On the Taproot Therapy Collective podcast, Joel Blackstock talked with MJ Denis, a Licensed Professional Counselor and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist from Austin, Texas, who now trains other clinicians in Emotional Transformation Therapy (ETT). Her story is a common one among ETT practitioners: firm skepticism, a personal experience that would not fit the skepticism, and then years of watching the method work.
From talk therapy to brain-based work
MJ became a counselor in 2012 and trained extensively in sex therapy, betrayal trauma and the treatment of out-of-control sexual behavior. “Talk therapy is wonderful and it’s effective, but it only gets so far,” she said on the podcast. That led her to EMDR. It helped some of her clients, but others got caught “on a train” of memories, jumping from one painful experience to the next without resolution.
“Nope”
When a colleague first suggested she look into a therapy that used light and color, MJ’s answer was an emphatic “Nope.” Even after seeing Dr. Steven Vazquez, ETT’s developer, demonstrate the method at a conference, she assumed it was staged. “I absolutely couldn’t believe that transformation could happen that quickly,” she said.
What changed her mind was a colleague in the office next door. He had trained in ETT and kept telling her about clients whose depression, anxiety or obsessive symptoms had shifted. One morning, when both of their early clients canceled, he offered her a session. Her own experience did what his stories had not.
What the cases look like
MJ described a training demonstration with a therapist from Portland who had been afraid of the dark her whole life. Working from the phrase “When I think about the dark,” and moving through colors ETT links to shock, loss, fear and overwhelm, the woman suddenly remembered being four years old during an earthquake, snatched up by her mother and rushed out of their apartment building in the dark. She had never connected the two before. By the end of the session, she said she felt joy and was almost excited for it to get dark that night.
MJ also described a senior EMDR trainer in Austin, practicing since the late 1980s, who went through ETT training and now blends her EMDR skills into ETT rather than using EMDR on its own. These are clinical stories, told by a clinician, and they should be read that way. They are also the kind of story ETT practitioners tell again and again.
How ETT works
ETT combines an attachment-focused relationship with four kinds of visual stimulation: a style of guided eye movement, peripheral light through goggles, a chart of intense colors, and a tunable light device.12 Each color carries an emotional theme, and the therapist matches colors to what a person is working on. The science of how light reaches the emotional brain is covered in the science of light and color in trauma therapy, and a patient’s view of a session is in how color and light can help heal trauma.
For the skeptics
Skepticism is reasonable, and MJ started there herself. ETT has not yet been tested in randomized controlled trials. Its support is clinical: Vazquez’s books and case reports, the experience of the clinicians he has trained, and what patients report and show in session. A 2026 paper in the Journal of Psychological Experience lays out a theoretical framework for how ETT works.3 For a clinician, the most direct test is the one MJ took: experience it before deciding what it is.
At Taproot we use ETT alongside Brainspotting and talk therapy. You can read about Emotional Transformation Therapy at Taproot, listen to more conversations on the Taproot Therapy Collective podcast, or contact us in Hoover.
References
- Vazquez, S. R. (2012). Emotional transformation therapy: An interactive ecological psychotherapy. Jason Aronson. https://doi.org/10.5040/9798216510253
- Vazquez, S. R. (2012). Accelerated ecological psychotherapy: ETT applications for sleep disorders, pain, and addiction. Jason Aronson. https://doi.org/10.5040/9798216510048
- Bruno, J. (2026). Sensory-salience regulation in Emotional Transformation Therapy: A clinical-theoretical framework. Journal of Psychological Experience. https://doi.org/10.64484/jpsyexp-x4s8m0l2c8n1y8z0
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