Erin Barnes

Feelings and memories can be overwhelming to navigate without a blueprint. For nearly 20 years, I have provided a safe space for clients to address, fear, anxiety, and depression. I work with with clients carrying complex trauma and PTSD that still runs the day; LGBTQIA + clients struggling with identify and acceptance; and people with intellectual disabilities and the families who love them. Grief and trauma often go hand and hand. Grief does not just meant grieving the loss of someone. It can also happen during major life transitions, including changes in health and independence. I am an LCSW in Indiana and EMDRIA-certified in EMDR. If any of that sounds like your life right now, I would be glad to meet you.

My style is warm and accepting, and I work proven techniques into ordinary conversation, so sessions feel like talking with someone who is genuinely on your side. I use cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to loosen the thoughts that have started to feel like facts, and trauma focused CBT and EMDR when a memory still hijacks the present. Because I am EMDRIA-certified, trauma work moves at the pace your nervous system sets and never faster. With older adults I make plenty of room for life review, grief, and the questions that come with illness and end of life care.

Our first session is mostly me getting to know you: what brought you here, what you have already tried, and what you want to be different. I will tell you plainly how my experience with trauma, grief, and end of life care might help, and if I am not the right fit I will say so and help you look elsewhere. There is no test to pass and nothing you need to have figured out beforehand. You get to set the pace, in the first session and in every one after it.