Ross Hackerson

I discovered psychology in my last year of college, as I was preparing to be a teacher, and I suddenly knew what I wanted to do. I taught Science and English, then returned to graduate school in psychology. Several positions later I was a clinical psychologist at Big Spring State Hospital in Texas, with a busy schedule of testing, therapy, and administration. As Director of the Adolescent Unit I ran therapy groups with the kids, their parents, and their families: the beginning of my romance with family therapy. I read everything therapy-oriented I could find, and in that reading I discovered Gestalt Therapy.

I followed that interest and became a Gestalt trainer, certified by the previous Gestalt Therapy Institute of the Southwest, and went on to train therapists myself. One of the highlights of that time was living in New Orleans and teaching on the faculty of the New Orleans Gestalt Institute with Anne Teachworth, who introduced me to Richard Bandler. I studied and became a Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) Master Practitioner. New Orleans was also where my own family got its start: we had two boys there before returning to California, where we had two girls. Licensed as a Marriage and Family Therapist in California, I now had my own family, and the family training was experiential and intensive.

One thing followed another and I moved to New England, taking up residence in Northampton, MA. While preparing for the Massachusetts Marriage and Family Therapist license, I fell in love with Emotionally Focused Therapy for couples. I attended a one-day workshop with Dr. Sue Johnson and was determined to continue that training. In the meantime I studied EMDR, which I believe to be the gold standard of trauma therapy, and became an EMDRIA Certified Consultant. My understanding of trauma deepened, and I built a practice serving individuals, couples, and families, most of them with trauma histories.

I continued to deepen my understanding of trauma treatment and expand my toolbox by studying Coherence Therapy, Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART), and Image Transformation Therapy, which I think is the single most effective treatment to come along for working with neglect, addiction, and sexual addictions.

When training in Emotionally Focused Therapy for couples finally came to my neighborhood, I jumped in. This approach brought together all my previous learning and opened a very effective path to coaching couples, individuals, and families. I spent many years in the EFT community, committed to helping people build the best lives and relationships possible, and I taught the Hold Me Tight couples workshop developed by Sue Johnson, with a focus on teaching it to EFT therapists so they could apply its principles in their own relationships.

Today, having retired from the therapy business and become a coach, I am constantly amazed by the wonderfulness of this work. It is with a profound sense of the possibility of healing each other, and maybe our environment, through and in our relationships that I bring you our intensive retreats.