Our Team
Leadership
Alison Teal, MA, MFT
Founder, Super Resourcing Institute
Born in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania as one of five siblings, Alison is no stranger to the joys and challenges that larger family dynamics present. With a childhood rich in literature, theater, and fine art, the predominant family culture was psychological. Being a therapist is deeply rooted in Alison’s cellular structure and psychological process has been a lifelong fascination. She is forever interested in the vagaries of human nature and finds that our similarities are as striking as our differences; we are each “one-of-a-kind.”
Professionally, as a Special Education teacher, Alison worked with severely emotionally disturbed individuals. These included autistic adolescents, as well as those suffering from schizophrenia and a variety of other behavioral issues. Upon obtaining her master’s degree in Counseling Psychology, she began serving adults and children in private practice and working as an adjunct professor for graduate psychology students. She also combined her passions for visual art and psychology when she founded and directed a school called Creative Explorations, in which students explored their identity and life issues through art.
Alison became licensed as a Marriage and Family Therapist in 1986, completed basic training in EMDR in 1993, and soon after became a facilitator in EMDR trainings. She became an EMDRIA Certified Therapist and Consultant in 1998. Additionally, she created a facilitator training manual and taught facilitators in England.
During decades of work with both students and clients, she observed the limitations of attachment healing within the scope of current trauma modalities. In response, through her multifaceted professional background, she developed an innovative protocol called Super Resourcing: An EMDR Strategy for Healing Attachment Trauma. Formally introduced in 2017, Super Resourcing (SR) offers a new way of thinking about and healing attachment trauma that is both creative and grounded in current research on the neurobiology of trauma and the repair of attachment issues.
One of the foundational benefits of SR is that it presents a paradigm shift; it focuses on developing the neurological integration of positive resources for the part of the person who experienced the trauma, rather than on the trauma itself. This results in a lowering of distress and facilitates an enhanced present-time experience of self. It maximizes the development of new and more positive neural networks. By taking the trauma out of trauma processing, SR challenges the assumption that reprocessing traumatic memories is necessary for their resolution.
Alison’s approach to life as well as her work is essentially creative. She has great trust in the indomitability of the human spirit and believes that we are all capable of transforming old behavioral patterns, self-limiting beliefs, and feelings as we move toward living our lives more authentically. She is an innovator in the healing of attachment wounds, and she views Super Resourcing Institute as a means through which similarly-minded therapists can support their clients in attaining sustainable and meaningful healing.
Administration
Alex Gilliam
Administrative Director
A native of Philadelphia, Alex is a multifaceted administrator who brings her passion for people to every aspect of her career.
A member of the Super Resourcing Institute team since its inception, Alex is responsible for the day-to-day operations of SRI and works closely with Alison to develop and streamline innovative, convenient offerings that cater to the ever-changing world of the healing arts. In addition to her management of SRI’s online presence and communications, she oversees and facilitates the technical evolution of all facets of our operations, including webinar moderation, video editing and graphic design, website maintenance, digital marketing, social media outreach, and interpersonal coordination between SR practitioners and prospective clients.