Gail Atwater LCSW

09/02/2025

Check out my latest blog post on addiction and the brain!

I’ve been a therapist in an intensive outpatient program for those with substance abuse, mental health diagnoses and HIV for several years. I also used to work in a neuroscience research lab at Duke Medical Center so I geek out on brain stuff more than the average Clinical Social Worker. Last week...

03/15/2023

If you know of anyone looking for a therapist, I now have some evening availability and I now take Medicare. I offer in-person in Uptown Dallas or virtual. Specialties are grief, chronic illness and trauma and I am EMDR-trained. I particularly enjoy helping clients reprocess early traumatic memories which then gives them a chance to examine and deconstruct the layers of patterns, identity and meaning that have built up around such incidents (and reconstruct new ones). Also- check out my new-ish website!

Gail Atwater, LCSW is a therapist in Dallas, TX offering individual therapy for clients with depression, anxiety, trauma, insomnia, aging, caregiving, using CBT, EMDR.

10/14/2020

I haven't been very active here but I'm working on a new therapy website + blog in conjunction with my new private practice, but for now, keep up with me on IG:

https://www.instagram.com/leveraging.change/

Thanks!!
Gail

10/18/2019

Let's talk about asking for help. I know, right - eeeeeeeks!!! No, seriously, I've needed a lot more help do "do" my life this past year especially as a homeowner and it's been scary asking for it but life is so much sweeter when you have what you need, even if you have to struggle with a few layers of shame, embarrassment, stoicism or fear in order to get there. I've seen people who need the help and refuse to ask for it and end up being more trouble for the people in their lives. Is there something you need help for and you've been putting off asking? Are you the one who's quick to help everyone else but never ask for help yourself?

10/13/2019

I've been talking to a lot of lonely, isolated people lately. In our 50s and 60s our social life and what we need to do to build and maintain one is going to look different from what it did our 20s and 30s and that's OK. As a society, seems like we are so connected in some ways and so disconnected in others these days and we haven't quite caught up to how to cope with (or avoid) that. This is for you.

"Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could."

~Louise Erdrich

09/10/2019

I had the privilege of presenting Legacy's August in-service on Addiction and the Brain. I had fun prepping this talk. I spoke about where different phases of the cycle of addiction live in the brain (liking, craving, guilt, being triggered, euphoria, obsession, withdrawal, etc.) then where different aspects of recovery happen in the brain (social connection, spirituality, coping with triggers, service) and how this can help our work with clients.

07/27/2019

I usually assume I'm more chatty with strangers *because* I'm in a better mood (which can be true) but these guys did an experiment to show it works the other way too.

Happiness, says one researcher, is the sum of many positive moments throughout the day. Something as simple as a friendly chat in the elevator can boost your mood. So put down your phone and try it.

07/24/2019

07/22/2019

I am very excited to have completed EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) Training Part One in Dallas this weekend. After years of helping clients cope better with histories of trauma and with triggers and limit the damage of the trauma in their lives, I look forward to gaining experience in this modality that helps clients actually resolve traumatic memories and remove the painful emotions from them. I'll start small but will be able to expand my EMDR work after Part Two of the training in October.

07/16/2019

“We had a lot of trouble with western mental health workers who came here immediately after the genocide and we had to ask some of them to leave. They came and their practice did not involve being outside in the sun where you begin to feel better, there was no music or drumming to get your blood flowing again, there was no sense that everyone had taken the day off so that the entire community could come together to try to lift you up and bring you back to joy, there was no acknowledgement of the depression as something invasive and external that could actually be cast out again. Instead they would take people one at a time into these dingy little rooms and have them sit around for an hour or so and talk about bad things that had happened to them. We had to ask them to leave.”

From The Moth podcast, Notes on an Exorcism.

07/16/2019

Hi. Thanks for liking my professional page. I'm hoping to begin posting more regularly here. Not too much- just here and there to give you all some good information, some idea of who I am as a therapist, a little encouragement for the journey and maybe the occasional chuckle.

07/16/2019

Hear hear. This is one of the things that strikes me most in people who have suffered significant trauma or abuse - when they retain the capacity for compassion and the kind of vulnerability it takes to truly be kind to others. To me these are signs of a soul that is, in some fundamental ways, still intact.