Dr. Pria Alpern

12/13/2025

✨My dream team✨ I’m filled with gratitude this holiday season as I prepare to close out another year with these incredibly talented and caring psychologists by my side (and Crystal!). The people you work with really make the job ❤️

12/10/2025

I’ll be holding EMDR office Hrs (drop in consultation) next Thursday for basic trained therapists - feel free to join! Register below

EMDR Office Hours (12/18/25, 4-6pm ET, virtual). Join this 2-hour group consultation to deepen your EMDR practice, connect with peers, and receive consultation credit toward EMDRIA requirements.

12/10/2025

“Most people think they know what trauma looks like. Pop psychology often conceives it as a singular incident that knocked a person’s world off its axis. A shocking event with a distinct “before” and “after.” Think car accidents, school shootings, and natural disasters. As a trauma therapist and fellow human, I can attest that those types traumatic experiences are real and deserve attention. They also represent a sliver of the broader landscape within the vast trauma field.” Read the rest on Substack

12/04/2025

✨New up on my substack✨ “For many readers, the piece will land like an invitation toward repair and emotional maturity. But for trauma survivors, its framing reinforces the same narratives that kept them in harm’s way for years. And for clinicians, the article raises a deeper ethical problem as it collapses all forms of estrangement into the same moral category.”

12/02/2025

“There is something unsavory about seeing an eight-figure book deal land in the lap of an eighty-two-year-old white man. It’s less about the size of the advance than it is about the way power concentrates itself in the hands of paternalistic figures who already dominate the trauma field. Having been centered in the literature for decades, they overshadow others who are doing more nuanced, community-rooted work.”

There is something unsavory about seeing an eight-figure book deal land in the lap of an eighty-two-year-old white man.

12/01/2025

“There is something unsavory about seeing an eight-figure book deal land in the lap of an eighty-two-year-old white man. It’s less about the size of the advance than it is about the way power concentrates itself in the hands of paternalistic figures who already dominate the trauma field. Having been centered in the literature for decades, they overshadow others who are doing more nuanced, community-rooted work.” - read the rest on my Substack

12/01/2025

Therapists and therapists in training: Come to my next Trauma Study Group on 12/12/25 from 2-3pm et on zoom! This study group focuses on Ogden’s Chapter 8: Principles of Treatment from Trauma and the Body: A Sensorimotor Approach to Psychotherapy.

Trauma Study Group w/Dr. Pria Alpern *This study group focuses on Ogden’s Chapter 8: Principles of Treatment from Trauma and the Body: A Sensorimotor Approach to Psychotherapy.

11/29/2025

“Oprah’s recent podcast episode on estrangement frames the rise of “no contact” as a cultural trend, as if swaths of people woke up one day and decided that distance from their families was the newest fad for self-improvement. That framing misses the mark, primarily because the phenomenon of estrangement is older than the trauma field itself. What has changed is that it’s more visible.”

11/27/2025

Let’s be real about this

11/25/2025

“Thanksgiving feels like a lie. That feeling sits under so many conversations I hear in my office, in my DMs, and in my own community each November. A holiday built on the illusion of gratitude becomes a pressure cooker for people whose stories simply don’t fit the script. We’re told that Thanksgiving is about connection and family, but the truth is far more complicated. For anyone who has untangled themselves from toxic family systems, the holiday doesn’t feel warm and fuzzy. It feels like a performance.”

11/25/2025

“Aggression has a bad reputation in our society. Even in trauma therapy, the word is often linked to harm or hostility. But the root of the term goes back to agredi, which means to move toward. It reflects an impulse meant to support life and agency. For many trauma survivors, that impulse has been quashed or buried beneath years of shame. What looks like collapse on the outside is often the body’s reflexive remembering that moving forward costs too much and threatens survival.”

11/21/2025

The next trauma study grp at the Manhattan Center for Trauma Studies is on 12/12 (zoom)! We will be discussing a chapter from Ogden’s book on sensorimotor psychotherapy. Join us!

Trauma Study Group w/Dr. Pria Alpern *This study group focuses on Ogden’s Chapter 8: Principles of Treatment from Trauma and the Body: A Sensorimotor Approach to Psychotherapy.