Trey Manor, LMFT 

Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in Gallatin TN
$150 per 50-minute session

“You have to understand yourself in order to explain what you need to someone else.”

Hey, I’m Trey Manor. I get to work with couples and individuals who struggle to understand and express what they want, need, and fear emotionally or relationally. I help clients build internal awareness about what is important to them and what they are experiencing. In my experience, many clients struggle to label and connect where their emotions come from, what makes them so intense, and what clients need in order to calm down and feel relaxed or safe again.

I often get to work with couples, men, military, or first responders who are seeking help with communication, emotion regulation, or trauma recovery. To me, these are all related. In order to ask for what we need, we have to be able to slow down and understand what we are experiencing. Once we start connecting the dots of why certain things matter so much to us, we can understand what we are truly reacting to. From there, we call the experience what it is plainly and address or reprocess how we understand and what we need.

• Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist
• Brainspotting Practitioner
• Couples and Men

About Me

I am a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (TN #1952) I offer help and clarity to young adult and adult clients through increasing personal awareness. Whether clients are seeking communication skills, individual emotion regulation, anxiety reduction, depression reduction, trauma recovery, or infidelity recovery I strive to help clients understand how they see themselves, their relationships, and the world around them. I help to connect emotional and relational patterns to discover sensitivities, insecurities, or wounds that trigger intense emotional responses. Together, we then work to explore and explain what makes those topics so painful so that we can heal the wounds you’ve suffered.

My Counseling Services in Gallatin TN

As a trauma specialist and Brainspotting practitioner, my focus lies in aiding couples and men heal trauma wounds so that they can get back to living fulfilling lives and having connected relationships. 

In addition to healing trauma, I help men navigate their emotional landscapes. Utilizing analogies and anecdotes, I guide them in discerning the nuances between primary and secondary emotions. With this awareness, we explore how emotional responses relate to core attachment fears or wounds, which often ignite profound emotional reactions. Through this process, I facilitate clients in courageously confronting these fears or wounds within themselves, followed by open communication with their loved ones. By fostering this vulnerability, my aim is to enable their needs to be acknowledged and met, fostering a sense of relaxation and security within themselves and their relationships.

Areas of specialty:

• Trauma healing
• Couples Therapy
• Men’s Issues
• Military and First Responders
• Anxiety and Depression

Couples Therapy

I work with couples (Married and Unmarried) coming in for anything from Pre-Marital Counseling to Infidelity Recovery to Communication Skills or a “Tune Up”. With every couple, we work to De-Escalate, Build Trust and Vulnerability, and then address Core Attachment Fears and Wounds.

Every couple has their own cycle - their way of communicating and understanding each other. Most couples get caught up in arguing about mundane things: finances, household chores, relationship responsibilities, parenting disagreements, sex, communication patterns, etc. Some topics are sensitive, some are not. All can become highly escalated to where couples wonder if they are actually fighting about something else than the topic at hand. I would argue that most couples are indirectly talking about deeper Core Attachment Fears and Wounds.

I help couples slow down their cycle and label their levels of emotions - those shown vs those below the surface creating the intensity. As conflict slows down and becomes less reactive, couples are able to hear and understand what is truly sensitive, important, threatening, confusing, or needed by the other.

We then address the heart of the matter. We talk about the sadness, hurt, fear, or anger that is often linked to thoughts of being abandoned, not being good enough, simply being used, no one truly caring about you, or seeing yourself as a “bad person”. Speaking aloud, disarming, and sharing these feelings with your spouse allows them to understand, comfort, and support you in ways they never have before. It also allows you to challenge and work through the feelings you’ve held for so long.

Men’s Issues

As men, we don’t get taught how to understand, express, or regulate our emotions while maintaining our masculinity. Often we think in extremes of either being an unmovable rock or breaking down in tears - we ignore everything in between. Accordingly, most men don’t let themselves feel their emotions. Instead, we avoid, compartmentalize, dismiss, or bury our feelings - until we can’t anymore.

Whether you are seeking to manage your temper, brace for the tidal wave of emotions you’ve been holding back, understand your unwanted sexual actions or compulsions or explore why some subjects are so sensitive for you, we have to learn and understand our emotions. Understanding emotions makes us informed and capable.  

I help men learn the skill set (just like learning a language, how to work on a car, how to program computers or perform countless specialized tasks) of deciphering their emotions. Together, we separate Primary and Secondary emotions - the ones deep down making everything so intense vs. the anger/defensiveness we often show on the surface. From there, we explore what makes the Primary Emotion so sensitive so that we can calmly and plainly explain our wants, needs, fears, and joys. With that newfound knowledge, we as men are open, honest, and grounded in ourselves for whatever life or our most valued relationships demand of us.

Military and First Responders

Within the Military and First Responder community, it can be very difficult to state that you need help. There are often concerns about how getting help will affect promotion status or job applications later on. Thankfully, more and more units are becoming increasingly understanding that we all need help sometimes. Additionally, many units are realizing that they cannot function with mentally wounded members. So let’s get you back to full capacity so you can continue to fulfill your purpose.

First, we will build understanding between our thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations. All three are connected and work together to help us understand our current mental and emotional state and needs. Additionally, when we learn our internal indicators, we can also use cognitive and somatic cues to calm ourselves down. 

Next, we can look into reprocessing. We will use different methods to learn and explore your emotional response and how you understand significant events that stick with you. We will first connect the dots of what made those events and your understanding of them so profound to you. From there, we will start to disconnect the meaning you have made that harms you or may not be fully objectively accurate.

As you learn and know yourself more fully, you can return to fulfilling your purpose. You will know what matters are sensitive to you and why. You will also know how to connect and disconnect the meaning you attach to significant moments so that you are able to calmly live in the present moment.

I also am a Brainspotting Practitioner (Brainspotting Level 1), which is a brain-based, highly effective therapy that helps heal trauma so it no longer takes over your life.

Anxiety and Depression

Let’s get you unstuck. Many people feel trapped, frustrated, overwhelmed, or even snuck up on by Anxiety and Depression. Many others feel like they don’t fully understand why they feel this way and are so strongly affected by it. Others still know and understand where it comes from, but they can’t find a way out and might even feel a little hopeless. My goal is to help you understand, overcome, and live freely again.

First, we will look at where Anxiety or Depression comes from for you. Maybe it came after an event or series of events. Maybe it simply started one day. Perhaps it feels like it has always been there. Either way, we will look at both the context of how and when you experienced it and how you perceive and understand it. Within this process, we will also connect somatic sensations, thoughts, and emotions to scale and learn your experience.

With this newfound knowledge, we will explore Primary and Secondary Emotions, Attachment Significance, and meaning-making. We will work together to label and make sense of how/what you are feeling, what makes it so strong to you, and how you understand and perceive the experience. From an open and accepting perspective, we will see what causes you to react so intensely to the present circumstances.

Finally, we will locate what wants and needs to emerge that can now be understood and pursued to bring relief. We will state what makes them important to you and find ways to get those desires met. Ultimately, you will be able to decipher what affects you most strongly and how to work through it so that you can return to pursuing your purpose.

My Approach:

I work primarily with an evidence-based trauma healing approach called Brainspotting. I also use Person Centered approaches such as Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), Narrative Therapy, Gestalt Therapy, and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. Essentially, I recognize that everyone sees the world differently, so I try to see it similarly to the current client I am working with. From there, we can work together at your pace on the things that are most important to you (Person Centered).

I seek to create change through exploring previous experiences and relationships to help you understand how they have impacted you (Narrative). I focus especially on Primary and Secondary Emotions and their Attachment Significance (EFT). To fully explore that, we look at how you understand and connect your physical sensations, emotions, and thoughts. I also often help clients explore their values and how they can live in accordance with them (Acceptance and Commitment). Ultimately, from that point, you are more aware of what you want and need and how to express and meet those needs (EFT and Gestalt).

My Story & Background:

Long story medium, I went into college knowing I wanted to help people, but I wasn’t sure in what way. I went through three different majors and finally settled on Psychology the summer before my Junior year. At that point, I knew that I wanted to help through conversations and relationships. To me, that meant bringing aid through counseling.

I sought a Marriage and Family Therapy degree specifically to work with couples. I believe strongly in committed relationships and the positive impact they have on families. As I worked with couples, I also realized that many people in our culture today do not understand themselves, their wants/needs, nor their emotions well. Therefore, that has also become a cornerstone of my work.

Finally, after enlisting in the Tennessee Army National Guard in August 2020, I began to meet many veterans and first responders. As I heard their stories, I also began to care deeply about removing the stigma of mental health and providing aid to them so that we can continue with our mission and purpose of serving and protecting our communities. 

A Little Fun:

When you understand what is important to you, what makes it significant, and the meaning you attach, then you can communicate your needs and choose your response.

Your reactions and emotions no longer feel confusing, overwhelming, chaotic, or senseless.

If these concepts of increasing self-awareness to understand and explain what you need to yourself and others sounds beneficial to you, I’d love to connect and work with you. Let’s set up a 15-20 minute Phone Consultation to start getting to know each other, and we can go from there. You can reach me at (615) 510-4551 or trey@tnmentalwellness.com.