What Trauma Does
Memory is only part of it. Trauma lives in the body and in the reflexes: the startle that arrives before the thought, the sleep that will not come, the places and people you route around without ever deciding to. Some people carry one terrible day. Others carry years of a childhood in which the ground was never steady, which is a different shape of injury and often a harder one to name.
Both are treatable, and we work with both.
A Certified Trauma Practitioner
Ann Marie is a Certified Trauma Practitioner, a credential earned on top of her counseling license through training specific to trauma. In a region where federal data counts fewer than half of one full-time mental health provider across three counties, that training is hard to find close to home.
What Trauma Therapy Is Not
Ann Marie does not make you relive it. She does not ask for the whole story on the first day, or ever, if you do not want to tell it. And she does not push you faster because someone else thinks you are ready.
Steadiness First
The first part of the work is steadiness: sleep, grounding, and a way to come back to the room when something pulls you under. Those are tools you take home and use between sessions. Only then, once she sees steady progress, do you move toward the harder material.
You decide what gets talked about and when. If somebody once took that choice away from you, having it back is the treatment itself.
Who This Is For
We welcome adults working on something recent or something from childhood, teenagers, and children from age three. With a child, the work happens through play and other ways of working that fit how a child processes what happened.
Coming From Tawas City, West Branch or Oscoda
People come to us for trauma therapy from right across the Sunrise Side. A weekly appointment is a weekly drive, so here are the road times to our office in Hale.
- Tawas City, about 32 minutes by road.
- West Branch, about 40 minutes by road.
- Oscoda, in Iosco County, about 45 minutes by road.
Tell us which town you are coming from when you call, and we will help you find the times that make sense with the drive. On the longer drives, a longer appointment spaced further apart sometimes suits better than a weekly hour, and we are happy to set it up that way. We list road times from the rest of the area on our service area page.
Sessions and Insurance
A session is normally 60 minutes. The first appointment is longer, and we will not ask you to explain anything you are not ready to talk about. Our appointments page sets out what to expect at a first appointment and what to bring. We take most major insurance. See which plans and what to ask yours before you come. If you are not sure about yours, ask us. We are happy to help you work it out.
You Might Also Be Looking For
Abuse and neglect have a page of their own, and trauma most often shows up as anxiety or depression before anybody calls it trauma.
If you are not sure which of these fits, call us anyway. We will help you work out where to start.
Reviewed by Ann Marie Shay, MA, LPC, CTP, MITS, September 2026.