Therapy for Veterans & Military
The Washington region is home to a large population of veterans, service members, and military families — and a culture that expects them to arrive squared away. What service actually leaves behind is more complicated: experiences that didn't file themselves neatly, a transition that reads like a demotion from meaning, relationships that waited out deployments and now need rebuilding.
Both clinicians here have worked extensively with military populations — Dr. McVey through years of contract work with military communities, Paul El-Meouchy as a specialist in the military-to-civilian transition.
What we work with
- Service-connected trauma and PTSD — treated with EMDR, a therapy recommended in VA clinical guidelines
- The military-to-civilian transition: identity, mission, and what replaces them
- Reintegration with partners and kids after deployment tempo
- Moral injury — the wounds that aren't fear-based
- Sleep, vigilance, and the body that never got the memo the war ended
- Military sexual trauma, treated with particular care
How this work goes
Directly. Military clients tend to do poorly with therapeutic vagueness and well with structure, candor, and measurable progress — so that's how we operate. EMDR does much of the heavy lifting with trauma, and it doesn't require narrating your worst day in detail.
The transition work is its own discipline: translating an identity built on mission and unit into a civilian life that can feel underpowered by comparison. Paul's background — decades in organizational human-capital work before clinical practice — makes him unusually fluent in the career side of that translation.
This is a private practice, separate from the VA and DoD systems. Some clients prefer exactly that; records live here, under standard therapy confidentiality.
Practical details
55-minute sessions, $215 with sliding scale from $150–194, and superbills for out-of-network reimbursement. Downtown office near Metro Center and McPherson Square, or telehealth across DC. Free 15-minute consultation first.
Common questions
Ready to begin?
The 15-minute consult is where most people begin.