Client Testimonials

KP

For over twenty years I held a secret deep in my heart that caused great mental suffering. While I was functional as an adult, my beliefs and deep shame about myself affected my decisions about life.

Several traumatic events occurred early in my life that added to this shame and negative beliefs and ultimately was the reason I made several bad choices. Justin was the first counselor to bring Christ and His loving acceptance into my healing process. When I started working with Justin, using EMDR therapy, I was able to overcome my fear of being judged and speak about my hurts and negative beliefs openly.

To begin healing, true and lasting healing, one has to be able to talk about and think about the past traumatic events. Doing that would not have been possible for me if I had not had Justin guiding me through each stage of my healing. He was able to make me feel accepted, secure and safe as I shared my hurtful past. Through therapy I was able to work through the traumatic events from my past and experience a deep and life changing healing. Through working in therapy with Justin I began to believe that I could heal and be forgiven.

My life since working with Justin is still difficult at times and I have my struggles, however I now believe that I am forgiven and deserve to have a good, productive and joyful future.

EH

After experiencing years of childhood sexual, physical, and emotional abuse, I lived my entire life in a cloud of shame, guilt, fear, and self-hatred. Throughout my teenage years I lived a life of self-destruction full of high risk behaviors. Around the age of 17 I began to practice my childhood faith of Catholicism and develop a relationship with God. Although I was able to advance in life and earn a college degree and remain steadily employed, the trauma from the abuse of my childhood was destroying me from the inside out. I desired to live a moral, Christian life and have meaningful relationships with both others and God; however, the trauma from my past made this nearly impossible, as I was unable to see the truth about myself or others. I continued to struggle with many negative and self-destructive behaviors that stemmed from my deep shame and self-hatred. I truly hoped to die as death seemed to be the only release from the deep pain I had in my heart.

I had already experienced 3 years of talk therapy before I began meeting with JD and doing EMDR. I thought myself to be nearly hopeless, and believed the truama from my past would handicap me emotionally forever. After the first session of EMDR with JD, I experienced relief. JD guided and directed EMDR to target the the painful memories and assisted in helping me to see the Truth about my intrinsic, God-given, dignity and value. JD's gentle guidance and Christian philosophy, coupled with his gifts as a therapist were such a gift to me as his kind and understanding spirit as a therapist gave me the freedom to face the painful experiences of my past that haunted me my entire life. I faced the deepest, most shameful memories that I thought I would take with me to my grave and through EMDR with JD was able to experience freedom, healing, and truth in a way I never thought possible.

After EMDR Therapy with JD, my life is so completely different it is miraculous. I am not longer ashamed of my past or my history, and I live out of the truth of my value as a person. It is as though before EMDR I was seeing through dark, dirty sunglasses, and EMDR Therapy has removed those glasses and now I can see clearly the light of the truth of the beauty in my life. Before EMDR Therapy with JD I was unable to be in any sort of relationship with anyone, friendship or otherwise. Now, I am engaged to be married active in living a life of service to others and I have meaningful relationships with both friends and family.

JD is a very gifted therapist and his skills and experience combined with his Christian Philosophy in counseling and EMDR was not only instrumental in saving my life, but gifting me with the ability to live life in a way I previously did not believe was possible.