Meet Erinn

My Professional Story

For over two decades I was part of the traditional mental health system as a licensed clinical social worker. During that time I became a Certified Trauma Therapist®, Level III EMDR Clinician, Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner, Level II AEDP therapist, and Certified Grief Educator®. Additionally I spent years extensively training in Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) for couples.

Beginning in 2023 I shifted my practice from psychotherapy to coaching. My coaching model focuses more on generating desired change in the here and now rather than engaging in lengthy explorations of the past.  The process of encouraging self-discovery and eliciting client-generated solutions and strategies versus “diagnosing and treating mental disorders”  is in harmonious alignment with my core beliefs and values.

 

Education and Experience:
I was the Clinical Director of an outpatient mental health program for four years and then co-founded and served as Executive Director for an agency that provided therapy to rural, under-served families. I began my specialty training in trauma while employed at The Meadows, a world-renowned inpatient treatment facility for trauma and addictions. Subsequently I worked for nearly a decade providing in-service trainings for mental health professionals regarding trauma and addiction and designing and leading over one hundred multi-day trauma, couples and family workshops. Since 2007 my private practice has specialized in individual and couples therapy with trauma survivors.

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I hold a Master’s degree in social work from the University of Minnesota.

 

My Personal Story 

I met Andy when I was nineteen years old. We married four years later. While we were very much in love, neither of us had great role models for how to navigate the inevitable challenges that arise in relationships. I grew up with the "no talk rule" as my family avoided talking about emotions or difficult topics and Andy learned to shy away from conflict as he had witnessed discord frequently erupt into emotional violence. We both came by our “Avoider” or “Withdrawer” patterns honestly. Despite these challenges, we were very much in love, deeply committed to one another and did remarkably well in the first thirteen years of our relationship.

 

Then we decided to have children and that is when our relational deficits really became pronounced. Somehow we created an upspoken agreement to make parenting, rather than our marriage our top priority. The years when our kids were young were especially hard! I worked long hours to support our family financially and Andy stayed home to raise and homeschool our two children. Over the years we grew increasingly distant. The turning point came when I read the book "Hold Me Tight: 7 Conversations for a Lifetime of Love" by Sue Johnson (the founder of Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT). This book comprehensively made sense of our pattern of disconnection, or as Sue calls it, our “cycle”.

 

I was so inspired by what I learned that I underwent training in EFT so that I could help other couples. Eventually I convinced Andy to join me in couples counseling with an EFT therapist. That work was the catalyst for profound changes in our relationship. Over time we shifted from seeing the other person as the problem to recognizing how we each contributed to our cycle and accepting that each of us played a vital role in changing it. We became allies in fighting against the cycle and intensely committed to finding our way back to one another each time there was a "rupture". Sadly, Andy died suddenly in 2021. However I am proud to say that we were closer at the time of his death than we had been in years due to both of our persistence and incredibly hard work. The principles of EFT were truly transformative in our marriage, and if you and your partner are willing to do the hard work required, it has the power to transform yours as well.