The consultant I went looking for
Hello!I’m Candace Dickinson, LMHC, NATC, CCTPII, EMDRIA-Approved Consultant. Licensed in five states. Assisting faculty at Precision EMDR Academy. I want you to know I am approachable and that I care about you, your clients, and what happens in your career.
Thirty minutes, no charge, and not a consultation. Just the two of us working out whether we fit.
Why I Consult
There were not enough of us where my clients are
I love my clients. I love the work, I learn from them constantly, and I still carry a full clinical caseload that I have no intention of giving up.
But my clients kept telling me they loved this work and wanted somebody like me. And when I went looking to refer, I hit the same wall every time. There are clinicians I would send anyone to, the Precision team among them. What I could not find was enough of them licensed in the states where my clients live.
That is why I teach and why I consult. There are only so many clients who can come through my door. If there are clinicians out there who know what they are doing and feel confident doing it, then there are countless people we can support between us. If I had to give up everything except one piece of this, I would keep the consultation, because that is where the most change actually happens.
How I got here
This started before I knew EMDR
I knew I wanted to build clinicians up long before I knew EMDR. When I was working in community mental health and substance use, I sought out the roles that would let me do it.
What I ran into was not the people. It was the constraints those systems genuinely operate under, and the fact that what I wanted to build did not fit inside them. I also learned something about myself along the way: I am the best boss for me. So I built the thing I had been looking for.
Building it myself did not mean doing it alone. I got trained in EMDR, saw how far it could go, and went looking for a consultant who could take me there. That search is how I found Susie Morgan. She started me on Decoding Complex Developmental Trauma Part 1, and things shifted almost immediately. For the first time I had a framework for complex cases.
Then she put me through it properly. Twenty hours of consultation-of-consultation, and a full skills verification. I went through every piece of it. And I kept working with basic trainings on purpose, so that I understand EMDR at the most foundational level.
That is the whole reason I teach the way I teach. When you look at masters of anything, they mastered the basics first.
It means working with Susie to make sure anything happening in the room gets handled. It means actively connecting with my cohort so they feel connected, and so that whatever challenges come up, in practicum, in consultation, or with their own clients, are being managed.
It also means I am still learning every time I am in a basic training. That comes back to the same thing: I have to truly master the basics. And when I am in consultation past basic training, I am looking for the best way to help with adaptations, and to unravel the system a clinician is seeing so they can work effectively with complex clients.
Susie and I talk at least once a week. Right now we are building out how Precision creates community through faculty and through the advanced certification, and I am building the system that manages Precision's framework.
Assisting faculty means more than running a consultation group
What I do at Precision
Where I come from clinically
Over a decade, most of it before private practice
I worked in intensive outpatient and partial hospitalization programs, in community mental health, and for over seven years in substance use.
What that gave me is the ability to hold the trauma of being hospitalized and the real constraints of the system at the same time. It keeps me from losing hope, because even when I do not know exactly where someone is going, I know there is something on the other side. It also changed how I assess. When a client brings up substance use now, my first response is a whole litany of questions I would not have had otherwise.
Community mental health is where I learned to build connection with other providers, why team meetings matter, and why clients should know exactly why I am in contact with the people on their team.
I have a master's in Mental Health Counseling and Behavioral Medicine from Boston University School of Medicine; I am KA-EMDR® trained, and I run Candace Dickinson Counseling Services out of Beverly, Massachusetts. I love keeping in touch with where our field is going so I can keep in touch with what the research and experts are actually saying!
Who I Am
I started seeing a lot of narcissistic abuse in my office. And I started noticing that the work that needed doing needed a revamp. I trained with multiple people, and there was good material coming from a lot of places, but I kept asking what the research says now, and how to conceptualize it differently. Because with narcissistic abuse you can be working with family, with complex developmental trauma, and with systems all at once, and it gets confusing fast.
I want much better for people than what was available. I have seen clinicians who were not expecting the level of manipulation involved, and clinicians who did not know how to work through the people-pleasing.
And I have heard clinicians say they will not work with clients who are currently in it. How is someone supposed to get out of that without support from a clinician through it?
What makes me angry is clinicians treating it as 50/50. What did you do, how did you do that, when they are missing the power imbalance entirely. That means they are also missing medical issues, dental issues, whether someone feels safe in their own space, and how children and animals are treated. All of it coalesces into a point where we do not actually know what is happening and the client feels misunderstood.
What I want for you, separate from what I want for your clients: that you walk into the room confident in yourself. That you know the right questions. That you are not uncomfortable asking about sexual coercion, or financial coercion, or systemic coercion. That when a case walks in, you can say, okay, I am going to run the MOSAIC, I am going to run the Danger Assessment, and you are not missing danger.
Work With Me
3 ways in
Individual consultation
Your case, your certification hours.
Consultation groups
Curriculum-based tracks, small cohorts, starting November 2026 and January 2027.
Advanced EMDR Training
The narcissistic abuse course. 12 CE hours, on demand.
Your Questions, Answered
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MA, FL, CA, UT, IL and VA for clinical work. Consultation is not supervision, so I consult with clinicians anywhere. These hours do not count towards licensure hours.
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Yes, and I am assisting faculty at Precision EMDR, so I can also sign off on Precision EMDR Advanced Certification.
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Yes, and I am actively looking for more of it. What I present on:
Why narcissistic abuse cases stall in Phases 1 and 2, and what to do about it
Resource contamination and safety planning when the abuse has not stopped
Post-separation abuse as a clinical problem rather than a life circumstance
Working with clients who are still in the relationship
Virtual or in person. If you are programming an event, get in touch.