ASHLEY TERRY
When it feels like your world is crumbling on top of you, help may seem like it’s just out of reach — but thanks to Serena Freiberg, it might be closer than you think.
Freiberg — a therapist who holds a doctorate in traumatology — is the founder and president of Designed to Heal Outreach, a nonprofit organization that provides free EMDR trauma therapy for at-risk, low-income women in the Azle and Dallas-Fort Worth areas.
EMDR, which stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, is a psychotherapy method designed to help individuals process and heal from anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and other forms of trauma.
“We use bilateral stimulation, so it can be auditory, it can be tactile, it can be visual, but it (EMDR) tricks your brain into lowering your corpus callosum, which is what separates your left hemisphere from your right,” Freiberg told The Azle News. “We store our trauma in our right brain, but we talk about it with our left and that’s why when people are really upset about something, or something really awful has happened, they can’t necessarily speak about it.”
Freiberg explained that EMDR works to reprocess traumatic memories over a series of about eight sessions, helping to “cleanse” not just the brain but the body.
“It literally rewires your brain on how you think and believe about yourself, and about the world and experiences,” she said.
While Freiberg originally planned to teach parenting after earning her degree in marriage and family therapy, she later shifted her focus to traumatology and EMDR after witnessing the lasting effects trauma had on her clients.
After opening her private practice, however, Freiberg began to notice a different problem: many of the individuals who desperately needed trauma therapy simply couldn’t afford it.
“When you’ve had severe traumas — especially if they were chronic and during your formative years — it really skews the way you see everything. It’s really hard to maintain a job, be a good parent, stay in a healthy relationship — all of it,” she said. “I just thought, ‘How are we going to get to those people?’ because they don’t have any resources.”
Feeling inspired to help at-risk women, Freiberg founded Designed to Heal Outreach, located at 1169 Southeast Parkway in Azle, in July 2025. Currently, the organization is in its infancy, with Freiberg serving as the only therapist in DTHO’s pilot program helping survivors of sex trafficking at Unbound Now in Fort Worth.
As the organization grows, Freiberg said she plans to launch a training program so she can build a network of EMDR-trained therapists who will dedicate one day a week to helping at-risk women.
“These people … they don’t have families, they don’t have income,” she said. “Most of them are homeless, have been on drugs or have been incarcerated. We’re trying to give them a chance to live a normal life in spite of what they’ve been through.”
Freiberg said the long-term goal is to get DTHO fully funded so the organization can offer mobile EMDR therapy, allowing women in juvenile detention centers, homeless shelters and safe houses to receive the help they need.
“How can we reestablish families? That’s what we really want to do,” she said. “We thought if we can get to women who have already had these struggles, we can do treatment with them and see if we can impact the whole picture.”
While Freiberg has only been able to help about 12 women through EMDR since March, she says the changes have been incredible, with many seeing improvements after just a few sessions.
“All of them qualified statistically for PTSD, but after four sessions, none of them did,” Freiberg said. “EMDR is just different than regular therapy. Our objective is to stabilize these women to the degree that they can hold down a job, go to school, own a home or pay for their own way — and we’re seeing that happen in six to eight sessions; it’s been really impactful.”
Because financing is DTHO’s biggest challenge, Freiberg is seeking the public’s help for donations to hire more therapists to allow the organization to heal more women at one time.
“The waitlist is forever; there’s no limit to the women who need it,” she said. “When we get funding and we have two more therapists, we'll see about 21 women a week.”
Freiberg said her hope is to continue expanding awareness of EMDR to help more trauma survivors reclaim their lives.
“We’re just trying to bring hope and healing to people who don’t have it in a very quick, efficient way,” she said.
For more information or to donate to the nonprofit, visit designedtohealoutreach.org.
