Nice to meet you!

I'm Kirsten Dunlap, a Licensed Professional Counselor and trauma therapist in Darien, CT. I work with adults who are tired of understanding their patterns but still feeling stuck inside them. People who have done the reading, the talking,maybe even the therapy, but they still find themselves looping back to the same fears, the same doubts, the same sense that something underneath just won't budge.

I have the unbelievable privilege of guiding people as they turn their post traumatic stress into post traumatic growth. I have watched clients shaking, sobbing, presenting as much younger versions of themselves who believed terribly painful things about who they are and what they deserve. And I have watched those same people become lighter, more peaceful, more confident, more free. No longer trapped by the emotions and thoughts that once defined them. That transformation is not magic. It is the result of a very specific kind of work.

My approach is built on the belief that real change does not happen through insight alone.

It happens when we reach the places in the body and the nervous system where the old story actually lives. I have extensive experience in the art and science of EMDR therapy, and it is the heart of everything I do. EMDR, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, is a research-supported method that works directly with the way your brain and body have stored difficult experiences, whether those are single overwhelming events or the quieter, accumulated weight of years of feeling unsafe, unseen, or not enough.

What makes my work different from traditional talk therapy is that we are always monitoring both what you think and how you feel.  We track changes on both a physical and a cognitive level, so nothing gets left behind. I help clear up confusion.

I help people see themselves in new ways. I help them make sense of their past and understand how the stories they tell themselves may be holding them back.

We don't rewrite history. We reinterpret it. We change the way you interact with that history to bring it more into alignment with who you want to be and how you want to live.

I do not tell you what to do or how to think. I ask you why you do what you do, and why you think what you think. I am always asking, what brought you into the room today? What in that belief still there, that is making it hard to believe what you know you want to believe? Those questions are the beginning of everything.

Clients who come to me are often self-aware, intelligent, and exhausted from the gap between what they understand and what they feel. Many have tried other approaches and found that talking about the problem, while helpful, only goes so far. They are ready for something that works at a different level. Many clients find that after working together, the charge around old memories begins to soften. The beliefs that once felt like facts begin to loosen their grip. Clients report feeling more present, more able to respond rather than react, and more connected to a sense of themselves that feels true rather than performed.