Sue Redmond

Dr Sue Redmond is an Integrative Somatic Trauma Therapist & Somatic EMDR Practitioner (see below for more information), Child & Adolescent Development Specialist, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Teacher & Education Consultant. 

She has a PhD in Youth Leadership, Resilience, and Social Support. She has over 20 years’ experience of working with children, adolescents, and professionals, with a particular focus on wellbeing, mental health, sexual health, and leadership.  

Education Consulting 

Sue develops resources and training for professionals particularly social workers, social care workers, youth workers, and teachers to equip them with the skills to change children and young people’s lives for the better. She also works at an organisational level around team development, leadership and conflict management. Sue has developed over 30 resources for professionals including; 

• Tusla’s Child & Youth Participation Strategy, Toolkit, Training and Culture Change Process
• The Irish Junior Cert Cycle curriculum on Wellbeing, Mental health and Sexual health. 
• The Manuela Programme – a Sexual Violence Prevention Programme 
• Gender-Based Violence Prevention Programme for Youth Work Ireland  
• University of Galway’s - Foundation in Youth Leadership & Community Action
• A Just Transition to Climate Change Programme for Youth Work Ireland 

What is Integrative Somatic Trauma Therapy?

There have been some exciting developments in the realm of trauma therapy. Guided by influential teachers such as Dr. Peter Levine founder of Somatic Experiencing, Deb Dana an expert in Polyvagal Theory, Pat Ogden founder of Sensorimotor Psychotherapy and other influential experts such as Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk and Babette Rothschild. These pioneers in trauma therapy found that trauma happens in the body and must be released from the body. A body-centred approach can help a person come to healing and wholeness, which can be a beneficial option for people where talk therapy may be difficult and a person may remain stuck and dysregulated. 

 Somatic Therapy helps:

• Restore the body as a place of safety while helping to expand the capacity to process body (preverbal and nonverbal) memory
• Metabolise unprocessed emotions
• Complete thwarted (incomplete) stress responses
• Restore our optimal relationship to self and the world around us. 

Somatic trauma therapy offers techniques for clients to sense and regulate their own physiology and states of being. This includes building more internal and external resources, building trusting and co-regulatory relationships, learning to turn inward with compassion, being invited deeper in the body, and given time and space to process the trauma. These somatic techniques unwind trauma and restore well-being.

The core of somatic trauma work is the premise that the body can tap into its innate healing processes when supported to attune to the language of the body to release and discharge trapped emotions, including the fight, flight, freeze, and fawn responses that crop up in response to traumatic experiences. These get held in the nervous system, often for decades. Trauma happens in the body and to be healed it needs to be released from the body. The main aim of somatic work is to release buried emotions caused by trauma, providing healing from the inside out.

Using these body-centred approaches Sue has witnessed profound transformations as individuals embark on a journey to heal trauma at its roots. Integrative Somatic Trauma Therapy gets people out of their heads, and safely into their bodies to foster healing. By addressing the physiological aspects of trauma and guiding clients through embodied experiences, we tap into the body's wisdom, enabling a comprehensive and lasting healing process.

What is Somatic EMDR?

Somatic EMDR is the synthesis of somatic psychology and EMDR Therapy. 

According to Trauma expert Bessel van der Kolk, Somatic Therapy and EMDR Therapy are considered the best approaches for the treatment of trauma. 

Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) Therapy is a comprehensive approach to therapy that integrates elements of psychodynamic, cognitive behavioural, interpersonal, experiential, and body-centred therapies to maximise treatment effects. 

EMDR uses bilateral stimulation (i.e. eye movement, tapping, etc.) to attend to and deesclate the reactivity to  past memories, present triggers, or anticipated future experiences.  Somatic EMDR  also utilises movement techniques to help complete unprocessed nervous system impulses and frozen emotions that have been previously stuck in the body.

Somatic Interventions such as tracking sensations, deepening awareness, boundary awareness, and self-regulation complement and increase the efficacy of EMDR Therapy and collectively these therapeutic modalities offer a profound healing tool for anyone facing the pain of PTSD.

Additionally

Sue has a 20-year of practice in meditation, is a Yoga Teacher, Surfer, Artist, Singer, and Blackbelt in Tae Kwon Do as well as mumma to twins girls and double dog parent!