My Approach: EMDR + IFS
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) helps the brain process difficult experiences that may still be influencing how you feel, think, and respond today. As these experiences are processed, they often lose their emotional intensity, allowing you to feel less triggered and more present in your daily life.
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Internal Family Systems (IFS) helps you understand the different parts of yourself that developed to help you cope, protect yourself, and navigate life's challenges. Rather than fighting against these parts, we learn to understand them, build compassion for them, and create more internal balance and self-trust.
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Coherence Therapy helps uncover the deeper emotional beliefs and learnings that were formed through life experiences. These patterns often make perfect sense based on what you've lived through, even when they no longer fit your current life. By bringing them into awareness, they can be updated and transformed at the root.
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IFS-informed EMDR (Syzygy Model) combines these approaches to help you understand not only what happened to you, but how those experiences continue to shape your emotions, relationships, beliefs, and reactions today. This work goes beyond managing symptoms. Together, we help your brain and nervous system process unresolved experiences, update old patterns, and create lasting change. The goal is to help you feel more grounded, connected, confident, and free to respond to life from the present rather than from old survival patterns.
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Education and Experience:
Amanda is a licensed mental health counselor with 10 years in practice. She holds a Master of Science in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from the University of Nebraska (2016) and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Creighton University (2013).
Advanced Training & Certification:
National Certified Counselor (NCC, NBCC)
Qualified Mental Health Provider (QMHP)
EMDRIA Certified EMDR Therapist
EMDRIA Approved Consultant
IFS-Informed EMDR Step 3 Provider (Syzygy Institute)
IFS Informed Therapist (IFS Institute)
Ongoing advanced training in EMDR, Internal Family Systems (IFS), IFS-informed EMDR, coherence therapy and somatic experiencing.
Licensed in South Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota and Wisconsin
Amanda Van Kalsbeek
MS LPC-MH NCC QMHP LMHC LIMHP LPCC LPC
