EmmaS
Emma Sunshaw, PhD, earned her BS in Human Development, her MS in Professional Counseling, and her PhD in Marriage and Family Therapy.
She has worked psychodynamically as a licensed clinical counselor in private practice since 2003, as trained by a Jungian supervisor. She emphasizes the de-pathologizing and de-colonializing voice of lived experience and feminist liberation framework.
She is the voice behind "System Speak: A Podcast About Complex Trauma and Dissociation",
which has aired in over 100 countries around the world for more than ten years.
She is on faculty with the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (ISSTD), and teaches beginning, intermediate, and advanced courses about complex trauma and dissociative disorders. She offers frequent trainings for therapists and psychoeducational classes for peer support groups.
She has worked as the ISSTD Professional Training Program Administrator since 2018, has served as an interfaith community and hospital chaplain, and traveled as the international clinical coordinator for humanitarian aid organizations offering counseling and trauma resiliency training to government leaders, humanitarian aid workers, and first responders in war zones, refugee camps, and natural disaster sites. She worked for ISRAAID as part of natural disaster responses prior to the pandemic. She continues lecturing internationally about trauma and resiliency.
Besides numerous syndicated articles online about mental health issues, she is the author of the 2019 EJTD article about DID and the Online Community, with others currently under review.
She is also the author of several books, which you can see HERE.
EmmaS counsels, consults, and trains alongside you with lived experience and a unique passion about complex trauma and dissociative disorders. She also specializes in religious trauma, adoption trauma, and creating safe and affirming spaces for LGBTQAA2S+ folks.
EmmaS is Deaf with cochlear implants and uses she/they pronouns.
As a person of Jewish and Blackfoot heritage living in the Pacific Northwest, EmmaS honors the sacred lands of her ancestors in the northern plains. These are territories spanning present-day Alberta, Montana, and beyond, where the Niitsitapi (Blackfoot Confederacy) have lived in relationship with the land for countless generations.
EmmaS also acknowledge that we are guests on the ancestral homelands of the Coast Salish peoples, including the Swinomish, Upper Skagit, Samish, and Sauk-Suiattle Tribes. These nations have stewarded the lands, waters, and lifeways of this region since time immemorial, and they continue to do so with deep knowledge, strength, and care.
Living and teaching and healing here, we recognize the layered histories of displacement and survival, and we strive to walk with respect, humility, and solidarity. We commit to learning from and supporting the Indigenous communities whose lands we now call home, while also honoring my own roots and responsibilities as a member of both the Blackfoot and Jewish diasporas.
May this acknowledgment be more than words; may it be a call to right relationship, ongoing listening, and reciprocal action.
