Meet Jamie Vollmoeller, LCSW, EMDRIA CIT
Founder & Clinical Director of Suffolk Family Therapy
EMDR Therapy | Complex Trauma | PTSD | Neurodivergence | Attachment & Relationship Trauma
I work especially well with people who understand their patterns but still feel controlled by them.
Maybe you’ve spent years in therapy learning why you respond the way you do. You recognize your triggers, understand how your childhood shaped your relationships, and know what you’re supposed to do differently.
But when something activates those old responses, you still find yourself people-pleasing, shutting down, overthinking, or feeling responsible for everyone around you.
I understand how frustrating that can be.
My approach to therapy focuses on helping people move beyond understanding their trauma toward actually changing how those experiences affect their daily lives.
As the founder of Suffolk Family Therapy and creator of The Reclaiming Pathway™, I’ve built a practice centered on structured, compassionate trauma treatment that addresses not only symptoms but the experiences and protective patterns contributing to them.
My Approach to EMDR Therapy and Complex Trauma Recovery
I believe that many of the behaviors people criticize themselves for are responses they developed when they didn’t have better options.
People-pleasing, perfectionism, emotional shutdown, hyper-independence, and even anger can serve important protective functions.
They may have helped you navigate environments where your needs weren’t consistently met, where expectations were unpredictable, or where expressing emotions didn’t feel safe.
The problem is that these responses can continue long after the circumstances that created them have changed.
In therapy, I’m interested in understanding not just what you’re experiencing, but why your mind and body continue responding the way they do.
My approach integrates Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), Internal Family Systems (IFS), attachment-focused interventions, and nervous-system regulation.
I don’t believe trauma processing should be rushed. Developing the capacity to recognize your emotions, tolerate distress, and feel connected to yourself is an important part of treatment.
And I don’t believe the goal of therapy is to make you better at tolerating a life that isn’t working for you.
The goal is to help you build a life where you no longer have to rely on the same survival strategies to feel safe, worthy, or connected.
My Clinical Background and Why I Founded Suffolk Family Therapy
My career as a clinical social worker has given me the opportunity to work with children, adolescents, and adults across a variety of mental health settings.
I’ve worked with children in foster care, adolescent girls with complex trauma histories at Madonna Heights, a residential high school, and individuals receiving treatment in a community mental health clinic. I also spent several years working in another clinician’s private practice.
Throughout these experiences, I began recognizing how frequently trauma was at the root of behaviors and symptoms that were often misunderstood. Anger, defiance, avoidance, emotional shutdown, and difficulty trusting others weren’t always simply behavioral problems. They were often protective responses developed through difficult experiences.
But I also began noticing another problem within the mental health field.
There was often a significant gap between the complexity of the clients we were expected to treat and the training and support we were given to treat them effectively.
As clinicians, we were expected to work with individuals experiencing complex trauma, significant mental health symptoms, and challenging clinical presentations, but we weren’t always provided with the professional development, consultation, or resources necessary to feel adequately prepared.
I believed that if we wanted clinicians to provide high-quality care, we needed to invest in their clinical growth.
In 2019, I founded my own group practice with a mission to create the kind of clinical environment I had wanted to work in.
I wanted a practice where ongoing training and professional development weren’t afterthoughts, but essential parts of how we operated.
A place where clinicians were supported in developing the skills and confidence necessary to provide effective, evidence-informed treatment.
I also wanted to build something collaborative.
I didn’t want clinicians to feel like they were simply employees expected to carry a caseload and follow directions. I wanted them to feel heard, valued, and empowered to contribute their perspectives, ideas, and clinical expertise to the direction of the practice.
Because I believe the people doing the clinical work should have a voice in how that work is delivered.
Over time, that vision evolved into Suffolk Family Therapy and eventually The Reclaiming Pathway™, our structured trauma recovery program.
Today, our focus on clinical training, collaboration, and program development reflects the same mission that led me to open the practice in the first place.
My Specialized Training and Therapeutic Approaches
My clinical approach integrates advanced training in trauma treatment, including:
- Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) — Trauma processing and adaptive resolution of distressing experiences.
- Internal Family Systems (IFS) Level 1 Training — Understanding protective parts, internal conflict, and the development of compassionate Self-leadership.
- Somatic and nervous-system-informed approaches — Understanding the relationship between physiological responses, emotional experiences, and trauma.
- Specialized EMDR protocols and interventions — Including approaches supporting stabilization, trauma processing, and treatment of complex presentations.
As the founder of Suffolk Family Therapy, my work now extends beyond individual clinical treatment into supporting the development of our clinicians, strengthening our treatment approaches, and creating opportunities for collaboration and continued learning.
I’ve always believed that better-supported clinicians are better equipped to provide the quality of care our clients deserve.
Why I Created The Reclaiming Pathway™ Trauma Recovery Program
One of the things I’ve noticed throughout my career is that many people spend years in therapy developing insight into their experiences without experiencing the changes they’re hoping for.
They understand why they’re anxious.
They recognize the connection between their childhood and their relationships.
They know which coping skills they’re supposed to use.
But they still struggle to access those skills when they’re overwhelmed.
I wanted to create a treatment model that addressed that gap.
The Reclaiming Pathway™ combines weekly individual trauma-focused therapy with weekly therapeutic groups, providing opportunities to build emotional capacity, process unresolved experiences, and practice new ways of responding.
Our approach follows four stages:
Build Capacity → Resolving the Past → Reclaim Your Life → Sustain Recovery
The program emphasizes individualized treatment planning, clinical readiness, and meaningful progress in daily functioning.
We don’t measure recovery simply by whether someone understands their trauma.
We want to know whether they’re beginning to experience their lives differently.
Can they recognize and communicate their needs?
Can they navigate conflict without automatically abandoning themselves?
Can they tolerate uncomfortable emotions without becoming overwhelmed?
Can they begin making choices based on what they want rather than what they fear?
For me, trauma recovery isn’t just about feeling less distressed. It’s about having more freedom to live your life.
Why This Work Matters to Me
I know that understanding your experiences and changing how they affect you are two very different things.
I also know how easy it is to build an identity around being capable, dependable, and productive while struggling to recognize your own needs.
For a long time, I understood the value of working hard, pushing through difficult experiences, and turning anxiety into something productive.
But I’ve also learned that the strategies that help us survive aren’t always the strategies that allow us to enjoy our lives.
That’s something I bring into my work as a therapist.
I don’t view trauma recovery as a process of fixing everything that’s wrong with someone.
I view it as an opportunity to understand the ways we’ve adapted, recognize which patterns are no longer serving us, and develop a more compassionate relationship with ourselves.
As a mother of three, I also understand that these patterns don’t exist in isolation. They influence our relationships, our parenting, our work, and the ways we show up for the people we love.
I believe people deserve more than simply getting through each day.
They deserve the opportunity to understand themselves, trust themselves, and build lives that feel meaningful beyond what they accomplish for everyone else.
Begin Trauma Recovery With Suffolk Family Therapy
Whether you’ve been in therapy before or are beginning to explore trauma treatment for the first time, finding the right support matters.
At Suffolk Family Therapy, our clinicians provide structured, individualized trauma treatment designed to help clients move beyond symptom management toward meaningful change.
Through The Reclaiming Pathway™, we combine EMDR, parts-informed approaches, capacity building, and therapeutic groups to support recovery.
In-person trauma therapy in Bohemia and Smithtown, Long Island, and virtual therapy throughout New York State.