SPECIALTIES

What I work in, deeply.

Trauma and PTSD are the core of the practice. Around that: anxiety, depression, life transitions, and the specific realities of military, veteran and first-responder life.

How I think about the work

People rarely arrive with a diagnosis in hand. They arrive with a description: I am not sleeping, I snap at my kids, I cannot sit with my back to a door, I retired and I do not know who I am. The categories below exist to help you find the right page, not to sort you into a label. In practice the first sessions are spent working out what is actually driving the picture, because the same symptom can come from very different places and the treatment differs accordingly.

Two things shape most of what happens here. The first is that trauma is the center of the practice, so when something looks like anxiety or low mood but is really a nervous system still responding to an old event, it gets recognized early rather than after months of symptom management. The second is that the work is structured. You should be able to say what you are working on, why, and whether it is moving, instead of hoping a good conversation adds up to something.

Where the boundaries are

This is a solo telehealth practice, which makes it right for a lot of things and wrong for some. It is not the setting for acute crisis, for active suicidality that needs close monitoring, or for care that requires in-person work or a higher level of support. Medication questions belong with a physician or psychiatric prescriber rather than a social worker. If what you need sits outside what can be done well here, you will hear that at the free consult rather than three months in.

Where each category leads

The military and veteran pages are organized by situation rather than symptom, because the situation is usually what makes the difference. Active-duty therapy deals with the pace of the mission and the privacy questions that come with it, Guard and Reserve therapy with living two lives at once, and military spouse and family therapy with the household that absorbs all of it. Moral injury therapy and military sexual trauma therapy cover the injuries that are least likely to be named out loud.

The condition pages go into the clinical detail: PTSD and trauma, anxiety, depression and life transitions. For police, fire, EMS and dispatch, the first responder page covers cumulative exposure and shift work specifically.

Some pages go narrower still. Each responder role has its own page: police officers, firefighters, EMTs and paramedics and 911 dispatchers. There are also pages on trauma after a car accident, the move from military to civilian life, insomnia and panic attacks.

The methods behind all of it

Whatever the category, the treatment is drawn from the same evidence-based set. EMDR and Cognitive Processing Therapy are the trauma protocols, and CBT carries most of the anxiety, mood and skills work. Zandria Hooks is EMDR trained and CPT certified, and which approach is used is a decision made with you rather than assigned by default.

ALL SPECIALTIES

Questions about finding your fit

Sessions are telehealth in Texas, Maryland and Massachusetts, see service areas. To talk it through, book a free 15-minute consult.

In crisis or thinking about harming yourself? This site is not for emergencies. Call or text 988, or dial 911. Veterans: press 1 after calling 988.