Karen Gardner

Karen Is Here For You!

Karen's Background

Karen earned a Master's Degree with Honors from Arizona State University in Social Work and an undergraduate degree in Psychology from ASU.

Karen has worked in academic settings, in treatment centers with Native Americans learning their traditional healing methods, with foster children and their families, and she now works in private practice.

Karen is passionate about her work in helping children, adolescents, and adults heal. Karen brings a wealth of life experience with her. She understands women’s issues and the struggles they face, including complex issues of infertility, children’s resiliency after a divorce, raising blended families, and helping children heal from abuse.

Karen has experience working with high-risk adolescents who struggle with issues including rage reactions, abrupt mood swings, an inability to regulate their emotions, excessive and uncontrollable worry, hyperactivity, an inability to bond with others, a reduced ability to deal with stress and those struggling with attractions to dangerous situations.

Karen is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker. She is a certified consultant in EMDR, an expert in EFT (Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy), and a trainer for DNMS Ego State Therapy. Karen also uses CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy), Solution Focus Therapy, Play Therapy, and Art and Music Therapy.

Karen's Comments On DNMS Therapy

If you tried EMDR and it was too triggering for you, or a therapist said your dissociation was too high for EMDR to be used on you, you need to try DNMS. DNMS is 'parts work' and a gentle backdoor approach to getting all your traumas reprocessed - so you can remember them but not react to them.

I have helped thousands of individuals put the past permanently behind them. With DNMS irrational, negative thoughts disappear. In therapy, I work with the part connected to the undesirable thoughts and bring that part into the safety of the present time.

In the late 1990s, mirror neurons were discovered.

• A Mirror Neuron is a neuron that fires both when an organism acts and when the organism observes the same action performed by another. Thus, the neuron "mirrors" the behavior of the other, as though the observer were itself acting. Mirror neurons have been directly observed in humans through fMRIs.

The concept of mirror neurons is essential to understand. It explains the negative small talk we hear in our minds – which are ‘recordings’ from the past that our brain has stored. The brain records the negative messages from past wounds (and the people who did the wounding) that have occurred throughout a person’s life. These ‘negative message recordings’ can be triggered whenever something similar happens in the present. The reactions to the recordings can then be overwhelming, and those reactions (the sensations we feel) to being triggered can make a person feel like they’re back in the past, reliving the negative experiences. It’s important to know we’re not reliving the experiences; we’re reliving our reactions to the experiences.

DNMS works by first turning off the old recordings stored in the brain. Then, it gets them to disappear forever. This changes everything for a client. When all these negative recordings have disappeared, the client will have a quiet mind. For some, it’s the first time in their life. It’s rewarding for me as a therapist to witness this. When a client tries new things, like meeting new people or starting a new job, they will have more confidence without the negative thoughts. In fact, many clients report feeling like a new person.

This is the magic of DNMS. It heals anxiety from the past that has been stored in the body. When there is too much anxiety in the body, depression can set in. I have seen DNMS eliminate depressive symptoms in my clients. I have seen people who previously struggled to manage their anger no longer get angry, these people don’t have to use any special tools to control it - it simply is not there. From a DNMS perspective, they can stay fully in the present without any triggers of the past affecting them.

I have seen abused, co-dependent clients completely heal and get out of their abusive relationships. I have seen clients struggling in their relationships, successfully repair the breaks in those relationships. Resolving relationship problems becomes easier because they feel safe and grounded in the present, without the fears from their past triggering them. It then feels OK for them to trust.

If you are going through a difficult time in your life and are hoping counseling might provide some answers, I invite you to experience DNMS therapy. Read the information on the DNMS page on this website to learn more about it and then reach out to my practice.