Empowering Humans to Thrive
Laine Demetria, MS, LMFT
I believe healing happens when body and mind are connected. My passion is helping people heal from trauma, reduce harm to themselves, loved ones, and community, and develop powerful parenting skills and healthy family relationships.
~ Laine Demetria
Services
Therapy for individuals, couples, families, and groups to heal together.
About Laine
Laine Demetria, MS, LMFT
I am a licensed psychotherapist, certified Integrative Gestalt coach, and certified yoga instructor. I work with adults, adolescents, couples and groups at my Bay Area practice, MindBodyMend.
I utilize a positive depth-oriented approach and integrate somatics, mindfulness, Internal Family Systems (IFS) and EMDR. I offer prep and integration for psychedelic journey work. And I facilitate Nonviolent Communication (NVC) trainings, grief groups, and women’s trauma groups.
My practice is grounded in a trauma-informed, feminist, queer, anti-racist, and relational lens.
Specialties
Psychedelic Psychotherapy & Integration
In over 30 years of work, I have found that our deepest wounds are also our deepest blessings—a gift to ourselves and our communities. In psychedelic spaces, this notion of ‘wound to blessing’ often comes up as gratitude. In a non-directive approach, I support clients to embody their inner healing intelligence, their heart and wisdom.
My life mission is to treat trauma with psychedelic therapies. I currently offer prep and integration sessions for psychedelic journey work. I collaborate with prescribing psychiatrists, individual therapists, and somatic and sound bath healing practitioners.
Training
Psychedelic Facilitation Training Program
UC Berkeley's Center for the Science of Psychedelics (2024-25)
Ketamine-Assisted Therapy (KAT) Training Program, and Clinical Supervisor
Alchemy Community Therapy Center (August 2023 – Present)
MDMA-Assisted Therapy Training Program
Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) (April 2022)
Trauma Recovery
PTSD, complex trauma, adult survivors of childhood abuse and illness, grief and loss, medical and disability trauma.
My fundamental belief in working with trauma is that there is a place in all of us that can never be harmed. What and where this place is, I’m not sure. It’s known and felt, but it’s hard to put into words or quantify. We may be bruised and torn up, but within each of us there is a place that is whole, perfect, and complete. When I work with clients, I hold this unbroken place in my awareness.
Since trauma is locked in the cells and tissues of the body, I have found that the most effective treatments address the body’s response, which talk therapy alone does not do. Here are some of the trauma informed, evidence-based therapies I utilize to help calm our nervous systems when agitated or unregulated:
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing)
Trauma-Focused CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy)
EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) i.e. tapping on acupressure points
Sensorimotor Psychotherapy
Reichian breath and bodywork
Somatic Experiencing
Parenting
What we are teaches the child far more than what we say, so we must be what we want our children to become. ~Joseph Chilton Pearce
Too many parents make life hard for the children by trying, too zealously, to make it easy for them.
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Attachment parenting, adoption (including transracial adoption), alternative families, parents of children with chronic medical conditions, LGBTQ+ parenting issues.
We are raising a generation of children who do not know how to calm themselves down, how to self-regulate and self-soothe, because they are overwhelmed and often have too much stuff. Our job as parents is to help our children tolerate boredom and disappointment. Let them have nothing to do. Let them tell you they are bored. They need down time, not screen time.
An additional parenting task is to support children as original and open-minded thinkers. As Margaret Mead so eloquently states, “Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.”
Heal yourself to heal your relationship with your kid(s)
Move beyond the shame/blame game of communication with your kid(s)
Learn powerful tools for connection
Harm Reduction
Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch.
~ James Baldwin
Substances, process addictions, any kind of problematic behavior.
People often ask me what is “harm reduction?” I answer by way of example: harm reduction is wearing a seatbelt, a helmet, a condom. All of these things reduce, but do not eliminate, the possibility of harm. Harm reduction, in the most general sense, is any action we take that moves us toward positive change in our lives.
At the heart of harm reduction is a gentle, compassionate, non-judgmental, client-driven commitment to positive change which does not require stigma, punishment, or an all-or-nothing philosophy.
THRIVERS
A Women's* Trauma Therapy Group
Trauma isolates; the group re-creates a sense of belonging. Trauma shames and stigmatizes; the group bears witness and affirms. Trauma degrades the victim; the group exalts [them]. Trauma dehumanizes the victim; the group restores [their] humanity.
~ Judith Lewis Herman
Winter 2025
Tuesdays: 6-7:30pm PST - ongoing, open
Thursdays: 6-7:30pm PST - Enrolling now! Begins Fall 2024
*trans and cis women, non-binary folks, and femmes
Contact me.
lainedemetria@gmail.com
510.703.4766
1191 Solano Ave, Box 6443
Albany, CA 94706