Today we’d like to introduce you to Emily Remillard.
Hi Emily, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I always had a sense, even as a teenager, that I was interested in becoming a therapist or mental health counselor. Even when I was young, I was always fascinated by human beings – their unique personalities, their stories, their struggles, and what motivated them. Each person looks at life a little bit differently, has unique goals and values, and meets life’s challenges in their own creative ways, and I love that! I’ve always felt honored when friends would confide in me and I could offer empathy and perhaps a little perspective that would help someone in their journey.
When I was in my 20s, I worked with an amazing social enterprise in China called Starfish Project, a jewelry business which provided employment and job skills training to women in vulnerable situations, and that experience furthered my interest in helping people heal from trauma. I finished grad school to become a therapist after I moved to the Washington, DC area, and since graduating, at different times I’ve provided therapy to kids and teens in the foster system, people recovering from eating disorders, and individuals from all types of circumstances and walks of life in Washington, DC and Maryland. I can definitely say I have never been bored or lacked a sense of purpose in my work!
After several years of working in a group therapy practice, I decided to start my own private practice in 2022. That has been a new kind of adventure, one of continually growing as a therapist while also learning what it means to be a small business owner.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I wouldn’t necessarily say it has been a smooth road, but life usually isn’t!
In my early days of being a counselor, I worked with both kids and adults who had experienced a lot of trauma and who had a lot of obstacles and challenges they were facing, including systemic oppression and injustice. It felt like I had so little experience and so little power to change their circumstances, when their needs were so great. I had to learn that it wasn’t up to me to solve all of my clients’ problems, but to offer them the support, respect, and care they needed, so that they could feel safe and capable enough to make their own decisions and learn to take good care of themselves.
Today, I find that as a business owner, it can be a challenge to adapt to the ups and downs of running a business in an ever-changing economy and an ever-changing world. It’s certainly given me the change to grow in being flexible and adaptable! In addition, in the therapy room, my clients challenge me every day to continue growing as a therapist and as a person, as they bring me their life challenges and their perspectives on the world.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I am a Licensed Professional Counselor – what most people would just call a therapist. Within that broader profession, I consider myself a trauma therapist. A lot of my work is helping people process traumatic events, experiences or conditions in their past, either as a child or as an adult. And trauma can look many different ways. It could be a car accident that someone had when they were 25, or an ongoing set of difficult family dynamics when they were growing up.
I am trained and certified in something called EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) – a widely known and researched form of trauma therapy that helps people return to events or situations in their past that still bother them and reprocess those experiences. The goal is that by returning to that memory in a focused, contained way with caring support, the person can decrease the distress associated with the memory and gain a new perspective of it, so that it doesn’t bother them as much.
Another therapy modality I’m currently training in is called Somatic Experiencing. “Somatic” means “related to the body,” and Somatic Experiencing is a gentle way of practicing therapy that invites a person to notice how memories, emotions or experiences show up in the body. By bringing attention and support to a person’s bodily experience of stress, tension, injury, illness, or trauma memories, the therapist can often help a person release some of that stuck energy and find a new sense of aliveness and assertiveness in their body.
What I hope sets me apart in my work is that I have a passion for helping people work through trauma or any experience that is keeping them from living a full, thriving life. I love watching people become more fully alive and more fully themselves as they heal from old wounds.
Do you any memories from childhood that you can share with us?
I grew up in Eagle River, Alaska, and one of my favorite childhood memories is of going camping with my family at a campground that was at one end of a beautiful, gray-blue lake that was fed by glacial meltwater and surrounded by mountains. We’d canoe on the lake, bike along the trail around it, and hike up the mountains overlooking it. We could pick blueberries in the late summer and cranberries in the fall to put in our pancakes in the morning!
Pricing:
- My current rate is $220 for a 50-minute therapy session.
- I reserve some reduced rate spots for clients, and people can inquire about that.
- I am out of network with insurances, but I offer a superbill after each session that clients can submit to their insurance for out-of-network reimbursement.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists/emily-remillard-washington-dc/858311
- Other: https://www.emdria.org/directory/people/emily-remillard/
