Tanya Pusey has an affinity for the human brain, with a thorough understanding of how it works.
Pusey, a licensed clinical social worker of nearly 30 years, is the owner of Riverton Counseling—a practice she’s operated since 2018—that provides hope and healing through memory-based therapy.
Pusey always wanted a profession where she could help people navigate deep and troubling emotions. Those aspirations drew her to clinical counseling and therapy work.
“I absolutely love doing trauma work, because I can see what happens when people get to the other side of that,” she said.
Pusey earned a Bachelor of Science degree at Utah State University, then continued her education at the University of Utah, where she got her Master of Social Work degree.
Pusey’s expertise covers a wide range of issues, including trauma, anxiety, depression, abuse, grief, and pornography addiction, as well as providing parental and marital relationship therapies.
Riverton Counseling specializes in therapeutic methods like Brainspotting, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), and Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART) to help reduce the emotional impact for people recalling a disturbing experience.
“I know that your brain can update and change. And so I want to make sure that people have that sense of hope,” Pusey said.
Brainspotting, according to its website, is based on the idea that “where you look affects how you feel.” Because the eyes are closely connected to the brain’s processing systems, eye position can influence emotional responses. The method uses specific points in the visual field to help locate where these unprocessed traumatic experiences are stored. By holding the gaze on a particular spot, the brain is guided to access and deeply process the underlying trauma, supporting its release and resolution.
EMDR is a therapy that helps with PTSD and other issues by using side-to-side eye movements to change how intrusive memories are stored in the brain. This reduces emotional intensity and reactions to triggering words, images or places. The treatment has garnered worldwide attention in recent years, and is recognized by the World Health Organization and Department of Defense as an effective form of treatment for trauma and other disturbing experiences.
Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART) is considered a faster, more structured version of EMDR, offered at Riverton Counseling. It helps clients replace negative images and sensations with positive ones, without requiring them to share detailed information about past events. This technique typically only requires a single two-hour session.
While none of these methods are new, many people are unaware of the role their brain plays in recovering from trauma, and haven’t explored therapeutic methods such as those.
Not all traumatic experiences are created equal. Whether it's surviving a serious car crash, domestic or sexual abuse, military combat, chronic bullying, childhood neglect, among other events, intrusive thoughts of the past and alter a person’s ability to function in the present.
Pusey says each method of therapy she specializes in leans into the concept of neuroplasticity, which involves structural and functional changes to the brain.
“Your nervous system is kind of hijacked, and you're back then and you're not able to have a healthy reaction in the moment, because you're reacting to that past stuff. So if we can go in and update and kind of rewire your brain with that neuroplasticity, with EMDR, ART, or Brainspotting; it can genuinely feel like someone has been given their life back,” Pusey said.
For people of various age groups, genders, and cultures who experience different types of trauma, with thoughts and feelings that seem like they’ll never go away—Pusey said it can make a person feel helpless, but the modalities offered at Riverton Counseling can begin a path to healing.
“We can't take away the memory, but we can take away all the trauma elements that your body and nervous system and brain are kind of reacting to,” she said.
Pusey encourages people wanting to heal from trauma, anxiety, mental health issues and other cognitive disruptions to consider the services at Riverton Counseling, located at 10623 Redwood Road, Suite 101, in South Jordan.