Sandra L Paulsen Ph.D.

Sandra Paulsen, Ph.D., is an international instructor, author and illustrator of principles and procedures for using EMDR with complex trauma including structural and somatic dissociation and trauma held in implicit memory. Her books include The Beauty and Burden of Autism: An Illustrated Guide and Workbook. In 2024, she’ll publish Indigenous Trauma and Dissociation: Healers, Psychotherapies and the Drum, with Shelley Spear Chief. She coedited The Neurobiology and Treatment of Traumatic Dissociation: Toward an Embodied Self. She wrote and illustrated Looking Through the Eyes of Trauma: An Illustrated Guide for EMDR Therapists and Clients; and When There Are No Words: EMDR for Very Early Trauma in Implicit Memory, and coauthored We’re Listening Body: Integrating EMDR, Somatic and Ego State Therapies. She also coauthored and illustrated a children’s book that is also useful for dissociative adults called All the Colors of Me: My First Book on Dissociation. Sandra is a Fellow of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation.

She developed the first protocol for the use of EMDR with highly dissociative individuals, publishing cautions about EMDR with dissociation, and for first urging the screening of every client for dissociation before administering EMDR. She has trained thousands of mental health professionals in these special procedures since 1993. Sandra has numerous online workshops available through the Steve Frankel Group. For additional information see Sandra’s vitae. She lives in a log house in the forest on Bainbridge Island, near Seattle, Washington, USA where she does intensive treatment in the three-day format at Paulsen Integrative Psychology