Insight Family Therapy Group, Inc.

Insight Family Therapy Group, Inc. Psychotherapy practice for couples, individuals, groups & families. Additional offerings include trauma informed yoga & somatic groups.
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Specialities inclide: Somatic, Gestalt, Perinatal, Eating Disorders, Emotionally Focused Couples, EMDR & Yoga Therapy. Insight Family Therapy Group is a psychotherapy practice offering mental health services to: individuals, couples, and families. Areas of speciality are: eating disorders, trauma, anxiety, dissociative disorders and depression. This practice uses a variety of techniques and treatment modalities. These include: relational Gestalt therapy, EMDR therapy, and exposure based methods. Mary Ortenburger is EMDR certified and an approved EMDR consultant, a Certified Eating Disorder Specialist (CEDS) and supervisor (CEDS-S). She is also a certified Gestalt therapist and runs a consultation group for therapists seeking certification. Mary Ortenburger, LMFT, owner of Insight Family Therapy Group, is a Registered Yoga Teacher (RYT) and actively training as a Certified Trauma Informed Yoga Therapist.

In somatic and trauma-informed practice, safety is not an environmental guarantee but a subjective, nervous-system–media...
01/20/2026

In somatic and trauma-informed practice, safety is not an environmental guarantee but a subjective, nervous-system–mediated experience.

Research and clinical models grounded in neurobiology, attachment theory, and Somatic Experiencing consistently demonstrate that regulation is shaped by prior experience, context, and relational cues — not by intention alone.

Declaring a space “safe” risks collapsing this complexity and unintentionally overriding client agency, especially for individuals with trauma histories where power, choice, and unpredictability have been compromised.

A trauma-informed approach emphasizes attunement, pacing, consent, and responsiveness. Safety emerges through collaboration and moment-to-moment tracking, not assumption.

In this work, safety is not promised.
It is listened for, negotiated, and co-created.

01/17/2026

Many unseen people develop a creative attachment to giving.

They often become the fixer.
The caregiver.
The one who anticipates needs before they’re spoken.

This creative adjustment is a brilliant adaptation to early relational gaps.

In Gestalt terms, the question isn’t why you do this,
but:
What are you hoping comes back when you give this way?
And what part of you is left out of the exchange?

Healing begins when giving becomes a choice, and not an abandonment of self.

Audio

Trauma healing is often misunderstood as something that needs to be released—as if the body is holding a fixed amount of...
01/16/2026

Trauma healing is often misunderstood as something that needs to be released—as if the body is holding a fixed amount of pain that can be emptied through intensity, catharsis, or a single breakthrough moment.

From a nervous system perspective, that’s not exactly how healing works.

In Somatic Experiencing, trauma is understood in terms of capacity, not as a “discharge problem.” When something overwhelming happens, the nervous system contracts to survive. Over time, that contraction, without support, can limit flexibility, choice, and access to regulation.

Healing happens as capacity expands.

This means working slowly and safely—in small, tolerable pieces—so the nervous system can experience activation without becoming overwhelmed. Regulation comes first. Integration follows. Discharge may occur along the way, but it’s a byproduct, not the goal.

The work is not to erase the past or eliminate triggers.
The work is to increase the ability to stay present when activation arises—and to return to safety with more ease.

This is how the body learns that the threat has passed.
This is how trauma renegotiates.
❤️‍🩹

01/14/2026

There is almost always an abusive parent and a passive one.

Because if a healthy adult were present, the relationship would end.

What makes this so complex is that the passive parent is often the one who felt safer.
The one who loved you.
The one you protected by not being angry.

So the anger goes elsewhere first.

In therapy, we often begin with the overtly harmful parent—because the anger there is more accessible, more permitted.
But eventually, the deeper work arrives.

The betrayal that hurts precisely because there was love.
Because there was closeness.
Because you were seen—and still not protected.

This is the unfinished business many people avoid:
Holding love and anger toward the same person.
Letting yourself confront passivity without erasing the bond.
Allowing grief to coexist with loyalty.

Anger toward the passive parent isn’t a betrayal of love.
It’s a completion of truth.

And only when both can be held does something finally settle.

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In parts work, we understand that no part of us is “stuck in the past.”Every part is doing something important.In the wo...
01/13/2026

In parts work, we understand that no part of us is “stuck in the past.”
Every part is doing something important.

In the work of Internal Family Systems and in trauma models informed by structural dissociation (including the work of Dolores Mosquera), we learn that some parts learned early how to hold pain so that the rest of us could keep going.

This child part isn’t broken.
She isn’t frozen in time.
She is an emotional part—carrying fear, memory, and sensation that once felt too overwhelming to hold alone.

Other parts stepped in to help.
Protective parts.
Manager parts.
Parts that learned how to stay functional, composed, or invisible so life could continue.

In my inner child meditations and retreat work, we don’t force these parts to change.
We don’t ask them to relive the past or give up their roles.

We start by strengthening the adult Self—the part of us that can stay present, regulated, and curious.
From there, we gently orient toward the younger parts with respect and choice.

Healing happens in relationship.
When protective parts trust that the adult Self is here now.
When the child part no longer has to stay alone in the corner, holding everything by herself.

This isn’t about integration as erasure.
It’s about connection.
Safety.
And letting each part know they no longer have to do their job alone. ❤️‍🩹

Thank you to everyone who joined this weekend’s Wall Intensive ❤️‍🩹 I’m so grateful for the way you showed up —for the c...
01/11/2026

Thank you to everyone who joined this weekend’s Wall Intensive ❤️‍🩹
 
I’m so grateful for the way you showed up —
for the courage to explore inversion and backbending, and for the wisdom to listen when your body asked for support, slowing down, or a different choice.
 
What stood out to me most was the care you took with yourselves: building stability before depth, choosing rest when needed,
choosing movement when that felt more resourcing, and honoring that no two nervous systems need the same thing.
 
In somatic work, capacity isn’t built by pushing past limits—it’s built by noticing them, respecting them, and letting support come first. This weekend was a beautiful example of that.
 
Thank you for trusting your bodies, the wall, the props, and the process.
 
Thank you for practicing curiosity instead of comparison.
 
And thank you for being part of a room where listening mattered as much as effort.
 
I’m so looking forward to continuing this exploration together.
 
 

01/11/2026

There’s a difference between capacity-building discomfort and self-abandonment disguised as strength.

Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K) from talks about how some people push past pain not because they don’t feel it—but because overriding it has become a way to prove something about themselves. Deep down, they’re trying to prove something to the part that learned: I only matter if I can override my limits.

From a Somatic Experiencing perspective, this is nervous system override.

Signals like fatigue, pain, or shutdown aren’t honored—they’re dominated.

This isn’t about avoiding challenge.
Sometimes growth DOES feel uncomfortable.

But there’s a difference between stretching capacity and dissociating through pain to feel worthy.

Real resilience comes from staying in relationship with the body—not conquering it.

Flip your perspective—together! 🙃Join us for a Parent + Child Wall Yoga Class where we’ll explore playful poses, gentle ...
01/09/2026

Flip your perspective—together! 🙃

Join us for a Parent + Child Wall Yoga Class where we’ll explore playful poses, gentle inversions, stretching, and lots of connection. Expect laughter, curiosity, and movement that builds strength, confidence, and trust—side by side.

📅 Saturday, February 7
⏰ 11:00–12:00
👧🧒 Ages 7–11

📍 Insight Family Therapy Group
219 N. Indian Hill Blvd., Suite 201
Claremont, CA

No yoga experience needed—just bring your sense of adventure.

Healing is often quieter than we expect.It definitely doesn’t always feel good.And it rarely looks or feels linear.From ...
01/09/2026

Healing is often quieter than we expect.
It definitely doesn’t always feel good.
And it rarely looks or feels linear.

From a somatic and Gestalt lens, healing isn’t about fixing symptoms, it’s about increasing contact:
with sensation, emotion, choice, and self-support.

For instance:
When you notice more.
When you pause instead of react.
When old patterns loosen their grip.
When grief is allowed instead of rushed.

That’s not a regression in progress.
That’s integration.

If your process feels slow, messy, or tender, your nervous system may be doing exactly what it needs to do.

Save this for the days you doubt your progress ❤️‍🩹
Share with someone who needs a gentler reframe.

01/08/2026

Healing doesn’t just change how you feel It also changes who feels familiar and desirable.

At some point in the healing process, you realize certain people weren’t “home.”
They were recognizable.
Predictable.
To a nervous system that knew chaos and mistook it for connection.

When your body learns safety, the old dynamics stop making sense and often the pull to what was once familiar weakens.
The tolerance for chaos and disruption, once interpreted as connection disappears.
And what once felt magnetic starts to feel loud, destabilizing, or strangely empty.

Outgrowing people isn’t betrayal.
It’s your system no longer negotiating with what it had to survive.

Familiar isn’t always the same as safe.
And it is healing that teaches you the difference.

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It’s hard to honor the limitations of our body.Over the last 14 months, I’ve learned this the hard way.In the words of L...
01/06/2026

It’s hard to honor the limitations of our body.
Over the last 14 months, I’ve learned this the hard way.

In the words of Lael Stone, “If you listen to your body when it whispers, you won’t have to hear it scream.”

It took my body screaming for me to finally get the message.

Many of you know I’ve been in a long season of healing—two significant injuries, two recoveries, and two periods of relearning how to move forward. What surprised me most wasn’t just the physical recovery, but how much listening it required. How much slowing down. How many times I had to resist overriding signals of stress, fatigue, and pain in the name of “pushing through.”

I had to learn something many trauma survivors know intimately: healing doesn’t respond to force.

The body learns slowly. The nervous system changes gradually. What’s been conditioned over a lifetime doesn’t unwind in one sweeping moment of insight or effort.

Healing of any kind asks us to do something different.

For me, that meant resting more, simplifying my training, letting go of old ways of pushing, and learning to work with my body instead of against it. And the truth is—I feel stronger now than I did before. Less depleted. More aware. More present. I’m moving again in ways that feel sustainable, guided by curiosity instead of ego.

So many of us get frustrated when our bodies or minds don’t “heal fast enough.” But our bodies are our homes. And just like any healing human or growing child, they don’t need more pressure, they need safety.

They need the gentle hand of the parent we may never have had.

Not the voice that says do better or try harder, but the one that says, I’m here. I’m listening. Take your time.

So today, I invite you to pause.
To notice what it feels like to listen instead of override.

To honor what your body is asking for—without judgment. To offer yourself a loving, steady voice in your healing. Time, space, and support are what heal us all.

Sending love.❤️‍🩹

01/06/2026

PTSD and Complex PTSD aren’t just about what happened — they’re about what the nervous system had to do to survive.

PTSD often follows a single, overwhelming event.
Complex PTSD develops through chronic, relational, or inescapable trauma — especially when safety, attachment, or choice were missing.

In both, the brain adapts for survival:

• Amygdala stays on high alert → scanning for threat
• Hippocampus struggles to time-stamp memories → the past feels like now
• Prefrontal cortex goes offline under stress → less access to logic, choice, and regulation

The result?
A nervous system that lives in constant survival mode, even when danger is no longer present.

If your brain learned that certain roads were dangerous, it will keep rerouting you — even years later — trying to keep you safe. The problem isn’t that the system is broken.
It’s that the map was built during trauma.

In the present, this can show up as:
• Hypervigilance or shutdown
• Emotional overwhelm or numbness
• Difficulty trusting, resting, or feeling safe
• Reacting to now as if it’s then

And here’s the most important part:
People can heal.

With trauma-informed therapy, somatic work, EMDR, and nervous-system-based practices, the brain can update its map. The amygdala can soften. The hippocampus can re-orient to time. The prefrontal cortex can come back online.

Healing isn’t about erasing the past.
It’s about teaching the nervous system that the present is different — and that survival is no longer the only option.

Audio

❤️‍🩹

Address

219 North Indian Hill Boulevard Suite 201
Claremont, CA
91711

Opening Hours

Monday 8am - 4:30pm
Tuesday 8am - 3:30pm
Wednesday 8am - 3:30pm
Thursday 8am - 4:30pm
Friday 8am - 4:30pm

Telephone

+15622817752

Website

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