About Douglas Gosney

I have been a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in California for over 27 years, and worked in the healing arts in Washington State for 14 years before that. Over the years I have pursued many healing paths to relieve myself of the pain of the kind of childhood that I grew up in. Whatever I learned that was helpful to me I have passed on to my clients. Some might call me a wounded healer.

I grew up with a Father who had a severe case of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome from his wartime experiences. His Father was a rageaholic and alcoholic. He passed his distress down to me, which set me up on a healing path to recover from this family legacy of dysfunction and dysregulation. This started me on my own path of healing and recovery.

The trauma I was exposed to as a baby, at the hands of a very distressed Father, brought me into the field of pre- and perinatal psychology. I spent many years working in this field with babies who had early traumas, like early medical trauma or being born addicted to drugs due to their birth mothers drug use. This arena also allowed me to address some of my own early traumas and informed me of what a lot of human beings get exposed to early in life and how it can impact their nervous systems and their lives.

This experience set me up to start getting referrals from families who had very angry children, many of whom were adopted. This brought me into learning about attachment issues and the impact of big stressors on human beings early in life and how to resolve it. I spent many years in the attachment field and also learning about shock and overwhelm and utilizing body-oriented psychotherapy to work out the nervous system freeze and access resources for living.

I found all these arenas helpful in my own recovery, but there was still something missing. About 10 years ago my Father passed and I went into debilitating depression, anxiety and with terrifying nightmares. This went on for years, despite lots of very good therapy with some of the best people in the field. I also tried all kinds of medications, with medical supervision and eventually discovered through a SPECT Brain Scan that I had brain damage due to blunt force impact (I had been knocked unconscious a half dozen times in my life, with apparent neuron damage).

I eventually was introduced to LENS (Low Energy Neurofeedback System) by a client I hadn’t seen in a decade, who got major relief from her depression and suicidal tendencies through LENS. Upon researching the LENS, I found that it had been used to help vets with PTSD and TBI’s (Traumatic Brain Injury). I had been diagnosed with both in the past and decided to give it a try myself. In short, it helped me get my life back! I got excited about the technology and how it could help my clients. I have now been doing it with my clients for going on two years, have LENSed over 100 clients, and am very excited about adding this resource to my therapeutic supports for the people I work with. It’s very exciting work to me and often gets results when other modalities fail. At this stage of my career and in my life, I feel I offer a very unique approach to assisting people to heal their bodies, their minds and their lives. The goal of my work with clients is to support them to embrace their lives in a way that allows them to feel powerful and to love their lives. If what I talk about intrigues you, please feel free to give me a call and let’s talk about it.