Katelin Hanhart, LCSW
Book a consultation
San Diego · First responders · Telehealth

Therapy for First Responders in San Diego (Telehealth)

For SDPD, San Diego Fire, county sheriff, dispatch, ER staff, and military-connected clients whose hyper-vigilance does not switch off when the boots come off.

San Diego is a first-responder city. Police, fire, county hospitals, corpsmen, federal law enforcement, dispatch. And the price of doing this work well for years is a nervous system that has learned to run in the background at a heart-rate it was never designed to sustain. You know how to compartmentalize. You know how to keep your face still. What you may have lost is the reliable ability to stop.

A lot of what I see in this work is not one dramatic incident. It's a decade of low-grade adrenaline plus a couple of scenes that never got processed, sitting on top of whatever family or childhood pattern brought you into this line of work in the first place. That combination is not a character problem. It's a load problem.

What this looks like

  • You come home and you're either wired or gone — no middle setting.
  • Small-talk with civilians feels like translating a language.
  • You've stopped telling your partner about your day because the last time didn't go well.
  • Sleep is short, broken, or heavily assisted.
  • You suspect you're changing in a direction you didn't sign up for.

How I work

I'm Katelin Hanhart, LCSW, licensed in California (#92638) and New Jersey (#44SC05665400). Some of my background is outpatient work in and around a military base, so the culture is not new to me and neither is the vocabulary. We start with stabilization — sleep, regulation, honest containment for what's already loud — before we go near the harder material. When a specific incident is still living in the present tense in your body, I use EMDR. I am trained in EMDR and use it inside an integrative, relational frame.

I am not going to make you produce feelings on cue. I am also not going to let you outrun what's obviously there.

Honest geography

I do not have a San Diego office. San Diego responder clients meet with me by secure video anywhere in California. From your kitchen, your parked truck, or a bedroom with the door shut — whichever counts as private for you today.

Common questions

Is it confidential from my department?
Yes. This is private-pay therapy under HIPAA. I don't share with your chief, your union rep, your PD/PIO, or an EAP unless you explicitly request and sign a release. I don't take referrals that route around you. Your record is your record.
Do you get shift work?
Yes. I've spent time in outpatient work on and adjacent to a military base and I've sat with SDPD-, fire-, and hospital-adjacent clients. I know a Panama rotation from a Kelly schedule. I know what it costs a body to keep flipping. We plan accordingly.
Evening or early-morning slots?
When available, yes — I hold a limited number of before- and after-shift slots specifically for responders. Video from home means no commute stacked on top of your commute, which is often the difference between a session that actually happens and a session you keep meaning to book.