Heal Past Trauma. Rebuild Connection. Restore Peace.
Private Pay, Confidential, Individual and Couples Therapy
EFT & EMDR
Serving Clayton & Online Across North Carolina
For couples who feel:
• Stuck in the same exhausting arguments
• More like roommates than lovers
• Distant, defensive, or guarded
• Unsure how to heal after broken trust
Focus:
Using Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), we identify your negative relationship cycles, repair emotional injuries, and build a safe, resilient bond restoring intimacy and connection.
What This Work Feels Like
This work isn’t about assigning blame or picking sides—it’s about slowing down the noise to understand what is truly happening between you when things get hard. Instead of deciding who is right or wrong, we focus on helping you both feel deeply heard, safe, and understood. Over time, recurring arguments lose their intensity, you discover and are supported in practicing fresh ways to respond to one another, and you finally start feeling like you’re on the same team again.
For individuals who feel:
• Overwhelmed by anxiety or hypervigilance
• Trapped by painful past experiences or trauma
• Stuck in thoughts like “I’m not safe” or “I’m not good enough”
• Unsettled despite doing everything “right” on paper
Focus:
Using Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), we target how traumatic or distressing memories are stored in your brain, releasing their grip on your daily life.
Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy (EFIT) helps you break free from internal cycles of anxiety, self-criticism, and emotional numbness by building a secure, compassionate relationship with yourself. EFIT provides the emotional safety and self-acceptance to process deep feelings, while EMDR clears the underlying traumatic charges—giving you a complete path toward lasting mental and emotional freedom.
Why this Approach Works
Therapy Designed for Transformation
Some problems don’t yield to more effort or better advice. I provide experiential, humanistic therapy that helps individuals, couples, and families discover new ways of experiencing themselves and their relationships.
Traditional talk therapy helps you analyze your life, but true healing requires shifting how your brain and body experience daily life.
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Targeted Trauma Resolution with EMDR: Painful events can leave your nervous system stuck on high alert. EMDR allows your brain to reprocess lingering memories, reducing emotional distress without forcing you to talk through every detail for years.
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Evidence-Based Relational Repair: I don’t just teach communication hacks and coping skills. We address the underlying needs that drive conflict, working toward creating a genuine steadiness and closeness that lasts.
You’ve been doing your best with what’s going on, maybe read some books, searched online and tried the quick fixes. You may even understand why this is happening. But understanding the problem and changing it are not the same. And more discipline and motivation is not always the answer.
Therapy can help you change what has not changed on its own.
A Different Focus – New Ways of Experiencing
Our work does not need to be limited to talking about symptoms or revisiting the same stories repeatedly. Together we explore where you want to be in life and what works. Then we look at emotional, relational, and physiological processes that keep challenging experiences alive in the present. Mind, body, emotions and context are always factor in the way we experience our lives.
As those underlying processes begin to change, thoughts, emotions, relationships, and daily life often begin to change with them.
Therapy becomes less about managing the same problems and more about creating new ways of experiencing yourself and the people around you.
An Invitation
Whether you are seeking therapy for yourself or for your relationship, the first step is simply a conversation. If you would like to explore whether working together is a good fit, I invite you to schedule an initial consultation or you can just ask for your first appointment.
919-307-9017
What Therapy Looks Like
- A respectful, collaborative relationship.
- Time to slow down and make sense of what has been difficult.
- Research-informed approaches tailored to your goals.
- Attention to both present concerns and the deeper processes maintaining them.
- Attention to mind and body.
- Practical strategies alongside meaningful experiential work
- A private office in downtown Clayton or virtually from the comfort of your home.
Who I Work With
I specialize in couples who find they are more disconnected than connected in their most intimate relationship. We know from John Gottman’s research, couples who know they are struggling often wait about six years before seeking therapy. Often couples come in as their last ditch effort to work things out. I know from experience it is possible to come back from the brink.
With individual clients my expertise is on navigating anxiety, depression, relationship difficulties, trauma, grief, major life changes and transitions, and serious illness. I also have significant experience supporting people experiencing suicidal thinking.
I also collaborate with teens whose parents or guardians are willing to be involved in therapy.
My clients are thoughtful, curious people who are looking for a tailored, experiential process that leads to insight, growth and confidence as they move forward in lives.
How Change Happens
Meaningful change rarely comes from willpower alone. It develops through new experiences, greater emotional awareness, healthier relationships, and repeated opportunities to respond differently. Therapy provides a structured environment where those experiences can occur safely and intentionally.
Rather than offering quick answers, I work alongside clients to help them understand what has been keeping them stuck and to support the development of lasting change that extends beyond the therapy office.
Unsure about how to squeeze time for you into the day? Want that one hour of you-time, but can’t find it?
To help you put first things first, I offer morning, evening and weekend appointment times to accommodate your schedule. And we can work together to consider early mornings as well.
Are you at a transition point? Feeling pressure and wondering if you are in the right place in life for you?
Sometimes in life, the path ahead is unclear. With supported exploration, you will rediscover the clarity you need to move forward with purpose, hope and courage.
I specialize in helping individuals and couples stay grounded on what is most important to them while finding new and more beneficial ways to navigate life’s challenges.
If you are ready to take the first step,
call or email and we will arrange a time to meet.
(919) 307-9017
LORI DUPERON, MS, LMFTA
I am a mature clinician and bring a realistic perspective to mental health and wellness.
My background is diverse providing many points of reference for understanding the challenges, professional and personal, you may be facing. I enjoyed a career with director-level positions in technology management and intellectual property, working and living in several countries. I have also founded several non-profits and coached small business owners. My education includes an MS in marriage family therapy, extensive trainings, a law degree (JD) and a master’s in business administration from UCLA.
In addition, I have experienced immigration moving with my family from Canada to the United States as a teen. And in my early career, I was a professional concert dancer and choreographer touring internationally and directing an Emmy-award-winning company.
The COVID epidemic shifted my professional focus to mental health, and I assisted in the successful roll-out of the 988 national suicide and crisis line in addition to working in COVID testing services. For six years, I also provided peer support for individuals and couples facing head and neck cancer. Inspired by the work and the strides forward I had made with my therapist, I completed graduate studies in Marriage and Family Therapy.
I provide mental health, wellness, consulting and education services for couples and clients who place a high value their privacy and mental health. I see clients in person in Clayton and online throughout North Carolina, practicing under the supervision of Tracey Frink, LMFT-S.
If you are suicidal or in crisis, please call or text 988 for confidential and immediate assistance.
Individuals
Couples
Teens and Family Members
marriage and relationship challenges, family conflict, depression, anxiety, major or mid-life changes, divorce, suicidality, aging, career transitions, illness, existential crisis, grief, loss and trauma, increasing resiliance and coping skills, values based life planning
My practice is private pay only allowing us to focus on your needs and goals with increased confidentiality. If you would like, I will provide a super-bill for your insurance. If you have Medicare coverage, unfortunately, I am unable to serve you at this time but can provide referrals. .
Training:
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) EMDIRA certified training
Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFT) – ICEEFT Externship Certification Track
Attachment Injury Repair Model within EFT – Betrayal and Infidelity (AIRM)
Emotionally Focused Family Therapy (EFFT)
Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy (EFIT)
Gottman Method for Couples – Levels 1 and 2
Solution-Focused Training – Future-Oriented and Strengths-Based
Clinical Trauma: Mastering Polyvagal Theroy
Yoga for Trauma
Mindsight Approach to Interpersonal Neurobiology, Dr. Dan Siegal
Professional Course in Positive Neuroplasticity, Dr. Rick Hanson
LivingWorks safeTALK Suicide Prevention
Vibrant 988 Lifeline Crisis Training
Non-Violent Communication Training
Mindful Self-Compassion Training (MSC), Dr. Kristin Neff
International Centre for Excellence in Emotionally Focused Therapy (ICEEFT), member
American Association of Marriage Family Therapy, member
