Keep Your Edge Sharp and Your Heart Open
Trauma therapy for SOF and combat veterans, first responders, and their spouses.
The same qualities that make elite professionals—tactical empathy, situational awareness, loyalty—can make exceptional partners and parents. You can maintain professional excellence and family connection.
Why SOF & spouses choose this practice:
As the wife of a Purple Heart combat veteran with PTSD and stepdaughter to a retired Green Beret, I understand both sides of military life — the professional demands and the family impact.
You need someone who "gets it" without requiring extensive explanation of:
Military culture and brotherhood bonds
Operational realities and moral complexity
The unique challenges of loving someone whose identity and nervous system have been shaped by life-or-death experiences
The emotional labor spouses carry
Complexities of parenting with PTSD and TBI
Integration and relational challenges that civilian relationship advice, and traditional clinical skills, do not address
IN-PERSON THERAPY IN
COLORADO SPRINGS
ONLINE THERAPY IN
43+ STATES
Your nervous system is doing exactly what it was trained to do — for war.
The same tactical empathy, situational awareness, calm in chaos, and loyalty that made you elite professionally can make you an exceptional partner and parent—when applied intentionally to relationships. But first, we need to help you recognize why a system calibrated for a war zone misfires at home.
Does This Sound Familiar?
You want to stay calm, but instead you feel:
Overwhelmed, unsteady, like you’ve lost your edge.
Cynical, irritable, moody.
Like a burden or a failure. It never seems like you are doing enough.
That hope only leads to disappointment. Relaxing means you’ve let your guard down. Joy seems unreachable.
Disconnected from the ones you love. You have trouble sitting still and being present, and miss the work you used to do. You want to feel fulfilled at home, but you don’t.
You made a career out of staying sharp. But now you feel dull, out of place, and numb.
Noises, mess, small talk, stupid people, nagging, rejection - they make you so angry.
Sometimes you feel out of place at home, but you also don’t want to be anywhere else.
You wish people knew how much you were holding back and appreciated your restraint instead of criticizing your reaction.
You’ve given up on happiness and hope and have generally settled into acceptance that this is how life must be from now on.
You are skeptical that there is a mental health professional who can help you.
You can stay sharp and connected.
My name is Dr. Alisa Bartel. While I am a Clinical Psychologist specializing in PTSD and military trauma — I am also a spouse to a Purple Heart combat veteran, stepdaughter to a Green Beret, a mother, stepmother, and Type II fun sufferer. I meet you with the clinical expertise of a specialist, grit of an endurance athlete, and the raw authenticity of being married to, and parenting with, a combat veteran.
In therapy, we use traditional talk therapy, skills-based approaches, and exposure/EMDR therapy to help you:
Maintain your professional edge while building emotional connectivity
Apply your elite qualities intentionally to relationships (e.g., communication, tactical empathy, situational awareness, loyalty)
Integrate strengths rather than eliminate what makes you exceptional
We will embrace the suck while learning to lead with heart. My clients leave therapy feeling lighter, calmer, clear-headed, and steady. Relationships are more fulfilling, and everything feels like less of a fight. There is strength in reclaiming hope, joy, and connection.
Keep your edge sharp and heart open.
Schedule a consult to learn how.
What Makes This Practice Different
Prior Therapy May Have:
Treated military adaptations as pathology to eliminate
Lacked understanding of military culture and brotherhood
Offered civilian relationship advice that doesn't fit
Focused on "calming down" vs. channeling strengths
Balked at sailor language, graphic detail of war horrors, or authentic military storytelling
This Practice:
Recognizes your elite skillset has something tremendous to offer the civilian world
Your military adaptations are strengths to integrate
Understands operational realities without explanation
Addresses the actual complexity of your relationships
Helps you keep your edge sharp while opening your heart
Specialties
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Exposure Therapy
More intensive work exploring and healing the emotional, somatic, and logical elements of trauma. There are several types of exposure therapy, including EMDR.
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Trauma-Exposed Careers
Working through the demands of an intense, confidential, and graphic profession while trying to tend to the emotions and needs of loved ones at home.
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Veterans & Responders
You’ve seen and experienced things that most people can’t comprehend. This can lead to struggles with relationships, emotions, isolation, sleep, and work.
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Spouses
Spouses to partners with PTSD, combat veterans, or those in high stress careers can feel alone. Therapy may involve processing the past, learning communication and emotion regulation skills, and restoring trust.
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Transforming Events
Exploring major shifts in identity, time and resources, relationships, and loss that come with milestone events, even positive ones. Weddings, births, deaths, career changes, and transitions all introduce significant stressors, grief, and relationship changes.
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Elite Athletes
High performance demands add stress, which can harm relationships at home. Maybe some old traumas are also interfering with performance. This therapy addresses the dynamic between stress, unresolved traumas, performance, and relational connection.
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Warrior Intensives
Accelerated trauma therapy designed for warriors to process combat trauma, moral injury, and relationship challenges in focused 3-hour to 5-day intensive formats that leverage your professional skillset and identity into more connected and fullfilled relationships.
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Spouse Intensives
Specialized support to address secondary trauma, emotional exhaustion, and relationship challenges in intensive 3-hour to 5-day formats designed specifically for spouses who need more than being told to "be patient and understanding,” and who have lost themselves in their relationship.
1
Schedule free consult
In this phone call, we briefly discuss what you are struggling with, how I may be able to help, and any logistics (e.g. scheduling). This conversation helps us both determine if we are a good fit.
What happens next?
2
Attend first appointment
Complete emailed paperwork prior to attending. This intake is a broad overview: we briefly discuss current issues but also focus on history-gathering and other “need to know” information.
3
Trust and commit to the process
You’ve already overcome big hurdles. Moving forward, I will help guide you through the rest to find your balance, restore your trust, and seek contentedness.
What is normal for stress and PTSD?
Good question!
The term PTSD is well known these days, but not necessarily well understood. Many people will develop some symptoms of PTSD (there are 20), and many symptoms can be in response to a stressor not classified as traumatic (per the DSM-5).
If you have served as a frontline responder with chronic exposure to traumatic events (or a career with consistent exposure to death), it has changed you. You may not have PTSD, but you see the world differently now and certainly relate to other people differently. This is not necessarily bad. However, recognizing these signs in yourself and others offers the chance to intervene and course correct before it becomes PTSD - and to adjust on your terms.
Whether you have a PTSD diagnosis or are struggling to make sense of what is “normal”, I can help you restore emotional and nervous system balance, regain trust in your intuition, and reconnect in more fulfilling relationships.
