Marilyn J. Wooley PhD
Marilyn J. Wooley PhD is a psychologist and traumatologist that specializes in working with first responders and treating posttraumatic stress injuries. With over forty years of experience in the field of psychology, Wooley also teaches Critical Incident Stress Management and is often called upon by municipalities for forensic and pre-employment psychological evaluation services for perspective employees. She is an expert witness in several areas related to trauma.
Wooley completed her PhD in 1977 from the University of Arizona and performed her postdoctoral training at the Long Beach Veterans Medical Center treating veterans injured and traumatized during the Vietnam War. She moved to rural Northern California in 1979 and opened her psychology practice. Her experiences spurred her interest in the treatment of posttraumatic stress and helped shape her career. Along the way, she worked with the American Red Cross to help victims of 9/11 and served as a clinician for the West Coast Posttrauma Retreat since 2001.
In 1992, she discovered a trunk filled with her grandfather’s effects from WWII. By exploring hundreds of his letters and photographs, she discovered that her grandfather had served in the 7th Army and was a liberator of Dachau Prison Camp. She realized that her grandfather’s gruesome experiences left him suffering from untreated posttraumatic stress disorder and her interest in PTSD became an obsession. The diaries illuminated Wooley’s troubled family history and she was struck with fresh clarity how her clients’ individual experiences with posttraumatic stress not only shaped their lives but influenced and shaped the lives of their families and children. Her therapeutic goal of reducing the effects of PTSD eventually led her to develop a model for helping first responders embark on a journey from posttraumatic stress to recovery to posttraumatic growth that would allow them to reclaim and enrich their lives.
Wooley has published articles on posttraumatic stress injuries and recovery from critical incidents, including her own, in professional journals. Her latest book, How Heroes Heal: Stories of First Responders and the Journey for Posttraumatic Stress to Posttraumatic Growth won first place in the 2022 Public Safety Writers Association nonfiction category and is available on Amazon. Writing about public safety is not Wooley’s only genre. She won the 2000 St. Martin’s Press Malice Domestic award for Jackpot Justice, a novel about psychologist Cassie Ringwald who lives amid colorful characters and solves mysteries to save the lives of her clients.
Note: Dr. Wooley is only seeing first responders on a limited basis at this time.
