Areas of expertise
People rarely fit into one category. Dr. Tomlinson recognizes that concerns are often interconnected rather than isolated. Care begins with understanding the individual and the broader context of what they are experiencing, then determining which concerns deserve attention and which evidence-based approaches are most likely to help.
Who I work with
Care for people navigating demanding lives and experiences.
Dr. Tomlinson works with adults seeking thoughtful, evidence-based psychological care, with particular experience serving active-duty service members, veterans, military spouses, and professionals working in national security and other high-responsibility fields.
Many of the people she works with are accustomed to functioning at a high level despite significant stress or difficult experiences. They may continue to perform well professionally while struggling with sleep, relationships, traumatic experiences, guilt or moral conflict, irritability, emotional disconnection, or a persistent sense that something is not right.
Others come to the practice without any military or national security connection. Dr. Tomlinson works with individuals from a range of backgrounds whose concerns fall within her areas of expertise.
Her approach is particularly well suited to people who value directness, collaboration, privacy, and a clear sense of purpose in psychological care.
Posttraumatic Stress
Moving beyond what happened.
Traumatic experiences can continue to shape how a person thinks, feels, relates to others, and moves through the world long after the immediate danger has passed. For some, this means intrusive memories, nightmares, avoidance, or constantly feeling on guard. For others, the effects are less obvious—irritability, emotional detachment, difficulty trusting others, changes in identity, or a persistent sense that life is different than it was before.
Dr. Tomlinson has extensive experience working with trauma across military and veteran populations, including combat and operational experiences, military sexual trauma, loss, and other events that can have lasting psychological effects.
Treatment is grounded in evidence-based approaches to traumatic stress, including Cognitive Processing Therapy and Prolonged Exposure, while remaining responsive to the individual. The goal is not to erase difficult experiences, but to reduce the extent to which the past continues to dictate the present and help individuals reengage with the relationships, activities, and values that matter to them.
Complex Trauma
When the impact of trauma extends beyond a single experience.
Not all trauma can be traced to one event. Repeated, prolonged, or interpersonal experiences can shape a person’s sense of safety, identity, relationships, and ability to regulate emotions in ways that may be difficult to recognize as the effects of trauma.
Complex trauma can develop in many contexts, including difficult early relationships, repeated exposure to violence or loss, abusive or coercive relationships, and prolonged experiences in demanding or unsafe environments. Its effects may appear as difficulty trusting others, emotional disconnection, persistent shame or self-criticism, problems within relationships, heightened reactions to stress, or patterns that remain long after the circumstances that created them have changed.
Dr. Tomlinson looks beyond individual symptoms to understand how a person’s experiences have shaped the ways they adapted, related to others, and understood themselves. Care draws from evidence-based trauma treatment while recognizing that longstanding and interconnected concerns often require flexibility rather than a single standardized approach.
The goal is to understand which adaptations once served an important purpose, which remain useful, and which may now be getting in the way of the life a person wants to lead.
Moral Injury
When an experience challenges what you believe about yourself or the world.
Some of the most difficult experiences are not defined primarily by fear. They involve actions taken, actions not taken, events witnessed, or betrayals experienced that conflict with deeply held moral beliefs and expectations.
Moral injury can involve guilt, shame, anger, grief, betrayal, or difficulty reconciling an experience with one’s understanding of who they are. It may occur alongside posttraumatic stress, depression, or other concerns, but it is not itself a psychiatric diagnosis—and treating it as though it were simply another form of PTSD can miss what is most important.
Moral injury has been a central focus of Dr. Tomlinson’s clinical and research work. Her doctoral research examined the relationships among trauma exposure, moral injury, posttraumatic stress, and suicide attempts in active-duty military personnel.
Care focuses on understanding the meaning attached to the experience, examining beliefs about responsibility and accountability, and finding a way to integrate what happened without minimizing it or allowing it to define the entirety of a person’s identity.
Suicide Risk
A place to talk honestly about thoughts that can be difficult to say aloud.
Thoughts about death or suicide can take many forms. They may emerge during an acute period of distress, develop alongside depression or trauma, or persist quietly in someone who otherwise continues to work, lead, care for others, and meet significant responsibilities.
Dr. Tomlinson has specialized clinical and research experience in suicide risk, particularly within military populations and in connection with trauma and moral injury. Her approach begins with direct, nonjudgmental conversation and careful assessment of both risk and the circumstances contributing to it.
Experiencing suicidal thoughts does not automatically mean that someone requires hospitalization. Effective care requires understanding the nature and level of risk, responding proportionately, and taking safety seriously without unnecessarily removing a person’s autonomy.
When outpatient care is appropriate, the work extends beyond managing immediate risk. It focuses on understanding and addressing the experiences, circumstances, and patterns that have made suicide seem like an option in the first place.
Sleep Disorders
Restoring sleep when simply trying harder isn’t working.
Sleep problems are often intertwined with trauma, stress, mood, demanding schedules, and years spent adapting to environments in which normal sleep was difficult or impossible. Even after those circumstances change, the patterns the body and mind learned can remain.
Insomnia may involve difficulty falling asleep, waking repeatedly, waking earlier than intended, or spending enough time in bed without feeling restored. Attempts to compensate—going to bed earlier, sleeping later, napping, or trying to force sleep—can sometimes unintentionally make the problem more persistent.
Dr. Tomlinson’s background includes clinical work with sleep concerns as well as research experience within Stanford University’s Sleep Medicine Division. Treatment draws on evidence-based behavioral approaches, including Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I), while considering the broader factors that may be affecting sleep.
The goal is to understand what is maintaining the problem and rebuild a more reliable relationship with sleep rather than relying indefinitely on short-term solutions.
National Security
Psychological care that understands the environment you work in.
People working in national security, intelligence, military, diplomatic, law enforcement, and related fields can face psychological demands that are difficult to separate from the nature of their work. Exposure to violence or disturbing information, responsibility for consequential decisions, secrecy, irregular schedules, frequent transitions, and prolonged periods of high alert can all carry a psychological cost.
Seeking care can also feel more complicated when a career involves a security clearance, sensitive responsibilities, or concern about how personal information is documented and protected. Those concerns deserve to be understood and taken seriously.
Dr. Tomlinson’s experience within the Department of Veterans Affairs and U.S. Air Force, together with her familiarity with military and national security communities, informs her understanding of these environments. Her telehealth practice emphasizes discretion, clear communication about confidentiality, and respect for the privacy concerns that can accompany sensitive careers.
The goal is to provide a setting where individuals can address trauma, moral conflict, sleep, stress, relationships, or other concerns without having to spend the first several sessions explaining the basic realities of the professional world they inhabit.