Mental Health and wellness are assessed, evaluated and treated as part of our standard protocol for treating individuals, couples, and families.

We accept most insurances and encourage you to check with your insurance provider to determine your coverage.

Initial Assessment | $250
Therapy | $225

Psychosexual assessments for Individuals, attorney referrals, and court services are available. Fees for these services are individualized and provided upon consultation.

There are many paths toward healing or adopting new ways of being  and we each have our own unique needs. Our clinicians know that and will often use a combination of therapeutics to benefit you.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a structured, goal oriented form of talk therapy. It can be utilized to help change patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving. Talk Therapy can be helpful when we really need to emotionally, mentally, and verbally process our experiences, feelings or thoughts.

Skill development may involve learning new strategies to manage challenges with thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and the way that our body responds. Skill development can include additional therapeutics, such as Art Therapy or Play Therapy Techniques,‍ ‍Play Mindfulness a state of active, open attention to the present and Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) which focuses on helping people accept the reality of their lives and their behaviors, as well as helping them learn to change their lives, including their unhelpful behaviors.  Many of these therapeutics are also utilized in the resolution of traumatic responses that result from difficult moments in our lives.

Additionally, Somatic Therapies explore how the body expresses deeply painful experiences, applying mind-body healing to aid with trauma recovery.

Psychotherapy techniques designed to relieve the distress associated with disturbing memories include CBT, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy (EMDR) and/or Flash. Both are highly effective in producing safe, rapid results for the treatment of trauma, anxiety, addiction and other mental health related issues.

We proudly provide mental health services specific to participants in Drug/DUI Court in Brown County.
Participants are referred through UJS and are not charged for their care.

With the exception of the services listed, Dakota Group clinicians do not provide services that currently or may involve court proceedings. We honor the safe, secure, collaborative, therapeutic environment that our clinicians and clients deserve. We prioritize trust and confidentiality within the therapeutic relationship.

An eclectic approach means no single therapy is applied rigidly. Instead, the clinician draws from multiple evidence-based frameworks and sequences or blends them based on what the client needs at any given moment. For trauma specifically, this is especially valuable because trauma affects the body, mind, memory, and nervous system simultaneously — and no one modality addresses all of those layers equally well.

Somatic Therapies — the body layer

Trauma is stored physically. The nervous system encodes threatening experiences as patterns of tension, numbness, breath-holding, collapse, or hypervigilance. Somatic approaches — such as Somatic Experiencing, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, or body-based mindfulness — work directly with these physical patterns without requiring the client to narrate or cognitively process the traumatic event. The focus is on tracking bodily sensation, noticing where activation lives in the body, and helping the nervous system complete interrupted defensive responses (fight, flight, freeze).

In an eclectic framework, somatics often comes first or runs throughout — because a dysregulated nervous system can't absorb cognitive insight or tolerate memory processing. Stabilizing the body creates the foundation everything else builds on.

CBT — the thought and behavior layer

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy targets the distorted beliefs and maladaptive behavioral patterns that trauma leaves behind. After trauma, the brain often overgeneralizes danger ("nowhere is safe"), develops shame-based core beliefs ("I deserved it," "I am broken"), and forms avoidance behaviors that maintain distress. CBT — including Trauma-Focused CBT and cognitive processing therapy — works to identify, challenge, and restructure these patterns.

In an eclectic model, CBT is particularly useful once the client has enough nervous system stability to engage cognitively. It provides psychoeducation about trauma responses, teaches coping and regulation skills, and helps the client build a more accurate and compassionate narrative about what happened.

EMDR 2.0 — the memory reconsolidation layer

Standard EMDR uses bilateral stimulation (eye movements, taps, or tones) to help the brain reprocess traumatic memories so they lose their emotional charge. EMDR 2.0 is an updated protocol developed by Ad de Jongh and colleagues that streamlines and intensifies this process. Key differences include a stronger emphasis on cognitive interweaves, working with the most distressing moment of a memory more directly, and using more taxing dual-attention tasks — such as counting backwards while recalling the memory — which compete for working memory resources and are thought to reduce the vividness and emotional intensity of the memory during reprocessing.

EMDR 2.0 is particularly effective for discrete traumatic memories — a specific event, accident, assault, or incident. In an eclectic model, it tends to be introduced after somatic stabilization and some CBT-based skill-building, when the client has enough window of tolerance to engage with memory material without becoming overwhelmed.

Flash 2.0 — the gentle memory access layer

Flash Therapy, developed by Philip Manfield, is one of the most significant recent innovations in trauma treatment. It allows the brain to reprocess traumatic memories with minimal exposure — the client does not have to consciously revisit or narrate the traumatic experience at all. Instead, the client holds a positive, engaging focus (an "engrossing positive focus" or EPF) while the traumatic memory is accessed only peripherally in brief "blinks." The clinician uses tapping or other bilateral stimulation during these blinks.

Flash 2.0 refines the original protocol with more structured preparation, clearer sequencing, and improved methods for establishing the EPF. It is especially valuable for clients who are highly avoidant, easily destabilized, or not yet ready for full EMDR processing. It can also be used to reduce the intensity ("charge") of a traumatic memory before transitioning to EMDR, making the EMDR work faster and more tolerable.

In an eclectic model, Flash 2.0 often serves as a bridge — reducing the emotional load of a traumatic memory enough that the client can then engage with EMDR 2.0, CBT restructuring, or somatic processing without flooding.

How the modalities work together — a sequenced eclectic model

A well-structured eclectic approach to trauma typically moves through three broad phases, drawing from these modalities at each stage:

Phase 1 — Safety, stabilization, and resourcing

The priority is nervous system regulation and building the client's capacity to tolerate distress without dissociating or flooding. Somatics drives this phase — tracking sensation, titrating activation, building interoceptive awareness (the ability to sense what's happening inside the body). CBT contributes here through psychoeducation (explaining the window of tolerance, the stress response, why trauma symptoms make sense) and teaching grounding and coping skills. Flash 2.0 may be introduced gently here as a low-exposure way to begin reducing the charge on the most distressing memories without requiring full engagement.

Phase 2 — Processing traumatic memory

Once the client has a stable enough platform, memory reprocessing begins. Flash 2.0 is often used first to reduce the intensity of the target memory. Once the charge is lowered, EMDR 2.0 can be applied more efficiently — targeting the memory directly, working through the most disturbing moment, and facilitating full reconsolidation. Somatic awareness runs parallel throughout: the clinician tracks bodily responses during reprocessing and may pause to titrate activation using somatic techniques. CBT cognitive interweaves are woven in when the client gets stuck — helping challenge blocking beliefs like "I should have fought back" or "I caused this" that prevent the memory from fully resolving.

Phase 3 — Integration and post-traumatic growth

After memories are processed, the work shifts to rebuilding identity, relationships, and a sense of future. CBT is prominent here — restructuring residual negative beliefs, addressing avoidance behaviors, and supporting the client in testing new ways of engaging with the world. Somatics supports this phase through continued body awareness work and helping the client recognize what safety and ease feel like physically — often a genuinely new experience. EMDR 2.0 may be used to reinforce positive beliefs and install a more empowered self-concept.

Why this combination is particularly powerful

Each modality addresses a gap the others leave:

• Somatics reaches what CBT can't — the body's stored survival responses that don't respond to talking or thinking.

• CBT provides structure, psychoeducation, and cognitive tools that purely somatic or EMDR work doesn't systematically offer.

• Flash 2.0 makes memory processing accessible to clients who would otherwise be too avoidant or fragile for direct EMDR work.

• EMDR 2.0 achieves deep, durable memory reconsolidation more efficiently than CBT alone — changing not just what the client thinks about the event, but how it feels to remember it.

Together, they address trauma at every level it operates: the body, the nervous system, the memory, the belief system, and the behavioral patterns. That is the core logic of an eclectic approach — meeting the whole person, not just one symptom.

We offer evidence based groups and classes for the specific needs of our clients including both Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) Originally designed for individuals who have borderline personality disorder (BPD) has produced promising findings for patients with BPD and substance use disorders (SUDs).

Moral Reconation Therapy ( MRT) Primarily designed for justice-involved individuals and substance use disorders, it aims to reduce recidivism and modify negative thought patterns through cognitive-behavioral workbooks and group exercises.