

Therapy gives us the opportunity to notice these reactions before they begin influencing our clients.

This is a commitment to practicing with humility. 

The truth is, our clients don't need therapists who have all the answers.

They need therapists who know themselves well enough to recognize when their own shit is entering the room.

Signs You May Benefit from Therapy as a Therapist

One of the hardest parts about being a therapist is that we become incredibly skilled at recognizing emotional pain in everyone except ourselves.

We notice subtle changes in our clients' body language. We recognize when they're intellectualizing instead of feeling, and we can identify protective parts, attachment wounds, and nervous system activation almost immediately.

And yet, when those same patterns begin showing up in our own lives, they're surprisingly easy to explain away. We say things like, 

"I'm just tired."

"I've had a busy week."

"This season will pass."

Sometimes that's true.

But sometimes those explanations become ways of avoiding our own inner world.

The reality is that therapists are sometimes the last people to recognize when something inside them is asking for attention.

We are so accustomed to holding everyone else that we forget someone needs to hold us, too.

So how do you know when it's time to return to your own therapy?

You Feel Emotionally Drained Instead of Fulfilled

Therapy is deeply meaningful work. It asks a great deal of us emotionally, but despite its challenges, it should also feel energizing.

Not every day or every session. 

But overall, there should still be moments of curiosity, connection, and purpose. If you consistently leave your office feeling completely depleted, something may be asking for your attention.

You come home craving absolute silence. Your partner asks a simple question and you find yourself feeling irritated. Your children want connection, but all you want is to be left alone.

You begin wondering, "Why does everyone need something from me?"

While this can certainly be a sign of burnout, it can also point toward something deeper.

Sometimes you’ve become so practiced at caring for others that you’ve quietly stopped caring for yourself. Sometimes your own unmet needs begin protesting in the only way they know how. Through the body - through exhaustion, resentment and emotional withdrawal. 

You Need More and More Time to Recover

Everyone benefits from vacations and we all need rest. But if you find yourself constantly looking forward to weekends, holidays, or extended breaks and still find yourself feeling tired even after you’ve taken a break, it may be worth further inquiry. 

Ask yourself:

"Am I tired because I'm working hard?"

Or...

"Am I carrying something that is no longer serving me?"

There is a difference. One requires rest and the other requires healing. If you give yourself time to sit with the feeling of exhaustion for 10-15 minutes instead of pushing it away and moving onto the next thing, you may find a part of you asking for attention. 

You Find Yourself Becoming More Reactive

Perhaps you notice yourself feeling unusually defensive and reactive to people around you . Maybe you're becoming impatient with clients who remind you of someone in your own life.

Perhaps one client's story stays with you for days while another barely affects you.

Or maybe you catch yourself hoping a particular client will finally make the decision you believe they should make.

These moments aren't evidence that you're failing. They are an invitation from your internal system to explore and care for yourself in a way you haven’t for a long time. 

Every strong emotional reaction deserves curiosity and our clients often illuminate the places inside ourselves that are still waiting to heal.

You're Beginning to Lose Compassion

This one is often difficult to admit.

Most therapists enter this profession because they genuinely love people and curiosity comes naturally. Compassion feels effortless.

Until one day it doesn't and you begin to notice yourself silently rolling your eyes, feeling impatient, or wondering why a client keeps making the same choices. 

You may notice yourself feeling frustrated when someone cancels or feeling irritated that another crisis has come up in a client’s life or in the lives of family or friends.  

If you've found yourself here, you're not alone. But compassion doesn’t disappear overnight. It’s often buried beneath layers of exhaustion, unprocessed grief, and nervous system overload.

The goal isn't to judge yourself.

It's to become curious about what your own system is trying to tell you. 

Another common pattern that can be difficult to spot is believing that insight and willpower are all that's needed for change. I've heard therapists say, "If I want something badly enough, I just make it happen." While that mindset may have helped you succeed professionally, it can become a blind spot in relationships and in the therapy room. When you’ve learned to override your own nervous system in the name of achievement, you may unconsciously expect others to do the same. What looks like a lack of motivation is often a nervous system trying to protect someone from pain. 

Sometimes what you call "discipline" is actually a protective strategy you’ve relied on your entire life. It served you well and helped you succeed. But when you assume everyone else has access to that same strategy—or that it's even healthy for them—you risk missing the deeper reasons they're struggling.

You Feel Like an Imposter Despite Years of Experience

Imposter syndrome is incredibly common among therapists.

Ironically, it often becomes stronger as we gain experience.

The more we learn, the more aware we become of everything we don't know.

But sometimes imposter syndrome isn't actually about competence.

Sometimes it's about trust.

Do you trust yourself?

Do you trust your intuition?

Can you sit with uncertainty without believing you're doing something wrong or do you constantly look outside yourself for reassurance?

I've noticed that therapists who have done deep experiential healing often become much more confident—not because they suddenly know everything, but because they've learned to trust themselves and are ok with not knowing it all. 

Their confidence no longer comes from having the perfect intervention, it comes from believing they can remain present with whatever unfolds.

Burnout, Compassion Fatigue, and Vicarious Trauma: Understanding the Difference

These three terms are often used interchangeably but they are not the same, and understanding the difference matters because each one requires something different.

Burnout

Burnout develops gradually and it often looks like emotional exhaustion, cynicism, reduced effectiveness, and the feeling that you simply don't have anything left to give.

Burnout is frequently connected to workload, unrealistic expectations, poor boundaries, or constantly giving without receiving.

Sometimes the answer is changing your schedule, saying no more often, or taking a real vacation. Other times it is revealing something deeper. 

Sometimes your own perfectionism, people-pleasing, or inability to disappoint others keeps you trapped in patterns that no amount of self-care will fix.

You can't breathe your way out of boundaries you aren't willing to set.

Compassion Fatigue

Compassion fatigue is different.

It happens when you've spent so much time caring for others that your emotional reserves begin running dry.

You still want to care, but you don't have access to the compassion that once came so naturally. This doesn’t mean that you’re a bad therapist, it means that you haven’t tended to the parts of you that really need it. 

Vicarious Trauma

Vicarious trauma changes us.

Listening to trauma day after day reshapes the way we see ourselves, other people, and the world. You may notice yourself becoming more fearful, hypervigilant, suspicious, or jaded.

Your worldview begins shifting because you've witnessed so much suffering. When your nervous system has been deeply impacted by the work you do, it shuts down. But this is an invitation to see that need to shut off as an opening to tend to what’s underneath. 

Healing from vicarious trauma requires more than a vacation, it requires intentionally processing what your body has been carrying.

The Blind Spots We Can't See Alone

One of the greatest myths therapists tell themselves is: "If something was really affecting me, I'd know."

But that's rarely how blind spots work.

If you could see them clearly, they wouldn't be blind spots.

Protective parts are remarkably intelligent. They convince us we're simply being productive, responsible, helpful, or professional.

When, in reality, they may be protecting you from vulnerability, grief, shame, fear, or disappointment.

I've worked with many therapists who could beautifully explain exactly why they behaved a certain way. They had extraordinary insight but insight alone wasn't creating change.

Trauma isn't simply stored as a story in the mind, it is held in the body and the heart. True healing asks us to move beyond understanding and into embodiment. To notice what happens in our bodies when a client reminds us of our parents or when a couple's conflict echoes our own marriage.

When someone's grief awakens our unfinished grief or when another therapist's success activates our own insecurity, these moments aren't failures. They're invitations to return to our own work because we are human, and the greatest gift we can offer ourselves is a place to take our own healing. 

What Therapy for Therapists Looks Like

If you've ever been the client as a therapist, you know it's a unique experience.

You sit down on the couch and immediately notice the therapist's office. You wonder what modality they practice and find yourself analyzing their questions. You recognize the interventions they're using, and sometimes you even catch yourself wondering what they might be thinking about you.

It's difficult to turn off the therapist part of your brain because you know the language and understand the theories. You also know exactly how to answer the questions. You can decide how much you want to reveal, how deep you want to go, and if you're not careful, therapy can become another place where you perform instead of a place where you heal.

I've heard therapists say they left years of therapy feeling understood, but not transformed. They gained insight, learned coping skills, understood their childhood, but something felt unfinished. 

That's because there is a difference between understanding your story and allowing your nervous system to experience something new. Therapy for therapists shouldn't simply provide another intellectual understanding of why you are the way you are. It should create experiences that allow your mind and body to integrate what you've known all along.

That kind of healing can't be rushed, and it can't happen if we spend every session talking about our lives instead of fully experiencing them.

Why Traditional Talk Therapy Sometimes Falls Short

Please don't misunderstand me—I believe talk therapy has tremendous value. We all know that the therapeutic relationship carries the most weight when it comes to healing. Having someone sitting across from you validating your experience and co-regulating with you is wonderful. 

You gain insight, psychoeducation, and have someone to put language to your experience. But you already have a great deal of insight. You can explain exactly why we react the way we do.

You know your attachment style and maybe even understand your protective parts but you still find yourself repeating the same patterns. This is not because you’re unwilling to change, it’s because trauma isn’t stored as information. It is stored in the nervous system. 

You can hold the thought in your mind that you are safe while your body continues to react as though it’s not. You have a knowing that your partner truly loves you while your nervous system braces for abandonment every time there’s a conflict. You teach emotional regulation all day long but still struggle to regulate yourself when your own attachment wounds are activated. 

This is why so many therapists begin searching for approaches that move beyond insight alone. 

Why Bottom-Up Healing Matters

One of the biggest shifts in my own healing came when I stopped asking, "Why am I like this?" And started asking, "What is my body trying to tell me?"

For years, I had insight and understood the theories. I could explain my patterns but true healing never came. 

Healing happened when I began experiencing my emotions instead of analyzing them.

My body remembered what my mind had long forgotten. My healing required more than conversation. It required learning to listen to the wisdom of my body. I learned to listen without overriding it, without always having to explain it, and without judgement of it and I’m forever grateful to the community of healers that showed me the way. 

The Modalities That Have Changed My Own Life

I don't recommend approaches simply because I've been trained in them. I recommend them because they've profoundly changed my own life. Every modality I use with therapists has first been part of my own healing journey.

That matters to me.

I never want to ask someone else to walk a path I haven't been willing to walk myself.

Internal Family Systems (IFS)

IFS comes from our own innate wisdom and I was healing using this modality even before I knew what it was called. One of the greatest gifts of IFS is that it helps us move away from self-judgment.

Instead of asking, "What's wrong with me?"

We begin asking, "What part of me is trying to help?"

This non-pathologizing approach helps us understand perfectionism, procrastination, people-pleasing, overworking, and emotional numbing as protective strategies that are all developed for very good reasons.

Understanding those parts allows us to approach ourselves with compassion instead of criticism and does away with the need to relive or reprocess traumatic experiences. 

For therapists who have spent years believing they should know better, this shift can be incredibly freeing.

Brainspotting

Brainspotting has been one of the most profound healing modalities I've experienced personally.

Sometimes words simply aren't necessary and trauma is held as sensations, images, emotions, or implicit memories that exist beneath conscious awareness.

Brainspotting allows us to access those deeper layers without forcing the mind to explain what the body already knows.

For therapists who spend their lives analyzing, Brainspotting offers permission to stop figuring everything out and simply experience what emerges.

Again and again, I've watched therapists discover that the deepest healing happens when they stop trying to control the process.

Somatic Therapy

Many therapists have spent decades living primarily from the neck up. Our profession rewards us for thinking critically, solving problems, conceptualizing cases, and making meaning out of complex human experiences. Those are beautiful gifts, but they can also become the very thing that keeps us disconnected from ourselves. Somatic therapy offers an invitation to come back into relationship with the body—to notice our breath, our tension, our impulses, and the subtle language of the nervous system. Rather than asking us to think differently, it asks us to experience ourselves differently, trusting that our bodies often know things our minds haven't yet caught up to.

Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP)

One of the most transformative tools I've incorporated into my own healing journey has been Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy.

For many therapists, the greatest obstacle isn't a lack of insight.

It's the protective strategies that make surrender feel unsafe.

KAP temporarily softens those defenses, allowing people to access experiences, emotions, and perspectives that may have remained inaccessible through talk therapy alone.

Rather than simply thinking differently, therapists often experience themselves differently, and because KAP creates a window or neuroplasticity in the brain for several days, somatic therapy, brainspotting, or IFS are even more impactful. Healing becomes embodied rather than conceptual.

Of course, KAP isn't appropriate for everyone, but it is an amazing tool I love using when thoughtfully integrated with psychotherapy because it can create profound opportunities for growth.

Why I Offer Therapy Intensives for Therapists

One thing I've consistently noticed is that therapists often wait far too long to prioritize themselves.

They're busy.

Their schedules are full.

They have clients depending on them.

The idea of squeezing another weekly therapy appointment into an already overflowing calendar feels impossible.

Even when they do attend weekly therapy, they often spend the first twenty minutes transitioning into the session and the last ten minutes preparing to leave.

Just as something meaningful begins to emerge...

Time is up.

This is one of the primary reasons I love working in an intensive format. Traditional weekly therapy is incredibly valuable, but it can also feel like stopping a movie every twenty minutes. Just as your nervous system begins to settle and something meaningful starts to emerge, the session comes to an end and you have to shift back into your responsibilities. Therapy intensives allow us to stay with what is unfolding rather than interrupting it. We have the time to move beyond the initial layers of intellectual understanding and into the deeper emotional and somatic experiences where lasting change often occurs.

Many therapists leave an intensive saying something they've never experienced in traditional therapy:

"I finally stopped analyzing myself."

For me, that's one of the greatest compliments I can receive.

Because transformation rarely happens when we're performing.

It happens when we finally feel safe enough to be human.

Alicia Taverner, LMFT, is a licensed marriage and family therapist who helps couples heal after infidelity, years of resentment, and the exhaustion of feeling stuck in the same painful patterns.

Her work helps partners begin to understand each other again, rebuild appreciation, and create lasting change with a focused, supportive approach. Alicia uses brain based techniques, including Brainspotting and ketamine assisted psychotherapy, in an intensive format that gives couples more room to heal without the start and stop of weekly sessions.

Learn more about Alicia’s work with affair recovery intensives, relationship therapy, and ketamine therapy, or visit her About page.

What Happens to the Brain During Affair Recovery? Intrusive Thoughts After Infidelity Explained

If you've found yourself asking, "Why can't I stop thinking about this?"—you're not alone. This is probably the most common question I hear from the people I see in my practice. One of the most painful parts of affair recovery is feeling like your thoughts are completely consumed by what happened. Many people worry that they're stuck, broken, or incapable of moving forward when, in reality, these reactions are a normal response to betrayal.

After discovering an affair, many people feel like their brain has been hijacked and it's all they can think about.

You replay conversations, analyze details, and imagine scenarios you were never a part of.

You search for answers and even when you get them from your partner you wonder if you can actually trust what they are saying.

And no matter how hard you try to "turn it off"... you can't.

It can feel exhausting and scary.

But here's what I want you to understand: you aren't obsessive and you aren't crazy. You're not being dramatic. Your brain is just responding to a traumatic event that has turned your life upside down.

Intrusive Thoughts After Infidelity: What Helps During Affair Recovery?

When betrayal happens, you feel immense emotional pain, but betrayal also disrupts your entire sense of safety.

Your brain had a story: I’m safe in this relationship. I know this person. I can trust what's real.

But an affair shatters that story and when that happens, your brain goes into overdrive trying to rebuild a sense of reality.

This is where intrusive thoughts come in.

These thoughts actually serve a purpose and there is likely a part of you that is keeping you in the looping thoughts as a way to protect you from feeling the pain of betrayal. 

This part of you has probably felt safer being in your head, rather than in your heart, and it believes that if it can just figure it all out, you'll feel safe again. But the problem is that safety doesn't come from information alone.

This is one of the reasons affair recovery can feel so difficult. Your brain is desperately trying to make sense of an experience that fundamentally changed how safe you feel in your relationship. Understanding why this happens is an important part of healing. When you recognize that your brain is trying to protect you rather than torment you, it becomes easier to approach yourself with compassion instead of self-judgment.

In my affair recovery intensives, we slow things down and take the time to get to know the parts of you that are carrying the pain, fear, and uncertainty beneath the intrusive thoughts. As these parts begin to feel heard and understood, something shifts. Instead of staying trapped in mental loops, you can begin expressing your hurt in ways that invite connection, understanding, and validation from your partner.

When pain is communicated through accusations fueled by intrusive thoughts, partners often become defensive and focus on protecting themselves rather than understanding each other. This can leave both people feeling stuck in the same painful cycle. Healing begins when we create enough safety to move beneath the conflict and give voice to the deeper emotions that are longing to be seen and understood.

Why Thinking About It Doesn't Actually Bring Relief

Most people assume that if they just think about it enough, they'll eventually reach some kind of closure.

But instead, the opposite happens.

The more you think, the more questions you have.

The more questions you have, the less settled you feel.

That's because your brain is trying to solve an emotional injury with logic.

But betrayal isn't just a problem to be solved—it's an experience your body has to process.

No amount of mental replaying can fully restore the sense of safety that was lost.

So your brain keeps looping... not because it's helping, but because it doesn't yet know what else to do. Many people enter affair recovery believing that if they can gather enough information, they'll finally feel safe again. While answers can be important, healing ultimately requires more than information—it requires helping your nervous system process the betrayal.

This Is What Affair Trauma Does to the Brain

What you're experiencing is often referred to as betrayal trauma.

It shares many of the same characteristics as other forms of relational trauma:

You may feel hypervigilant and be constantly scanning for signs of danger. You may have intrusive thoughts and find yourself relaying things that happened between the person you love and their affair partner. You might feel flooded with emotions that feel uncontrollable and have difficulty concentrating on anything else. 

Your brain is trying to answer one core question:

Am I safe?

And until your nervous system begins to feel some level of safety again, the thoughts will keep returning.

Not because you're broken—but because your system is doing its job.

In affair recovery work, helping the nervous system regain a sense of safety is often one of the first and most important steps toward healing. This is why affair recovery isn't simply about deciding whether to stay or leave the relationship. Before clarity can emerge, the nervous system often needs support in processing the trauma of what happened. 

So What Actually Helps During Affair Recovery?

One of the biggest misconceptions about affair recovery is that healing happens by forcing yourself to stop thinking about the affair. In reality, healing begins when you stop fighting your thoughts and start understanding what they're trying to communicate.

Rather than focusing on controlling your mind, the goal is to support your nervous system. This starts with recognizing that your reactions are normal responses to a deeply painful experience. As you learn to ground yourself when you're activated and create more structure and safety around conversations about the affair, your system begins to realize that it no longer has to stay on high alert.

Recovery isn't about pretending the betrayal didn't happen or pushing your feelings aside. It's about creating small, consistent experiences of safety—within yourself, with your partner, and within the relationship. Over time, as your nervous system begins to settle, the intensity and frequency of the intrusive thoughts naturally decrease. Not because you've forced them away, but because your body no longer feels like it's in constant danger.

In my couples counseling Rancho Cucamonga practice, I often help couples create these experiences of safety so they can move through affair recovery without becoming trapped in endless cycles of questioning, defensiveness, and emotional overwhelm. As the nervous system begins to feel safer, many people notice that the intrusive thoughts that once dominated their lives begin to lose their intensity. This is often one of the first signs that affair recovery is underway.

You Don't Have to Figure It All Out Right Now

One of the biggest drivers of intrusive thinking is urgency.

The feeling that you need to understand everything right now in order to move forward.

But healing doesn't work that way.

You don't need every answer today.

You don't need to make a final decision today.

What you need first is stabilization.

Because clarity comes from a regulated nervous system—not an overwhelmed one.

When Avoiding the Conversation Makes It Worse

Many couples, especially in the early stages, try to cope by avoiding the topic altogether.

They tell themselves:

"Talking about it just makes things worse."

"We should focus on moving forward."

But avoidance doesn't resolve the trauma—it prolongs it.

When there's no space to process what happened, your brain keeps trying to do it on its own... through intrusive thoughts.

For couples navigating affair recovery, having structured conversations with the support of a trained therapist can help both partners move toward understanding rather than staying stuck in avoidance. Healthy affair recovery requires creating enough safety to talk about what happened without becoming trapped in endless cycles of defensiveness, blame, or withdrawal. While these conversations are uncomfortable, they are often necessary for rebuilding trust.

Final Thoughts

If your mind feels consumed by the affair, it doesn't mean you're weak.

It means your brain is trying to protect you after something that felt deeply unsafe.

The goal isn't to silence your thoughts.

It's to create enough safety—internally and relationally—that your brain no longer needs to work this hard to protect you.

And that is something that happens gradually, with the right kind of support.

Affair recovery is not about forcing yourself to "get over it." It's about helping your mind, body, and relationship heal from the impact of betrayal so that trust, connection, and clarity can emerge again.

If you're looking for couples counseling in Rancho Cucamonga or online throughout California, and you're struggling with affair recovery, know that healing is possible. With the right support, couples can learn how to process betrayal, rebuild trust, and create a relationship that feels safe and connected again.

Alicia Taverner, LMFT, is a licensed marriage and family therapist who helps couples heal after infidelity, years of resentment, and the exhaustion of feeling stuck in the same painful patterns.

Her work helps partners begin to understand each other again, rebuild appreciation, and create lasting change with a focused, supportive approach. Alicia uses brain based techniques, including Brainspotting and ketamine assisted psychotherapy, in an intensive format that gives couples more room to heal without the start and stop of weekly sessions.

Learn more about Alicia’s work with affair recovery intensives, relationship therapy, and ketamine therapy, or visit her About page.

Should You Stay or Leave After an Affair? A Guide to Affair Recovery and Healing After Betrayal

If you've recently discovered an affair, you're probably facing one of the most difficult questions in the affair recovery process:

Should I stay... or should I leave?

For many people navigating affair recovery, this decision can feel overwhelming, urgent, and impossible to answer with certainty. But what I want you to know, especially if you’re in the early stages of this, is that the pressure to decide right now is not actually coming from clarity. It’s coming from your nervous system trying to protect you.

And that changes how we want to approach this entirely.

Why This Decision Feels Impossible Right Now

One of the biggest misconceptions about affair recovery is that clarity should come quickly. In reality, recovering from an affair often creates a profound emotional and physiological shock. Before you can make a clear decision about the future of your relationship, your nervous system first needs time to process what has happened.

When an affair is discovered, most people are thrown into a full-body stress response. Your system shifts into survival mode—fight, flight, freeze, or fawn—and when that happens, your brain begins to narrow its focus. It starts scanning for danger and looking for the fastest way back to safety. In that state, it can feel like there are only two options: stay and fight for the relationship, or leave and get out. The complexity of your situation gets reduced into something urgent and binary.

At the same time, your mind may feel like it’s working overtime, replaying conversations, revisiting moments that didn’t feel right, and trying to piece together a story that finally makes sense. There is often a belief that if you can just figure it all out—if you can connect every dot—you’ll feel some kind of relief. But what’s happening here is not actually resolution. It’s your brain attempting to restore order in a moment that feels deeply disorienting.

The reality is that betrayal is not just something you process cognitively. It is something you experience emotionally and physically. The pain doesn’t live in the logic of what happened—it lives in what it did to you. And while your mind is trying to solve it, healing begins when you allow yourself to feel it, even though that feels like the last thing you want to do.

The Mistake Most People Make When Deciding Too Quickly

In affair recovery therapy, I often see people trying to decide the future of their relationship before they've had an opportunity to fully understand the impact of the betrayal. This is completely understandable, but it can make it harder to make a decision from a grounded place.

When the foundation of your relationship feels like it’s been pulled out from under you, it makes complete sense that you would want to rebuild some sense of stability as quickly as possible. Deciding whether to stay or leave can feel like the fastest way to do that.

But decisions made in urgency are rarely decisions made in clarity.

When you move too quickly, you often bypass the very process that would allow you to make a grounded choice. Your nervous system hasn’t had time to settle, your emotions haven’t had time to move through, and your partner hasn’t had time to show you who they are going to be in response to what’s happened. Without that information, you’re not actually choosing from a place of understanding—you’re choosing from a place of pain.

Over time, as things begin to settle, people often find that their perspective shifts. What felt certain in the beginning can start to feel less clear, and that’s where regret can creep in. Not because the decision itself was wrong, but because it was made before there was enough space to truly know.

What I often tell people is that the real decision isn’t simply whether to stay or leave. It’s whether you are willing to move through this pain together, or whether you are going to move through it separately. Either way, there is discomfort. Either way, there is a process. And that’s important to acknowledge.

Questions to Ask Yourself Before Deciding

Instead of forcing yourself into an answer, it can be far more helpful to slow down and begin asking yourself questions that invite reflection rather than urgency. When you shift from trying to decide to trying to understand, something starts to open up internally.

You might begin by noticing what you are hoping will happen if you stay, and what you are afraid might happen if you leave. You might explore what would actually need to change in order for you to feel safe again, not just in theory, but in a real, embodied way. You can also gently ask yourself whether the thoughts you’re having right now are coming from a place of reaction or from a place of clarity.

There is a distinct difference between those two states. Reactive decisions tend to come with speed. There is often a sense of needing to resolve something immediately, to escape the discomfort as quickly as possible. Grounded decisions, on the other hand, tend to feel slower. They allow for space, for nuance, and for the reality that you may not have all the answers yet—and that’s okay.

When you begin to listen to yourself in this way, rather than trying to override what you’re feeling, you create the conditions for clarity to emerge naturally rather than forcing it.

You Don't Have to Decide Right Away During Affair Recovery (And Why That Helps)

One of the most important aspects of healing after an affair is allowing yourself enough time to gather information. Affair recovery is a process, not a single decision. Giving yourself permission to stay in the process can often lead to greater clarity about whether the relationship can be repaired.

This might look like committing to working through the recovery process together for several months, often around six, not as a promise to stay in the relationship long-term, but as a container to explore what is possible. During that time, the focus shifts away from deciding and toward observing. You begin to see whether your partner is willing to show up in the ways that are required for repair, and whether you are beginning to feel even small shifts in safety and understanding.

Staying in the process means being open to engaging in the work. It means allowing yourself to express your pain, to ask questions, and to begin making sense of what has happened without rushing to resolution. It also creates space for your partner to do their own work, to understand what led to their choices, and to demonstrate whether they are capable of change.

What this approach does is give you real information. Instead of guessing what the future might look like, you start to experience what is actually unfolding in the present. And from there, decisions become much clearer.

What Staying Actually Requires (That Most People Don’t Realize)

Successful affair recovery requires much more than simply deciding to remain together. Rebuilding trust after an affair requires transparency, accountability, emotional honesty, and a willingness from both partners to participate in the healing process.

There is often a misconception that staying in a relationship after an affair is the easier path, or that it simply means choosing to forgive and move forward. But in reality, staying is an active and often deeply challenging process that requires a great deal from both partners.

For the person who had the affair, it requires a willingness to look inward in a way they may never have done before. It means developing a real understanding of what led them to seek something outside of the relationship, and then doing the work to address those underlying issues. It also requires a level of honesty that can feel uncomfortable and exposing, because rebuilding trust depends on transparency, even when the truth is difficult to share.

For the person who was betrayed, staying asks for something equally significant. It asks for a willingness to feel the pain rather than shutting it down, and to remain engaged in a process that takes time and patience. But it’s important to be clear about what staying does not require. It does not require you to abandon yourself, to minimize your needs, or to become someone you’re not in order to keep the relationship intact.

Staying is not passive. It is not about ignoring what happened or pretending everything is okay. It is a process of rebuilding, of understanding, and of addressing patterns that may have existed long before the affair itself. It asks both people to look honestly at themselves and at the relationship, and to be willing to do something different moving forward.

What Leaving Actually Requires

Leaving can sometimes feel like the more straightforward option, especially when the pain feels unbearable. And in some cases, it is the right decision. But leaving is not a way to bypass the emotional impact of what has happened.

The pain of betrayal does not disappear simply because the relationship ends. It still needs to be processed, felt, and understood. Some people attempt to move past it quickly by entering into a new relationship, but what often happens is that the unresolved parts of the previous relationship begin to surface again in new ways.

There are also practical and relational realities to consider. Life may need to be rebuilt in significant ways, and if there are children involved, the relationship does not fully end—you continue to navigate connection through co-parenting, which can bring its own set of challenges and triggers.

What many people underestimate is the depth of the grief involved in leaving. Even when it is the right choice, there is still a loss to be processed. There is an identity shift, a reorientation of your life, and a need to create stability again over time. Leaving can be a healthy and necessary step, but it is still a path that requires support, intention, and healing.

Whether you stay or leave, recovering from infidelity involves grief, healing, and rebuilding a sense of safety within yourself. The affair recovery process continues regardless of your relationship status because the emotional impact of betrayal still deserves attention and care.

How Affair Recovery Therapy Can Help You Decide Clearly

When you are in the middle of this kind of emotional intensity, it can be incredibly difficult to access your own clarity. There are often so many voices—your own thoughts, the opinions of others, the pressure to decide—that it becomes hard to hear what is actually true for you. Affair recovery therapy provides a structured space to process betrayal, regulate your nervous system, and gain clarity about what you truly want moving forward. Whether you are hoping to rebuild trust after an affair or determine whether the relationship can be repaired, therapy can help you make decisions from a place of understanding rather than fear.

It is a place where the focus is entirely on your experience, without an agenda for what you should or shouldn’t do. A good therapist is not invested in whether you stay or leave—they are invested in helping you understand yourself more clearly so that whatever decision you make comes from a grounded place.

Through that process, your nervous system begins to regulate, your thoughts become more organized, and your emotions start to make more sense. You are no longer reacting in the same way, and that creates room for clarity to emerge.

And importantly, you do not need your partner to participate in order to begin this work. You can read more about Relationship Therapy for One. You can gain a significant amount of clarity on your own by exploring your patterns, your needs, and your responses to what has happened. If your partner is not ready or willing to engage, you are still able to move forward in understanding yourself and your next steps.

Closing Reflection

If you are in this place right now, feeling stuck between staying and leaving, I want you to take a breath and hear this:

You do not have to rush.

You are allowed to take your time.

Clarity is not something you force—it is something that develops as you begin to understand yourself, your relationship, and what is truly possible moving forward.

The goal is not to make the fastest decision.

It is to make the decision that you can live with, that feels aligned with who you are, and that you arrive at without regret.

Every affair recovery journey looks different. Some couples ultimately rebuild a stronger relationship through intentional healing and repair. Others discover that separation is the healthiest path forward. Neither outcome is a failure. The goal of affair recovery is not simply saving the relationship—it is helping you heal, gain clarity, and move forward with integrity, regardless of the path you choose.

Get Help with Affair Recovery

Recovering from an affair is one of the most challenging experiences a relationship can face. Whether you're hoping to repair the relationship or simply need clarity about your next steps, specialized support can make a significant difference.

My Affair Recovery Intensives provide dedicated time and space to process betrayal, begin healing after an affair, and create a path forward with greater confidence and understanding.

Learn more about my Affair Recovery Intensives and how I help couples navigate affair recovery.

Alicia Taverner, LMFT, is a licensed marriage and family therapist who helps couples heal after infidelity, years of resentment, and the exhaustion of feeling stuck in the same painful patterns.

Her work helps partners begin to understand each other again, rebuild appreciation, and create lasting change with a focused, supportive approach. Alicia uses brain based techniques, including Brainspotting and ketamine assisted psychotherapy, in an intensive format that gives couples more room to heal without the start and stop of weekly sessions.

Learn more about Alicia’s work with affair recovery intensives, relationship therapy, and ketamine therapy, or visit her About page.