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 treatm

ent 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.

Clients often come in wanting one tool to “fix” what they’re feeling.But real change doesn’t usually happen that way.It ...
04/24/2026

Clients often come in wanting one tool to “fix” what they’re feeling.
But real change doesn’t usually happen that way.

It happens through repetition, support, and learning how to be with your nervous system differently over time.

These classes are designed with that in mind.

Each one offers a slightly different entry point—
supporting the body, building capacity, and creating more room for regulation, strength, and ease.

Whether you’re looking for rest, movement, therapeutic support, or deeper learning—there’s something here for you.

Swipe through to see what’s coming up.
Save this so you can come back to it!

Upcoming:
• Yoga Nidra — May 27
• Yoga for a Happy Back — June 20
• Yoga Therapy for Depression — July 12
• Yoga Therapy for Anxiety — July 26
• Advanced Somatic Wall Intensive — Aug 15–16
• Mom & Baby Nervous System Support — Aug 30
• Parent–Child Yoga Wall — Sept 13
• Supported Inversions — Sept 27
• Structural Dissociation Training — Oct 18

04/23/2026

In the framework of structural dissociation, what we often call “parts” are not random or pathological fragments of the self—they are organized adaptations of the personality shaped by overwhelming experience.

Many clients fear certain inner parts.
They may describe them as too much, destructive, shameful, or even evil.

But within this model, these are often protector parts—aspects of the personality that developed to manage, contain, or defend against overwhelming affect, memory, or relational threat.

What is feared is rarely the part itself.
It is the intensity of what that part is holding or trying to prevent.

These protectors may:
– suppress vulnerable emotional states
– create distance (numbing, avoidance, dissociation)
– mobilize control (perfectionism, hypervigilance)
– or express in ways that feel abrupt, critical, or reactive

From the outside—and even internally—they can feel adversarial.

But functionally, they are loyal to survival.

In structural dissociation terms, these parts are attempting to maintain stability between apparently normal functioning and trauma-related experience. Their strategies may be costly, but they are rarely arbitrary.

When therapy frames these parts as something to eliminate or override, it often reinforces internal threat.

When they are approached with curiosity, differentiation, and respect, something shifts:
– fear becomes meaning
– reactivity becomes communication
– fragmentation begins to reorganize

Integration does not occur through suppression.
It emerges through relationship—including the relationship we develop with the parts of ourselves we were taught to fear.

What appears “bad” is often burdened.
What feels “dangerous” is often protective.

And what is most rejected internally is often what most needs to be met with attuned presence.

Audio

Clients often share a quiet fear:“I should be further along by now.”Or a hope:“Maybe if I just learn the right tools, th...
04/22/2026

Clients often share a quiet fear:
“I should be further along by now.”

Or a hope:
“Maybe if I just learn the right tools, things will finally shift.”

Both make sense in a world that prioritizes speed.

But healing-especially nervous system healing-is not just about learning something new.
It’s about experiencing safety, again and again, over time.

That’s what allows patterns to actually change.

Trauma isn’t always processed into clear, time-stamped memory (what the hippocampus helps with).

It can remain as felt experience in the body.
That’s why healing takes repetition-not just understanding.

If your process feels gradual or nonlinear, you’re not behind.
You may be doing it in a way your system can truly integrate.
❤️‍🩹

04/21/2026

This alone is not EMDR.

While devices like light bars provide bilateral stimulation (e.g., eye movements), Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing is a structured, phase-oriented psychotherapy grounded in an integrative model of information processing.

A central mechanism in EMDR is dual attention-the capacity to maintain present-moment awareness while simultaneously accessing distressing or maladaptively stored memory networks. This dual awareness appears to facilitate conditions under which previously unprocessed material can be re-evaluated and integrated.

Bilateral stimulation has been associated, in some studies, with decreased limbic activation (e.g., amygdala responsivity) and increased parasympathetic engagement. However, the clinical impact of EMDR cannot be reduced to these elements alone.

The therapeutic process includes careful case conceptualization, preparation and stabilization, targeted memory activation, and the use of interventions (e.g., cognitive interweaves) to support adaptive resolution when processing becomes blocked.

Within this structured context, memory reconsolidation may occur—where activated memory traces become labile and are updated with new, corrective information, allowing shifts in affect, cognition, and somatic experience.

In the absence of this framework, bilateral stimulation remains a regulatory tool not a standalone therapeutic intervention.

Healing body and mind…the parallel This past year has changed how I understand healing. I started running in 2020 and mo...
04/19/2026

Healing body and mind…the parallel
 
This past year has changed how I understand healing.
 
I started running in 2020 and moved into distance running in 2024. By October, I had my first stress fracture. At the time, I was pushing hard: running, CrossFit, Lagree, yoga-with very little real rest.
 
In a familiar pattern, I overrode my body to push, improve, to prove my worth (to whom, I’m still not sure). I rushed the rebuild… and by February 2025, I had a femoral neck stress fracture.
 
That injury changed everything.
 
The return was slower than I expected. Beyond the fracture, I had torn surrounding tissue, including the iliopsoas. It required PT, bodywork, and a very gradual rebuild.
 
What surprised me most was how hard this was mentally.
 
My body was guarding.
My capacity was reduced.
Everything had to be rebuilt.
 
But more than that…my approach had to change.
 
The strategy that once “worked” was now causing harm.
 
I had to learn to rest.
To fuel more intentionally.
To let progress come from recovery-not just effort.
 
To run less than I wanted for a period of time longer than I hoped to.
To trade CrossFit for careful lifting to support what I was building.
To let go of chasing pace on every run.
To be patient.
 
It took a full year to return to my previous mileage. This week was the first time I ran over 40 miles at similar paces to before my first injury.
 
And this is why I’m sharing this-
 
Because this is not just about running.
 
We often separate body and psyche. But healing doesn’t work that way.
 
Healing asks for pacing.
For attunement.
For knowing when to lean in and push-and when to soften.
 
It asks for humility.
To stop comparing.
To learn how to support ourselves in ways we may have never been shown.
 
And this takes time.
 
But the progress now feels different.
 
Less depleted.
Stronger.
More aware.
More embodied.
More free.
 
We do break.
And we can rebuild.
 
Body and mind.
Mind and body.
Sending love, today and every day. ❤️‍🩹

Clients often talk about this phase of healing with a lot of confusion.They’ll say things like,“I thought I was doing be...
04/18/2026

Clients often talk about this phase of healing with a lot of confusion.

They’ll say things like,
“I thought I was doing better… why does this feel harder again?”

There’s an assumption that healing should feel like less:
less activation, less emotion, less intensity.

But clinically, we often see something different.

As the nervous system begins to experience less threat, it develops more capacity.
And with that increased capacity comes access to emotional states that weren’t previously available.

Not because those feelings weren’t there-
but because it wasn’t safe to feel them.

What often emerges here is grief.

Grief for unmet needs.
Grief for chronic adaptation.
Grief for the ways the self had to organize around survival.

This can feel disorienting, and it’s often mistaken for regression.

But from a nervous system perspective, this is frequently a sign of reorganization, not deterioration.

Less fear can create the conditions for more feeling.

And that feeling isn’t a problem to solve…
it’s a process that finally has enough space to unfold.

If you’re in this place right now, you’re not going backwards-you may be touching something that finally feels safe enough to feel. ❤️‍🩹

❤️‍🩹

04/18/2026

5 common adaptations in trauma survivors—often misunderstood, but deeply intelligent

What can look like personality is often patterning shaped by experience.

• Harsh self-criticism
An internalized voice develops when safety depended on “getting it right.” Over time, self-monitoring becomes self-attack—an attempt to prevent rejection, punishment, or unpredictability.

• Extreme independence
When reliance on others was inconsistent, intrusive, or unsafe, the nervous system learns: it’s better to need no one. Autonomy becomes protection, not preference.

• Attunement to others, discomfort with having needs
Hyper-awareness of others’ emotions can emerge from environments where reading the room was necessary for safety. One’s own needs become minimized—not because they don’t exist, but because expressing them once carried risk.

• Emotional distance or perceived “coldness”
What appears as detachment is often regulation. Creating distance can be a way to prevent overwhelm, rejection, or re-experiencing. It’s not a lack of feeling—it’s a strategy to manage it.

• Difficulty asking for help / trusting others
Trust is built through repeated, safe, relational experiences. When those are absent or ruptured, skepticism becomes adaptive. Not asking is not stubbornness—it’s a learned expectation that support may not come, or may come at a cost.

These are not flaws. They are organizing strategies—the nervous system’s attempt to preserve integrity under strain.

And importantly: what was adaptive in one context can become limiting in another. Healing is not about removing these patterns, but gently expanding capacity—so protection is no longer the only option available.

Audio

04/16/2026

What appears as flexibility or strength is often a shift in how the body organizes in the presence of support.

Rather than increasing effort, the system is given something to orient to—
which can reduce unnecessary bracing and allow for more efficient, responsive movement.

This is the focus of my upcoming 2-hour somatic yoga wall immersion:
not intensity, but recalibration.

🗓 May 3
⏰ 10–12
🔗 link in bio

04/15/2026

Healthy anger is not pathology—it is biology.

In the work of Gabor Maté, anger is understood as an adaptive, in-the-moment response that helps an organism recognize and respond to boundary violations. In mammals, this process is brief, embodied, and resolves once the threat has passed. It mobilizes energy for protection, then completes.

When this response is chronically suppressed—often in environments where expression is unsafe or relationally costly—the organism does not simply “become calm.” Instead, the activation is held internally.

Over time, this can contribute to dysregulation across systems, including immune function. Some of Maté’s work explores how chronic inhibition of emotional expression may be associated with diminished immune responsiveness—impacting the body’s capacity to detect and respond to internal threats.

From a somatic perspective, the issue is not anger itself, but the loss of its completion.

This is where differentiation matters.

Dave Berger describes rage as anger without presence—a state where activation is no longer tethered to present-moment awareness. Rage is often what emerges when anger has been repeatedly suppressed, disowned, or left unresolved. It is not boundary-setting—it is overflow.

Healthy anger, in contrast, is:
– time-limited
– oriented to the present
– in service of protection and clarity
– capable of resolution

The task is not to eliminate anger, but to restore relationship to it—so that it can move, inform, and complete, rather than accumulate and distort.

In this way, anger becomes not something to fear, but something to listen to, and to access with titration.

Audio from
Speaker

Emotional flashbacks in complex trauma aren’t narrative memories—they’re implicit activations.Narrative (explicit) memor...
04/13/2026

Emotional flashbacks in complex trauma aren’t narrative memories—they’re implicit activations.

Narrative (explicit) memory gives us sequence, context, and a sense of then.
Implicit memory doesn’t. It’s stored as sensation, affect, and action tendency—without a storyline to organize it.

So when it gets activated, it doesn’t feel like remembering.
It feels like a state shift.

This is where something often called over-coupling becomes important.

The nervous system learns to tightly link:
cue → meaning → survival response

With enough repetition, there’s no longer a gap for reflection.
A tone of voice, a pause, a look—or even an internal thought—can move the system directly into a familiar survival state.

Not symbolically.
Physiologically.

From the outside, it can look like an overreaction.
From the inside, it’s a system recognizing a pattern it once needed in order to adapt.

And because these associations live in implicit memory, insight alone often isn’t sufficient.
You can know you’re safe and still not feel safe.

This is why somatic work matters.

Healing isn’t just about understanding the past—
it’s about gradually uncoupling what has been linked:

so that not every cue signals danger
so that the body can begin to register difference
so that now is no longer organized as then

This is the slow work of increasing flexibility in the nervous system.

04/13/2026

When a child’s excitement is consistently mocked, minimized, or met with irritation, they often learn that joy is not relationally safe.

Over time, this can show up in adulthood as a reluctance to share good news, difficulty expressing excitement, or a tendency to downplay positive experiences. Not because the person lacks joy—but because their nervous system learned that visibility around joy came with social risk.

This pattern is frequently seen in the context of emotionally immature caregiving, where a parent may not have the capacity to tolerate or co-regulate a child’s emotional intensity—including positive affect.

In some families, this dynamic is reinforced through cultural or religious framing—where suppression of excitement is interpreted as “humility,” “good values,” or “not getting ahead of yourself.” While these values may be meaningful, they can also be used (often unintentionally) to justify emotional restriction.

Additional themes often include:
• Limited permission for play, rest, or spontaneity
• Hypervigilance to others’ reactions
• A learned preference for containment over expression

From a somatic perspective, this is not simply cognitive—it is adaptive patterning. The body organizes around what was safest in relationship.

Healing is not about becoming “more expressive” on command. It is about gradually restoring a felt sense of safety around joy, visibility, and expansion—often for the first time.

Audio

Sensitivity isn’t inherently a problem…it’s a form of biological responsiveness.Research on sensory processing sensitivi...
04/10/2026

Sensitivity isn’t inherently a problem…it’s a form of biological responsiveness.

Research on sensory processing sensitivity (often associated with the work of Elaine Aron) suggests that a subset of the population, commonly estimated around 15–20%, has nervous systems that process and respond to environmental input more deeply. This includes emotional, relational, and sensory information.

This increased sensitivity does not determine outcome on its own. What matters is the environment in which that sensitivity develops.

Work on differential susceptibility (e.g., Jay Belsky) shows that individuals with more sensitive systems are not only more vulnerable in chronically stressful or misattuned environments-they are also more responsive to supportive, regulated, and attuned conditions.

In other words, the same nervous system that becomes overwhelmed under chronic stress is often the one capable of greater depth, attunement, and meaning, making when conditions allow.

From a somatic perspective, what is often labeled as “too much” can be understood as a nervous system that learned to track more, anticipate more, and respond more intensely in order to adapt. These patterns are not fixed traits or personality flaws. They are organized responses shaped over time.

Sensitivity, then, is not the issue.
It is the conditions around it, and the patterns it had to organize into, that shape the experience of it.

The work isn’t to reduce sensitivity.
It’s to shift the conditions that taught your nervous system how to carry it.

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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