How to Find Peace in Chaos: Real Brain Talk with Kathie Stratmeyer

For more than 20 years, licensed therapist Kathie Stratmeyer has watched the emotional needs of her community shift dramatically. What once showed up as manageable anxiety, relationship strain, or transitional stress has grown into widespread trauma—often sparked not just by personal events but by community-wide tragedies.

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In Marysville, Washington, a high-school shooting and the devastating Oso mudslide left residents on edge for years. Even those who weren’t present felt the ripple effect of fear, social-media exposure, and a growing sense that danger was always nearby.

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Children, especially, began living in a world defined by lockdowns, safety drills, and repeated crisis alerts. Kathie notes that these experiences keep the nervous system in a chronic stress state, elevating cortisol and impairing emotional regulation and brain development. Over time, the community wasn’t just shaken—it was dysregulated.

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Why Talk Therapy Needed Support

After decades in private practice, Kathie began to feel that talk therapy alone was no longer enough. Clients dealing with deep trauma weren’t progressing, not because they lacked insight, but because their nervous systems were too activated to engage in therapeutic work. This realization led her to co-found Fountaingate Wellness, a mental-health clinic focused on integrating powerful, evidence-based tools like EMDR, hypnotherapy, and neurofeedback.

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The goal was clear: help clients first become calm enough to process their experiences. Without that foundational regulation, even the best therapeutic conversations remain out of reach.

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How Neurofeedback Became a Turning Point

Kathie’s introduction to neurofeedback began with a longtime client who had been stuck in emotional overwhelm for years. After reading The Body Keeps the Score, the client expressed interest in neurofeedback—something Kathie herself was just beginning to explore. Once the client started training, the results were unmistakable: reduced medication use, improved emotional stability, better sleep, and a newfound ability to tolerate therapy sessions.

Seeing this transformation unfold in real time convinced Kathie that neurofeedback needed to become part of her clinical approach.

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What Neurofeedback Actually Does

Neurofeedback trains the brain to regulate itself from the inside out. Instead of pushing clients to think differently, it helps their nervous systems settle so they can think differently.

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One of the protocols Kathie uses most often, SMR training, is deeply calming and supports focus and sleep. Clients simply watch a show while their brain receives feedback in real time, learning—implicitly—to return to a state of balance.

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Another protocol, Alpha-Theta training, encourages deeper emotional processing. While powerful, it must be introduced gradually for clients with significant trauma, since it can bring submerged emotions to the surface. When Kathie notices increased agitation, she adjusts the approach and returns to foundational calming work.

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A Transformation That Ripples Outward

One of Kathie’s earliest neurofeedback clients had endured severe developmental trauma and years of emotional instability. After consistent SMR sessions, she became calmer, brighter, and more connected to herself and her family. The change was so profound that her daughter later came to the clinic—not just for treatment, but to say:
“You gave me my mother back.”

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For Kathie, these moments highlight why neurofeedback matters. Trauma doesn’t just affect one person—it affects everyone around them. Healing does the same.

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Why Kathie Chose BrainCore

After researching multiple neurofeedback systems, Kathie ultimately chose BrainCore because of its depth, training quality, and professionalism. The combination of hands-on instruction, ongoing mentorship, weekly community calls, and advanced system capabilities gave her confidence to integrate neurofeedback into trauma-focused care. She felt supported—not just in learning the technology, but in using it responsibly with clients who needed it most.

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Expanding Access to Healing

Today, Kathie offers both in-clinic neurofeedback and at-home training units, making care more accessible without overwhelming her schedule. Her long-term vision includes incorporating QEEG brain mapping into all new client intakes and expanding trauma-informed neurofeedback services for children.

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What She Most Wants People to Know

Kathie summarizes neurofeedback simply: it helps people move from agitation to calm with a level of precision that talk therapy alone can’t always reach. There’s no homework, no intellectual effort—just the brain learning new patterns that allow healing to begin.

In a world where crisis feels constant, that kind of calm isn’t just helpful. It’s life-changing.