Northampton, MA
Ross Hackerson
Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, EMDRIA Certified Consultant, and NLP Master Practitioner
Over forty years of believing, and proving, that everyone can heal.
For more than forty years, Ross Hackerson has worked alongside people recovering from childhood neglect, sexual and emotional abuse, and the lack of connection that comes from preoccupied, distant, or self-absorbed parents. Across all of that work he has held to one conviction: everyone can heal.
Ross discovered psychology in his final year of college while preparing to teach, and the pull was immediate. After teaching science and English, he returned to graduate school and went on to serve as a clinical psychologist at Big Spring State Hospital in Texas, where as Director of the Adolescent Unit he led therapy groups with young people, their parents, and their families. That work began his lasting romance with family therapy.
His path wound through Gestalt Therapy, where he became a certified trainer with the Gestalt Therapy Institute of the Southwest and taught on the faculty of the New Orleans Gestalt Institute, and through study as a Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) Master Practitioner. Licensed as a Marriage and Family Therapist first in California and later in Massachusetts, he eventually settled in Northampton and fell in love with Emotionally Focused Therapy for Couples.
Along the way Ross became an EMDRIA Certified Consultant in EMDR, which he regards as the gold standard of trauma therapy, and deepened his toolbox with Coherence Therapy, Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART), and Image Transformation Therapy, an approach he considers among the most effective for working with neglect, addiction, and sexual addiction. He built a practice of individuals, couples, and families, nearly all of them carrying trauma histories.
He has spent many years in the Emotionally Focused Therapy community and taught the Hold Me Tight couples workshop developed by Dr. Sue Johnson, often coaching other therapists to apply its principles in their own relationships. Now working as a coach, Ross brings that full breadth of experience to the intensive retreats, grounded in a profound sense of the possibility of healing through connection.