My name is Rachel Sicari, and I am a trauma therapist.
I am passionate about working with people with complex and attachment trauma, have experienced child abuse and neglect, and who were abused by a narcissist.
I graduated with my Master of Arts in Clinical Mental Health Counseling in 2014. I started working in community mental health that year, and stayed put for a couple of years. I learned a lot about the lasting effects of trauma. I was also trained in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) during that period. I concurrently started doing assessments in the emergency department.
I eventually went to work for another community mental health center on a community-based team for psychotic and high-acuity clients. I learned a lot about how diagnoses like Schizophrenia, Schizoaffective Disorder, and Bipolar I present. I learned how to do case management. I also started doing on-call and I worked in the emergency department quite a bit, especially in the middle of the night.
After a long period of a challenging commute and midnight calls, I decided to enter child protection for a while. I was excited to help abused and neglected children. This led to a very challenging two years with DCYF (Division of Children, Youth and Families). It was systemically brutal and I ultimately experienced burnout. I also learned I wanted to get back into clinical work. I worked alongside therapists for in-home service providers and I loved seeing and hearing about the work they were doing with families.
I started working at Lakes Region Mental Health Center in Laconia, NH in 2020. I was a therapist for a few months before I was recruited to run their ACT team (Assertive Community Treatment). I ran the ACT team for 3.5 years, during which time we became the #2 ACT team in the state. I learned a lot more about psychosis, crisis assessment and case management. I observed psychiatric crises in hotel rooms, trailer parks, and Walmarts. I also worked in the emergency department again. I did evaluations in the Laconia ED for over two years.
Between 2021-2022, I got trained in EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing). I had always been interested in it, and our training director was kind enough to push for the agency to pay for a group of us to get the very expensive weeks-long training. Once I was trained (and supervised and consulted), I started using it. Using it with psychotic people was not appropriate, so I gathered a small caseload of traumatized clients. I saw change happening, and I fell in love with the modality.
I was trained at TICTI (Trauma Institute & Child Trauma Institute) by Ricky Greenwald. He said, “you don’t have to just use EMDR as a technique. You can be an EMDR therapist.” I knew that was my fate.
I dipped my toe in private practice starting in February of 2024, focusing mostly on traumatized neurodivergent people. I left community mental health for good in the fall of 2024 and started working in private practice full time. I quickly filled my caseload with folks with ADHD, ASD, C-PTSD, and all the other associated issues like OCD, anxiety, sleep disturbance, and Borderline Personality traits. I learned that this population was where I belonged.
I am entering into independent private practice in 2027. I am focusing mostly on EMDR intensives, immersives, and trauma retreats. I incorporate spirituality and esotericism in my therapeutic work for clients who are helped or fascinated by that element.
I am deeply passionate about healing trauma and helping people transform their lives. It’s my calling.
