Shari Kim, PhD
Shari Kim, PhD, is a licensed psychologist, EMDRIA Certified Therapist and Approved Consultant, trauma educator, clinical consultant, and social-justice advocate with more than 25 years of experience in mental and behavioral healthcare. Her primary areas of expertise include post-traumatic stress disorder, complex trauma, dissociation, dissociative identity disorder, human trafficking, sexual exploitation, LGBTQIA+ affirmative care, and trauma-related concerns affecting people living with vision loss. Her official practice site currently identifies her as actively licensed across several U.S. jurisdictions and providing individual therapy, group therapy, EMDR treatment, professional consultation, and evaluations related to gender-affirming surgery.
Dr. Kim operates a private psychology practice in Baltimore, Maryland, where her work centers on helping trauma survivors understand protective responses, process painful experiences, and develop a stronger sense of safety, identity, and personal agency. Her approach recognizes that trauma may affect far more than memory. It can shape emotional regulation, bodily responses, relationships, trust, self-perception, attention, coping behavior, and the ability to remain connected to the present.
Professional Background of Shari Kim, PhD
Shari Kim, PhD began providing therapy as a master’s-level clinician in community settings, including work with justice-involved young people. Across more than two decades, she has worked in schools, community programs, outpatient services, consultation, and private practice. Her professional profile identifies trauma as the recurring theme connecting much of this experience. She earned her doctorate from Fielding Graduate University in 2013 and currently specializes in trauma-focused psychotherapy for adolescents, adults, and older adults.
Her clinical work is individualized rather than limited to a single formula. Although EMDR and ego-state approaches are prominent within her practice, treatment may also draw from person-centered, DBT-informed, Jungian, and other trauma-focused perspectives when appropriate. This flexible approach recognizes that treatment must be adapted to the client’s needs, culture, history, stability, goals, and responses—not delivered identically to every person.
EMDR Therapy and Professional Consultation
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing is a defining area of practice and education for Shari Kim, PhD. She completed EMDR training in 2019, began offering consultation while working toward approved-consultant status, and now displays both EMDRIA Certified Therapist and Approved Consultant credentials through her professional website.
EMDR should not be reduced to eye movements, tapping, or another form of bilateral stimulation. The EMDR International Association’s explanation of the eight-phase model describes a structured treatment process involving history and treatment planning, preparation, assessment, desensitization, installation, body scan, closure, and reevaluation. Each phase contributes to assessment, safety, informed consent, treatment pacing, and the responsible processing of distressing experiences.
Dr. Kim helps clinicians understand how this structured process may need to be adapted for people with complex trauma, dissociative symptoms, attachment injuries, exploitation histories, or limited access to internal and external resources. Preparation may require more time when clients struggle with emotional flooding, memory fragmentation, self-harm risk, unstable living conditions, or difficulty returning to the present after activation.
As an EMDR consultant, she supports trained clinicians in strengthening case conceptualization, target selection, preparation, pacing, treatment planning, and decision-making around complex presentations. Consultation does not transfer responsibility away from the treating therapist; it creates an opportunity to examine clinical uncertainty, professional limits, countertransference, and potential risks with greater care.
Complex Trauma, Dissociation, and DID
Dissociation and dissociative identity disorder are major areas of clinical specialization for Shari Kim, PhD. Dissociation may involve a disruption in the ordinary connection among memory, identity, emotion, bodily experience, perception, or awareness. It can appear as depersonalization, derealization, emotional numbness, memory gaps, changes in sense of self, or periods in which a person feels disconnected from the environment.
These experiences can easily be misunderstood. A dissociating client may appear distracted, avoidant, inconsistent, disengaged, or resistant when the person is actually responding to overwhelming internal or external cues. Accurate assessment requires clinicians to consider trauma history, psychiatric symptoms, medical conditions, medication or substance effects, cultural experiences, sleep, neurological factors, and the specific context in which symptoms occur.
Dr. Kim’s work encourages therapists to approach dissociation without sensationalizing it or treating clients as collections of separate symptoms. DID is a serious and often stigmatized condition, but people experiencing it should not be portrayed as dangerous, deceptive, or incapable of recovery. Treatment can focus on safety, communication, stabilization, reduced internal conflict, improved functioning, and an increasingly cooperative relationship among aspects of the client’s experience.
Clinical Events’ article Dissociation Explained: Helping Clients Feel Safe and Present offers related guidance on grounding, present-moment orientation, therapeutic predictability, and the importance of pacing trauma work carefully. Clinicians can also explore the upcoming program Trauma and Dissociation: Navigating the Complexities in Clinical Practice, which addresses assessment, stabilization, grounding, safety, and readiness for trauma processing.
EMDR With Complex Dissociation
Applying EMDR in the presence of significant dissociation requires advanced assessment and judgment. Moving too quickly into emotionally intense material may overwhelm a client, increase disconnection, or weaken the person’s ability to remain oriented during and after the session.
The work of Shari Kim, PhD emphasizes the importance of understanding a client’s dissociative responses before assuming that standard trauma processing should begin immediately. Clinicians may need to strengthen internal cooperation, identify protective responses, establish grounding resources, develop crisis plans, and evaluate whether the client can move between activation and relative stability.
Dr. Kim has provided specialized professional education on this intersection. An EMDRIA-approved program she presented on EMDR with human-trafficking survivors reviewed all eight phases of treatment and included focused attention to preparation, dissociation management, complex trauma, and the adaptation of desensitization for highly dissociative clients.
This work supports a central trauma-treatment principle: slower treatment is not necessarily ineffective treatment. Thoughtful preparation can be an active clinical intervention that helps clients develop greater agency and reduces the risk of repeating experiences of coercion or loss of control.
Human Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation
Human trafficking and sexual exploitation are also central areas of expertise for Shari Kim, PhD. Survivors may present with PTSD, dissociation, depression, anxiety, chronic shame, self-blame, attachment disruption, substance use, physical health concerns, fear of authorities, financial instability, or difficulty identifying their experiences as exploitation.
Trafficking does not always involve kidnapping, physical confinement, or transportation across borders. Exploitation may be maintained through coercion, threats, emotional manipulation, debt, dependency, isolation, abuse of authority, or control over housing, income, immigration status, or relationships.
Dr. Kim’s training helps professionals recognize trafficking without interrogating, blaming, or pressuring survivors to disclose more than they are ready to share. A recent professional program led by Dr. Kim addressed major forms of trafficking, psychological control, trauma bonds, barriers to leaving, clinical assessment, trauma-informed treatment planning, and post-traumatic growth.
Trauma-informed care in this context requires more than asking whether a person has been trafficked. Clinicians should consider immediate safety, medical needs, confidentiality, mandated-reporting requirements, legal concerns, housing, financial resources, cultural and language needs, and the survivor’s freedom to make informed choices.
The goal is not to “rescue” a person in a way that removes agency. Effective care supports informed decision-making, protects privacy within applicable law, coordinates services carefully, and recognizes that leaving an exploitative situation can introduce new forms of danger or instability.
Anti-Oppressive and Social-Justice–Informed Practice
Social justice is an important part of the professional identity of Shari Kim, PhD. She currently serves as a member of the Maryland Psychological Association’s Legislative Committee, which evaluates legislation affecting psychological practice, access to mental healthcare, reimbursement, public services, professional regulation, schools, and equitable delivery of care.
Anti-oppressive practice requires clinicians to examine how social systems shape both trauma exposure and access to recovery. Racism, poverty, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, immigration-related vulnerability, criminalization, housing instability, and unequal access to healthcare may affect the client’s symptoms, safety, and experience of treatment.
This perspective is particularly important in work involving trafficking and exploitation. A clinician may unintentionally reproduce harm by assuming authority over the survivor’s choices, interpreting mistrust as pathology, overlooking structural barriers, or prioritizing institutional procedures over the client’s dignity.
Socially responsive trauma care combines clinical knowledge with humility. It asks therapists to recognize professional power, listen to the client’s understanding of their experience, remain aware of cultural context, and avoid treating every problem as something that exists only inside the individual.
LGBTQIA+ Affirmative Trauma Care
The practice of Shari Kim, PhD includes affirmative work with LGBTQIA+ clients, including transgender, nonbinary, bisexual, gay, lesbian, intersex, polyamorous, ethically non-monogamous, kink-identified, and sex-worker communities. Her professional profiles also identify gender-affirming surgery evaluations among her services.
Affirmative care does not assume that a client’s identity is the source of psychological distress. Anxiety, depression, trauma, or relationship concerns may be intensified by rejection, discrimination, violence, concealment, family conflict, healthcare barriers, or repeated pressure to justify one’s identity.
Clinicians should avoid treating affirming language as the entirety of culturally responsive practice. Effective care also requires attention to confidentiality, documentation, family and relationship structures, access to appropriate services, personal safety, financial barriers, and the client’s own language for identity and experience.
Trauma, Disability, and Vision Loss
Living with vision loss is another specialist interest identified by Shari Kim, PhD. Disability may shape access to information, transportation, employment, healthcare, community participation, digital technology, and personal safety. It may also interact with grief, identity, discrimination, dependence, autonomy, and previous traumatic experiences.
Therapists should not assume that disability automatically causes psychological dysfunction or that every disabled client wants treatment focused on loss. Accessible trauma care begins by asking what accommodations the individual needs and ensuring that consent forms, online platforms, written resources, office environments, and therapeutic exercises can be used meaningfully.
Disaster Mental Health Service
Dr. Kim’s Clinical Events biography also identifies longstanding service with the American Red Cross Disaster Mental Health program. Red Cross Disaster Mental Health volunteers are licensed professionals who support individuals, families, communities, and relief workers affected by disasters. Their work can include active listening, assessment of stress and resilience, psychological first aid, crisis intervention, psychoeducation, and referral to community resources.
Disaster mental health differs from ongoing psychotherapy. The immediate priorities may involve emotional stabilization, practical support, connection with resources, normalization of common stress reactions, and identification of people who need more specialized care.
This experience complements Dr. Kim’s wider work because disaster response requires flexibility, cultural awareness, rapid assessment, clear role boundaries, and the ability to support people without assuming that every intense reaction represents a psychiatric disorder.
Clinical Consultation and Education
In addition to direct clinical work, Shari Kim, PhD provides EMDR consultation and professional education for therapists working with trauma, dissociation, DID, trafficking, sexual exploitation, and other complex presentations.
Her teaching encourages clinicians to avoid equating advanced trauma work with aggressive or rapid processing. Competence also involves knowing when to pause, gather more information, build stability, seek consultation, coordinate care, or refer for additional support.
Mental health professionals interested in related training can explore Ego States and Internal Family Systems in Trauma-Informed Work, which examines protective and wounded parts, dissociation, internal conflict, pacing, and self-leadership.
They can also review Evidence-Based Treatment for PTSD and Complex Trauma and browse the complete Clinical Events continuing education calendar for current programs in trauma, dissociation, EMDR-informed care, ethics, attachment, social justice, and evidence-based psychotherapy. The current trauma calendar includes programs on dissociation, levels of care, anxiety, and PTSD through the remainder of 2026.
Learn With Shari Kim, PhD
The professional work of Shari Kim, PhD brings together trauma psychology, EMDR, dissociation treatment, DID, human-trafficking response, sexual-exploitation recovery, LGBTQIA+ affirmative care, disability awareness, disaster mental health, legislative advocacy, and social justice.
Her approach helps clinicians recognize that effective trauma treatment involves more than selecting a processing technique. It requires careful assessment, informed consent, emotional and relational safety, respect for protective responses, awareness of social context, and willingness to match the pace of treatment to the client’s readiness.
Through psychotherapy, consultation, advocacy, and professional education, Dr. Kim supports trauma care that is clinically skilled, culturally responsive, collaborative, and grounded in respect for the dignity and agency of every survivor.