What's in a Name? Grief, EMDR & the Story Behind Loma

About this episode

How did Loma Therapy get started, and what does the name Loma actually mean?

In this episode, we share more of the story behind Loma Therapy and the experiences that shaped why we're doing what we do. We talk about the grief that comes with losing a beloved pet, how loss can affect us in ways we don't always expect, and what healing can look like.

We also dive into EMDR therapy and access to quality mental health care through insurance — and why we believe people shouldn't have to sacrifice the quality of their therapy just because they want to use their insurance.

Transcript

Auto-generated from the episode audio and lightly edited for readability — it may contain transcription errors.

Welcome to Bilateral Banter, a Loma Therapy podcast where we explore the psychology of everyday life and make EMDR easier to understand — with your hosts Dr. Montana Holmes, licensed psychologist and EMDR-trained therapist, and Auriel Campbell, licensed professional counselor, supervisor, and EMDR trainer and consultant. This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for mental health care. Listening does not create a therapeutic relationship. If you're in crisis, call or text 988 or contact your local emergency services. Let's get into today's conversation.

Oh man, it's good to see you. How are you doing, Montana?

I am doing well — excited for another day of podcasting.

Are you surviving that Texas heat?

I am, actually. Barely, though. It is something else. I forgot what it was like — we were in Austin the other day and it was 101, and we were walking around in that kind of heat where you can feel your skin prickle. I was like, wow, I forgot what this was like, because I've been in California for a while. How is it in Louisiana?

Oh, it's hot. It's hot and muggy — a lot of humidity. To the point where, if I go on vacation in Colorado, I feel like the Princess and the Pea: I'm getting altitude sickness, it's too dry, I have to get a humidifier, because I'm so used to so much humidity. Like — I need to go back to the swamp, actually.

That's it. The swamp queen. Well, I'm so excited for this episode today — for everyone to hear about the vision of Loma Therapy and how it all came about.

We touched on it last episode, so I'm excited to get deeper into it, because it's such a big part of why we're doing this podcast and how all of these conversations got started. I feel really lucky, and I really believe in what we're all doing. And I'm so happy that we met, that you're part of the team — and hopefully we just get bigger and bigger.

Well, why don't you tell us? You got trained in EMDR earlier this year, which shows what you were saying in the last episode about your initial thought about EMDR. You and I have both had that thought — I think we're similar in that way. We like to analyze a lot, maybe more on the hyper-vigilant side of things, more skeptical about things. So it's neat: you shared your story of experiencing healing with it, and then you turned around and said, we need to make a company out of this.

Yes — we definitely picked that ball up and ran with it. And it was easy to, because I'd had that response to EMDR, so it was so easy to believe in it. But to bring our listeners up to date on what we're even talking about: Grant — I guess they don't even know that; Grant is my husband — has been in tech for a long time. We're actually planning on having him on the podcast one day so y'all can get to know him. He was in tech helping people become entrepreneurs and building technology for them, so he'd been in that space for a while, solving problems and learning what issues people run into when they're trying to start a business. And Grant witnessed me go through school and start my own practice with a colleague, and was privy to all the things therapists run into — especially with insurance, getting clients, building a website, learning about profit-and-loss sheets. All this stuff we're not taught in school.

So we had this idea: maybe what the community would benefit from is software that would help them, start to finish, open their own private practice. We must have had two hundred conversations with therapists at all stages of their careers, asking them: what do you need? What do you want? If you could flip a switch — the miracle question. And everyone — listening back, we now hear it — said: I would really love to gain a specialty, and I really need clients. I need help filling my caseload. As we were doing the interviews, we wanted the answer to be that they needed help starting a private practice, but it just wasn't that. So when we went back and listened, and gave ourselves the space to hear what they were actually saying, we heard it. And we asked: okay, what specialty? What's needed out there? And it was EMDR — on two sides: the clinician side and the client side.

The trainings are so expensive — to get the EMDR training and then go through the whole process. If you want to take it all the way, like you did, it is incredibly pricey.

And it takes a lot of time and dedication. I usually tell people: some therapeutic modalities are pretty cut and dried — think about CBT. But EMDR is incredibly complex. If you're going to dive into it, you're going to dive into it. You can't half-do EMDR. With some modalities you can pick up a manual, read it through, attend a few webinars, and gain the knowledge to implement it — but with EMDR, it is not that. You need those consultations. You need to do it the way it's set out.

It's true. I've been practicing EMDR since 2017, and there are still times I go, you know, I think I need to consult on this. It's not even just the complexity of the model — it's how complex humans are, how unique we all are. I'm also an internationally credentialed sand tray therapist — love sand tray therapy — and I make the joke that there are maybe five books on sand tray therapy, with a lot of repeating. EMDR — you just keep getting more and more and more to it.

So we were there going: okay, they want a specialty. What is hard, what is inaccessible right now? And it seemed like quality trauma-informed care — specifically EMDR — is really hard to get trained in if you don't have the resources or the time. And on the client side, it's also pretty inaccessible, because — at least in my experience — most therapists who are EMDR trained or certified are charging private pay. You're looking at $200, $300 a session. And I get it: you invested a lot in that specialty, and you have an expertise that warrants that kind of price. But not a lot of people can afford it.

It definitely limits who can receive care.

So as Grant and I looked at this: you have clinicians needing support with training, and clients needing support with access. What we envisioned was not only a platform that is EMDR-specific, but one day a platform for all specialties — helping therapists gain specialties across the board. Reflecting on my own experience: I did my master's and felt a little unprepared, which is why I went to get my doctorate. After my doctorate I felt way more prepared — but I didn't come out with a specialty. A lot of people are that way. It wasn't until I pursued my own specialty in OCD — an expensive, multi-day training, plus consultation and supervision — that I said, okay, I found my niche. I know what I'm doing and who I'm helping. But that came after grad school.

So suddenly the picture started to make so much sense: people go to school, graduate as generalists, then seek specialization — but they don't have the resources or the time, or they're at a practice that doesn't support them that way, so they have to do it on their own. That's how Loma evolved. We're going to help therapists get trained in this specialty. We're going to navigate the insurance world — helping therapists with their billing, and platforms like that exist, like Headway and Alma — and we're also going to help the client take advantage of their benefits and use their mental health coverage to access a specialized therapy. Not just talk therapy — EMDR.

Someone might have spent ten years in talk therapy, and it probably did a great job keeping them stabilized and supported — but did it address the root cause of anything? Did it get deeper?

Not to interrupt, but it makes me think of seeing something in a bubble. You're poking the bubble, you're talking about the bubble — but you don't necessarily have the modality to get through the bubble. And EMDR does that. You can identify the bubble, massage the bubble, talk about the bubble — but it's so different when you can get in the bubble.

Yes — and people can have that bubble their whole life. Speaking from experience, and I talked about this a little in the last episode: when I was equipped with narrative therapy, I felt like what I was doing was just moving the bubble around. If a client had something in their life and that bubble was getting in the way, I had enough tools to help them move it aside — but eventually that bubble would float back and get in the way again. With EMDR, we truly are going deep into that bubble and bursting it, so it no longer gets in the way.

And sometimes we're shrinking the bubble, but the bubble's still there — sometimes that bubble will always be there, just a little bit smaller. We see that a lot with OCD too: we're probably never going to get rid of this bubble entirely, but at least we were able to get inside it and get some things done — and it feels smaller.

It's so neat to hear y'all's heart. I think about how we got connected. My husband, Trent, is very similar to Montana's husband, and Montana and I are similar. Trent and I own a group practice here in Louisiana, and a big thing we're passionate about is very similar to what y'all's heart longs for. One: advocating for the clinician — exactly what you're saying, in grad school we're taught how to be clinicians, not business owners. Giving them good compensation and a healthy place to work, while providing quality services. And of these specializations, EMDR is actually one of the cheaper ones, which is crazy — some trainings are four grand just for a part one, and that's not income mental health therapists have to throw around.

No, they don't have that expendable income.

So it's neat to hear y'all's heart — and you took it from such a scientific standpoint. Such a PhD move: let's interview two hundred people and see what's going on. And the need you saw was on both ends: the clinician saying, I need someone who can support me on the business end while I keep my autonomy, who can empower me and float the expense of the specialty — and in doing so, provide more accessibility to the public. It's beautiful.

And Auriel, you and I were talking about Texas — which is where we started the company, and we're specifically accessible to Texas residents right now. What was the number? One mental health professional for every 760 residents. And then the likelihood of that one professional having EMDR training — what does it go to then? There's such a need for mental health professionals, period. And then there's such a need for specialization.

Yes, and trauma-informed care. I have to share this, because I think it's cool to hear: there's an interview with Shapiro — I talked about it last episode — where she shares how EMDR got really pigeonholed as a trauma model. Which it is, right? It even theorizes that everything we experience — anxiety, emotional eating, any maladaptive way of coping — comes from something that hasn't been fully processed in the brain. So in a sense, it's traumatic. But EMDR is used for anxiety disorders, addiction, depression, OCD, low self-esteem. Sometimes we don't even realize — oh, I have trauma? We only think of the symptoms, the somatic pain. Or we think of big-T traumas and not little-t traumas: I got sick a lot as a kid, we moved around a lot, I recently lost my job. Things we don't realize start to compound and impact our sense of self and how we relate to the world. EMDR hits it all.

I love that you're saying all of this, because I do think EMDR and big-T trauma often go hand in hand — but there are all these other things in the background going, hey, wait, I can be used too. Especially the little-t trauma. I think this is part of why you and I felt so pulled to do a podcast like this: so our listeners can hear our conversation and maybe identify things in their life that they didn't realize warranted help. I don't know how to phrase this well, but we get into this role of invalidating ourselves — because we get into this mode of, life is okay, I'm managing, I can get up in the morning, go to my job, come home. So what do I have to complain about?

It's so interesting you're talking about this — and I want to make sure we don't go too far off, because we're going to talk about Loma — but this goes to why you're doing Loma and why we're offering EMDR. Talking about a baseline — our normal. I use this story often: I had night terrors from the time I was a little kid, and two years ago my doctor happened to ask just the right question and said, whoa, those are night terrors — how often are you having them? I said, oh, about six times a week. Because it had become my normal, I didn't realize how much it was impacting my life. And just recently — I have a rare autoimmune disease called Addison's disease — I intentionally slowed my pace down and noticed symptoms that had stayed the same, and because I was able to take a step back, I realized: oh my goodness, I'm not on enough cortisol. But that had been my state for years. Sometimes it's not until someone holds up a mirror to a certain symptom that we start to connect the dots — huh, maybe this is from something.

The biggest thing EMDR says is: any present concern comes from something in the past. If there are weeds, there's some form of root. Even something like perfectionism or workaholism can come from something — and EMDR can help you explore what that is, to help you bloom into your authentic self.

I know you and I can get on these threads — but I do want to say something, because I had a baby fourteen months ago, which I cannot believe. My gynecologist — I can't remember if it was a postpartum appointment or if I was still pregnant; that time is so blurry — we were talking about symptoms that happen after you give birth. I'd made some joking reflection about tinkling on yourself when you laugh after birth, and I said, oh yeah, but that's normal. And she said: no, ma'am. That's not normal. That's common, but it's not normal. And I sat with that. Just because something's common doesn't make it normal.

Or even better — does it make it healthy? Does it serve your quality of life?

She said: it's common, it's not normal, it's a problem — and it can be fixed, with pelvic floor therapy. I don't know why that conversation had such a huge impact on me, but now I view things through that lens. Normal and abnormal can get a bad reputation as words, but sometimes it's actually necessary to name things as abnormal. We go on living with things saying, oh, it's normal. No — it's common, but that doesn't make it normal.

I love that she used the word common. As therapists, we normalize — we want people to feel normal, to feel like they're not crazy, that they belong. But there are things we start to accept as part of our life, sometimes not even consciously, and that doesn't mean they're healthy or bringing joy and quality of life. Like you said: oh well, now I'll just tinkle on myself the rest of my life — until someone says, you know you don't have to, right?

As therapists sometimes we lose that, because normalizing is such a big part of the work, and it is so helpful — yes, a lot of people experience this. But sometimes we do need to name it. When we name it, it comes to the forefront, and then we can target it — and it doesn't have as big an impact on our life as it did when we were saying, oh, this is normal.

It's like we go into either minimization or magnification. And I think that's the cool thing about where EMDR has been magnified: it is a trauma therapy, a trauma-informed therapy — but it can be used for a lot of things, especially when we see all these symptoms through the lens of something that hasn't been able to be fully processed.

So — Loma. The history of the name might be fun to get into. How we got started, and what it evolved into, and what the mission is now — that's what we were just talking about. But we wanted to talk about this because it reflects grief and happiness and joy, everything wrapped in one — the both-and. And the humanness of the company. It comes very much from Grant and me, and it's very personal to us.

Loma is short for Paloma — which in English means dove, and that's a whole other story. This was the name of our dog. She was Grant's and my baby. We loved this dog. She passed in October, several years ago, and it was devastating for us — both of us were just so, so hurt by the loss. For our listeners who have lost a pet — especially a soul pet, one of those once-in-a-lifetime dogs — they'll know what I'm talking about. And I know you're a pet owner yourself, Auriel.

Oh yeah. My soul pup is currently alive and will never die in my head.

They can never die in our heads — that's true. But we lost her in October several years ago. When we started this company and were thinking about names, we thought, you know, we should go with more of a mental-health name, something that makes sense — and we went back and forth, and I don't know how it came about, but we said: what about Loma? Because we used to call her Loma for short. And Loma in Spanish means hill. So we joked: okay, when we're in meetings and people ask what the name means, maybe we don't lead with the dog story — we'll do the hill story instead. But it just felt right. Her name will live on. Hopefully the company is successful, and it lives on for years and years, and we remember her when we talk about it and when we celebrate it. She was the best.

And this company being what it is — putting the life experiences of people first, especially the ones that are so tough and dark and come with a lot of emotion — that was so much of what that ending was for us with Loma. It was one of those stories where you have to make the tough decisions at the end.

Yep. We had a dog like that — Coco.

So we thought: how fitting that we're going to be a trauma-informed, trauma-focused platform, and this comes from one of our own personal traumas. We're celebrating her, and it's taking on a new meaning — the ending is a new beginning. We're really happy with the name we chose. It brings a smile to our faces when we use it, because we think of her.

It's amazing. One — I just love the name Loma; it's naturally therapeutic when you hear it. But also — you talked about how you were trained in narrative therapy, and you naturally did this: rewriting the story. In your own suffering and healing and resilience-building, it's now passed along to the community. I think it's beautiful. And like we said earlier: pets, man — sometimes pets are harder to lose than some family members. You're with them all the time. They're your babies. It's a really great testament to the connection you had with her.

Thank you. I'd like to think so too. And what you said about losing a pet — I might go out on a limb and say that most of the time, people downplay losing a pet in front of others. I did it myself when we lost Loma, because I was on internship when we lost her. Luckily I had some of the most wonderful supervisors at my placement — the University of San Francisco counseling center. The outpouring of love after they found out was incredible; some of the therapists wrote me cards, and one pulled me aside and said: you took her to the vet. You petted her every day. She slept in your bed and cuddled with you on the couch for seven years. How can you expect yourself to just get up and come to work like nothing happened? This is big. I had been comparing it to losing a family member and coming up short, and she said — it's not the same. You didn't do those things for Uncle Bob. So why are you comparing it to that? I needed to hear that validation.

It's amazing you're saying this. Thinking about trauma survivors — and really people in general; we're technically all trauma survivors to some level — sometimes pets feel safer than people. There's a level of consistency, attunement, and connection people can have with an animal that their nervous system doesn't feel safe to have with a human yet. I have two mini schnauzers — it's funny when I say that, it sounds like I have too many — and Zeke, our black one, is my soul pup. He used to come to sessions with me a lot, and there would be just this shift in clients from seeing him. Now that I own the counseling center, I still bring him — people ask, where's that dog? They build a connection and attachment, and he brings co-regulation and felt safety that sometimes we don't even feel in our own bodies alone. When you lose that, it's incredibly devastating.

I'm completely theorizing right now — but a baby sees themselves and mom as the same person for the first few months of life. I used to work with a good bit of adoption cases, and even with the most magical pregnancy and delivery, adopted right at birth into the most magical family, there's still trauma — because the baby knows the heartbeat of the mom, knows the smell of mom. It's incredibly regulating. So when I think about trauma survivors, some of the best ways to co-regulate and nurture ourselves is through the lens of the deepest maternal care — even if you didn't have a good mom. And I think dogs do that. I can sit next to Zeke, I know Zeke's smell, and everything's better — and he knows mine. There's something so deep you can't really explain, and it reminds me of a very young baby with their mom.

It reminds me of unconditional love. No matter what you do, what you say, how you show up — at your worst or your best — that pet is going to be there and love you, and wag their tail, as if you were at your best all the time.

It's beautiful. I think people value hearing the humanness behind companies and stories and people. We long to connect — so knowing the beauty behind the name is really special.

I'm so happy to share it, and I'm glad you had the idea — because for so long, Grant and I were like, we probably shouldn't share this.

Cat's out of the bag now. Dog's out of the bag now! So — currently, I know we're in the beginning parts of the company, and the hope is that it will be able to serve all the states, but currently it's serving Texas. Residents of Texas, if they're interested in EMDR therapy or receiving therapy — what happens next with considering Loma Therapy?

Thank you, Auriel. Yes — I encourage anyone and everyone, even if you're just curious, to go to lomatherapy.com. There you'll find a host of resources and explanations of what EMDR is. If you want to get started — whether you have insurance, or need a sliding scale or private-pay option — we'll help run your insurance check to make sure you're in network with one of our therapists. You fill out the form with your details, your preferences, and what you're hoping to work on in therapy, and you'll be given options for therapists who meet those preferences. You can schedule directly onto their calendar, or have us match you. It should be very, very easy to get connected with a specialist.

That's what we believe. The medical field has kind of got this down: you go to your PCP, you say something funky is happening in my throat, and they say — I've got you, here's a referral to an ENT, you'll be in their waiting room within a week or two. That part isn't always perfectly fleshed out, but the referral is there, and you get specialized care for what's going on. That's what Loma is trying to do. If you believe — from your own research, from reading our website, from watching podcasts like this — that EMDR might be worth a try, which it always is (some EMDR is better than no EMDR), you can come to our website, get matched with a therapist, and start. We can get you matched in less than 48 hours. That's our hope, our mission, what we're dedicating every day to making seamless. We're starting in Texas, our home state, and hopefully branching out and bringing this model to the rest of the country.

It's beautiful. Something from early on, when you reached out to me — a little of how Montana and I got connected: when she and her husband started the company, part of their heart was wanting an in-house EMDR trainer, someone journeying alongside them as a partner with the same heart and mission, pouring into these clinicians and training them — and they would float the expenses. Which I think is incredibly beautiful. It just happened that we connected and it worked out. I remember the first time we met, over Zoom or Google Meet, you shared that y'all had run a Google ad just in Austin — and had to stop the ad. At that time, all y'all were going to do was connect whoever was interested in EMDR with an EMDR therapist. Loma didn't even really exist at that point. And y'all had to turn the ad off because there was more demand than there were providers with availability — providers utilizing EMDR at all. And that was just Austin, not even thinking across the state or the country. So it's neat to see: not only is this providing more accessibility to EMDR — you can get there quicker. You don't have to wait.

And the other thing — I think we said this last time: if you've been in therapy for two, three, four, five years and you're doing okay, but you still feel like something is missing, EMDR is one of those therapies where you don't have to abandon your talk-therapy therapist. You can keep them — keep that relationship you've worked on for so long that is very beneficial to you — and add EMDR. You can do that work in parallel. Some things that have been following you for a very long time — like that bubble — we may actually be able to get in there, make it smaller, take away some of the charge, so your overall well-being improves with that kind of specialization. A PCP would never try to treat cancer.

Right — but you're also not saying, okay, bye PCP, I'm only going to see my oncologist now.

No — keep your family doctor. But get the care that you need. And for anybody currently in therapy: if you have a therapist who offers EMDR, that can be your PCP who happens to also have the specialization. But if you've been working with someone for a long time, none of that work is null and void, and you're not starting over. I've had plenty of clients where clinicians in my community would refer to me and say: I have this client — I just want you to do EMDR with them. I'd collaborate with that client's provider: what have you been doing so far, what's working, where do I pick up to continue the preparation for EMDR? And once that was done, they went back to their provider. And for some people who said, I've worked with that provider a while and now I want to transition to you — that's also something people can do. It can really complement the work you've already done, and be flexible with where you want to go.

Exactly. And for our listeners who don't know the behind-the-scenes operations: there's this thing called a release of information. That's what Auriel is speaking to. I won't speak for every therapist, but being on a team and working collaboratively is so fun and meaningful. These things exist for a reason: you sign one, and suddenly two therapists can talk to each other about your care and really work together for you. They exist to help people get more comprehensive care. So, a little behind-the-scenes lingo, in case a listener is wondering: I have a therapist, I'd love to start EMDR therapy, but I don't want to start from scratch with my story. You don't have to.

And let's say you're out of state. A resource you can use is psychologytoday.com — type in your state or city and look for EMDR with your insurance. Even though Loma's not outside of Texas yet — just wait — we don't want you to feel like your healing has to wait if you're not in Texas.

Yes — thank you for that, Auriel. Well, I know we have meetings to get to. Another lovely conversation with you.

Yes, same — looking forward to our next one. Thank you so much, Montana. I hope you all have a wonderful day, and we look forward to our next conversation.

Thank you all.