meet ashley
Part forest-library guide. Part nervous-system strategist.
And someone who knows firsthand what it’s like when your body carries what your mind can’t fix.
- Licensed Professional Counselor · Oregon
- Certified Master A.R.T. Practitioner
- Spinal cord injury survivor
- Mother · Artist · Consumer of books
- Earth and nature centered · Permaculture gardener
Ashley Jopling
LPC · Master ART Practitioner · CRC
the story
I know what it's like to lie in a hospital bed and realize your body has been carrying what your mind refused to.
I broke my back in a horseback riding accident. I’d been ignoring my body and the needs of my neurodivergent brain for years, pouring all my emotions into overworking and trying to solve everything with logic and strategy. I thought I could push through the depression and anxiety.
But my body was carrying stories my mind couldn’t fix.
I was disconnected, exhausted, and drowning in self-neglect. As I began to heal physically, I realized there were deeper wounds that needed my attention. I wanted to like myself. To truly love the person I saw in the mirror.
Healing was slow and painful. But I began to see a new possibility. I had a choice: stay stuck, or take a chance on a different path.
So I took that chance. I reprocessed the past that had been keeping me stuck and challenged the beliefs that held me down. I emerged. And now that journey informs everything I bring to this work.
Healing isn’t about quick fixes or logic alone. It’s about getting curious, looking for the lie, the myth, or the memory as the pathway to freedom.
how i work
Three things I need you to know before we begin.
Effort & Imagination
The work is yours. I'm the guide.
This is not a magic pill. Healing requires your full participation, not just showing up, but honoring the process. What you do between sessions, how you integrate what shifts, what you choose next, that belongs to you. Respect the work. Respect the space. You’re investing real money and real courage here.
Compassion Over Suffering
This will be hard. That's not a warning. It's an invitation.
I’m not selling you ease. Real change requires real contact with what hurts. The pain of staying the same is optional. The pain of change leads somewhere. I’ll be honest with you when it’s hard because that honesty is part of the care.
Faith in the Process
The path is uncertain. Trust it anyway.
We will not always know where we’re headed. There will be sessions that surprise you, shifts you didn’t expect, moments in the dark and the unknown. But in that uncertainty, if you stay with it, we will find our way back home to yourself.
Training & Credentials
Depth requires skill, not just insight.
I work at the intersection of brain-based trauma therapies because precision matters. Every modality I use has been chosen for what it can access, not just what it can explain.
Licensed Professional Counselor — LPC #C7797
Oregon licensed professional counselor specializing in trauma and chronic pain intensives.
Certified Master A.R.T. Practitioner
Accelerated Resolution Therapy uses voluntary image replacement and eye movements to shift how distressing memories, patterns, issues, and body sensations are stored without requiring you to retell every detail. It leans heavily into imaginative metaphor in your mind's eye.
Trained EMDR Therapist
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is an 8-phase model that shapes trauma treatment from the very first session to the last. Using bilateral stimulation: eye movements, tapping, movement, sounds — we target activating memories and body sensations to reduce the emotional charge, so they can be stored as the past, not the present. I don't practice fidelity EMDR. I draw on all 8 phases but integrate them fluidly with ART, Brainspotting, and PRT; moving between resourcing and reprocessing based on what your nervous system needs in the moment.
Brainspotting Practitioner
Brainspotting (BSP) uses eye position to locate and process trauma stored deep in the subcortical brain where words don't always reach. Of the reprocessing modalities it is the most flexible and fluid. In it's purest form it can feel like a psychedelic meditative journey. It integrates well with metaphor, parts work, and the other reprocessing therapies easily.
BSP leans heavily into the uncertainty principle: that we must let go of any absolutes of where our session will go and how the brain/body/system needs to process material in a session. We essential stay attuned to your system in the moment and unattached to our expectation of outcomes. We trust that your system knows exactly what it needs to heal, we just create the opening, frame, and space for it to do so.
Certified Rehabilitation Counselor
The CRC is the prominent certification for counselors who assist people experiencing medical and disability-related barriers. Many of the people I work with navigate chronic illness, disability, or injury alongside their trauma and this certification and ongoing training ensures I can meet them fully.
Master's in Rehabilitation & Mental Health Counseling
Master's degree with a concentration in Marriage & Family Therapy from the University of South Florida, 2011.
Advanced Therapy Trainings
ART
Basic, Advanced & Enhanced ART
EMDR
Parts 1 & 2
Somatic & Attachment Focused EMDR Advanced
Affirming Approaches: Queer & Trans Clients
Brainspotting
Phases 1 & 2
Specialty: Expansion · Intake · Group Brainspotting
Accelerated Resourcing Brainspotting
Brainspotting Intensives
Other
Flash Technique & Advanced Flash
Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT)
My Approach to Chronic Pain
Learning that pain can be neuroplastic changed my entire practice.
The idea that a perceived injury with no ongoing physical damage could send debilitating pain signals to a body for years was wild to me. And even wilder: that once the nervous system updates that information, the pain can be entirely gone.
My approach is anchored in the Pain Reprocessing Therapy lens working directly with the brain’s misfiring danger alarm system to update those signals. But I don’t stop there.
Humans are dynamic. What works for one person doesn’t work for all. And trauma and chronic pain are rarely traveling separately, they tend to show up together.
Me: I’ll ignore you.
Brain: No the fuck you won’t.
Back: …ouch.
Me: What was that?
Therapist: Yep. Chronic pain and trauma are besties
That’s the pattern. The somatics become sensitized and that’s the pain talking.
A little PRT alone often isn’t enough, because underneath the pain there’s frequently unprocessed emotion holding it in place. When the body has been ignored long enough, it stops asking nicely. It starts screaming.
So we don’t just retrain the signal. We also address what’s keeping it alive: the emotional weight, the survival patterns, the memories the body has been holding.
ART, EMDR, and Brainspotting are woven into the PRT framework in a way that updates the pain signal and expresses the emotion reinforcing it.
currently reading
If you recognize any of these, you're probably in the right place.
The books on my nightstand tell you more about who I am than any credential ever could.
Somewhere Beyond the Sea
TJ Klune
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
Taylor Jenkins Reid
To Shape a Dragon's Breath
Moniquill Blackgoose
Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Faeries
Heather Fawcett
Medicinal Plants of the Pacific Northwest
Natalie Hammerquist
Throne of Glass (series)
Sarah J. Maas
“Ashley creates a dynamic space where people can work with pain and trauma. She guides people from fear and stagnation to courage and expansion. She is highly skilled and incredibly kind. Working with Ashley is like having a trauma-informed Magician in your corner.”
— Amanda, Therapist @ Amanda Feaver Psychotherapy
Feel like we are the right fit?
Schedule a consultation and we’ll determine together whether this intensive model is right for where you are right now.