Therapy for First Responders
Nobody calls 911 on a good day. Police, fire, EMS, dispatch — the job is a subscription to other people's worst moments, on a sleep schedule no body was built for, in a culture where admitting the weight is often treated as the weakness.
The toll is cumulative and predictable: hypervigilance that won't clock out, humor that got darker, a marriage getting the leftovers. This practice treats first responders with methods built for occupational trauma and a bluntness the culture respects.
What the job leaves behind
- Cumulative critical-incident stress — not one call, all of them
- The calls that stuck: kids, colleagues, the ones that didn't miss
- Hypervigilance, scanning exits, sitting facing the door
- Shift-work sleep debt and the fuse it shortens
- Emotional armor that stopped coming off at home
- Alcohol or anything else doing the decompression work
How we treat it
EMDR is the backbone for critical-incident material — it processes what the job filed under 'later' without requiring a play-by-play, and it's widely used in first-responder treatment for that reason. Around it: practical work on sleep, the off-switch, and the relationships financing all of it.
Confidentiality gets said plainly: this is a private practice. We're not connected to your department, and records are held under standard therapy confidentiality, whose legal limits we'll explain in plain language before you share anything.
Practical details
55-minute sessions, $215 with sliding scale from $150–194. Telehealth across DC works with rotating shifts; in-person is downtown at One Franklin Square. Free 15-minute consultation — bring the skepticism.
Common questions
Ready to begin?
The 15-minute consult is where most people begin.