Our Staff
CORE represents the culmination of over thirty years of work in private psychotherapy practice, non-profit psychotherapy treatment and in the field of process (behavioral) and substance addictions. We are psychotherapists. It is what we do and what we love. Helping you overcome whatever blocks you have to lasting balance, centeredness and happiness is our overriding goal and desire.
Staff
Sharon W. Rinearson
LCSW, CCPS, CCTP, FQS
Licensed Clinical Social Worker
APSATS Certified Clinical Partners Specialist
Certified Clinical Trauma Professional
Florida Qualified Supervisor
Certified Life Coach
Former Board of Directors Member: APSATS
Sharon is a licensed clinician and Florida Qualified Supervisor who has extensive experience treating mental health disorders, including those associated with Chronic Pain, Addiction and the survival responses that they create in loved ones. She has designed therapy programs for well-known non-profit mental health and addiction programs in South Florida including The Lord’s Place, Gratitude House and Oakwood Center (currently Jerome Golden Psychiatric Center).
As a Certified Clinical Partners Specialist for partners of Sex Addicts, Sharon has achieved a high-level of specialized training and education in healing the partners and families of sex addicts. Sharon is also a Certified Clinical Trauma Professional, highly trained and skilled in trauma work, and is known for her expert use of creative therapies in healing betrayal and relational trauma. As director of clinical services for CORE, she has led our team of clinicians to create our innovative programs that are changing lives and can often be found in the community lecturing about relational trauma and the healing of it.
Sharon has been a working clinician for over 20 years. During that time, she has melded aspects and techniques of play therapy, sandtray and sandplay therapy, and trauma treatments into an innovative experiential practice that promotes growth and change. Her experience runs the gamut from 3-year old play therapy groups, to meaningful individual sessions with men, women and teens, to couples work and family work. She raises service dogs for the wheelchair-bound and she has included Canine Therapy Groups in the dog’s training.
James West Annear
LMHC, CSAT-Supervisor, CCPS, CCTP, EMDR-II
Licensed Mental Health Counselor • MH10291
Certified Sex Addiction Therapist - Supervisor
APSATS Certified Clinical Partners Specialist - Supervisor
Certified Clinical Trauma Professional
Florida Qualified Supervisor
Certified Life Coach
APSATS Board of Directors
James is a licensed clinician who has extensive experience in treating complex trauma, mental health disorders and addictions. He has also been an Executive Director and Clinical Director of both Mental Health and Addiction treatment centers, designing treatment programs that go to the core traumatic and neural issues to provide sustainable healing.
James is a certified professional in Trauma treatment, Sex and Love Addiction treatment for addicts and their partners and is a Florida Qualified Supervisor for mental health professionals as well as a State of Florida Supreme Court Certified Mediator. He has been trained in family-centered therapy by Dr. Patrick Carnes, Dr. Rob Weiss (CSAT), Dr. Sheri Keffer and Barbara Steffens (Founder of APSATS) in working with sex addiction and problematic & compulsive sexual behaviors as well as infidelity and intimacy issues.
As well as having been in practice for more than 13-years, James lectures and teaches about Problematic & Compulsive Sexual Behavior, Love and Intimacy Issues, including Addiction, Process (aka Behavioral) Addictions, Attachment Disorders, Complex Trauma and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Gail Nesmith
Core Office Manager
It’s an understatement to say that CORE couldn’t function without Gail, as she is the ultimate epicenter of EVERYTHING that happens here! From scheduling to accounting to everything in between, Gail makes our office—and therefore, our healing work in this world—functional, possible and emotionally sustainable.
With a career-long history in office management, including experience in substance abuse and addiction recovery environments, Gail’s executive skillset is impressively ideal for CORE. While interacting with our clients who are suffering and seeking help, Gail’s demeanor is profoundly sensitive, warmly supportive and deeply compassionate. She protects our clients’ personal information with exceptional standards of care and confidentiality, contributing to our overall reputation as a facility where everyone feels safe.
No matter who you are, Gail endeavors to leave your life a little bit (or a lot!) better than it was before you met. When she’s not working, Gail enjoys movies, biking and tennis. But when she really needs to release some of the stress involved in the work that we do? Gail heads to the golf course, driving range or gun firing range. We love those features of Gail’s personality, and consider them one of the many ways that Gail keeps things running smoothly and sanely at CORE!
Gaelyn Rae Emerson
CPLC, CCRC, CDRC, ICF-PCC, APSATS-CPC
Certified Professional Life Coach
Certified Couples Relationship Coach
Certified Divorce Recovery Coach
ICF Professional Certified Coach
APSATS Certified Partner Coach
Gaelyn is a certified professional coach, dedicating her career to helping others survive and thrive—whether or not their relationships do. Gaelyn is trained and credentialed by Impact Coaching Academy, the International Coach Federation and the Association of Partners of Sex Addicts Trauma Specialists, with additional training in abandonment, grief, relationships, divorce recovery, group facilitation, therapeutic disclosures and holding space in complexity (trauma, conflict, shame, abuse of power, etc).
Here at CORE, Gaelyn applies sixteen years of personal and professional experience, “down in the trenches” with other couples-in-crisis, healing from the impact of addiction, trauma and mental illness. During our treatment intensives, Gaelyn creates generous measures of safe, brave, comforting and empowering space, coaching our clients to identify and utilize their own internal resources, to make tough decisions when faced with conflicting values, and to rebuild new dreams from the ruins of their most devastating nightmares. Gaelyn contributes her background in writing, public speaking and curriculum development, creating an evolving lineup of special programming for CORE's clients and colleagues: workshops, retreats, guest speakers, study groups, field trips and professional trainings.
Gaelyn is known for (and lives by) her collection of meaningful, expressive and well-timed quotations. Her current favorite is this quote from the Baal Shem Tov: “Let me fall if I must. The one I will become will catch me.”
Ivana Costa
RCSWI, CTT, CCPS-C
Registered Clinical Social Worker Intern
Certified Trauma Therapist
APSATS Cert. Clinical Partners Specialist - Candidate
Ivana is a ray of sunshine that drifted from the land of the Amazon river, Brazil to start studying the pillars of healing here in The United States of America.
She started her studies in Brazil seeking justice inside a law degree that was too rigid to fit her spacious vision for truth. When transplanted to Florida, she encountered the basis of her passion with the teaching of Conscious Connected Breathwork with local teachers, Lori Reys, Benicio Farina and many teachings of Sondra Ray, the creator of the LRT (Loving Relationship Training). While working with special children that were on the Autism Spectrum, she learned the language of creative-art-in-daily-living.
Graduating from Florida Atlantic University (FAU) with a BA in Psychology and a destination to march to her own creative story, she became a yoga practitioner searching for the body's language. Working with holistic ways to bring spirituality into clinical practices, she studied, practiced, and combined many backgrounds while studying other religions to support the co-creation of daily rituals of Presence; to remain in the now.
With the rhythm of experiential work, she studied Trauma with Dr. Judy Crane (Author of The Trauma Heart) and learned more of the somatic lineage that was synchronized with the breath. While obtaining her masters, a Masters of Social Work (MSW) from Barry University, she encountered another part of the experiential work that deepened her understanding for the family systems that live inside of our generational somatic memories: Family Constellations. Ivana studied the Silent Constellations Model® with Sophie and Bert Hellinger in the town of Bad Reichenhall in Germany and in the U.S. with for another nine months to braid the Psychodrama of life with our ancestrality.
Her journey with APSATS was predestined, as a descendant and pattern breaker of Betrayal Trauma. Ivana learned from our very best pioneer, Dr. Barbara Steffens [Founder of the Assoc. of Partners of Sex Addicts Trauma Specialists (APSATS) and author of Your Sexually Addicted Spouse] while she was the Primary Therapist with Core Relationship Recovery. Her desire to expand and embody the healing effects that sit in the shadow of those who blindly carry on the generational trauma sent her off back to her homeland, Brasil.
Sharing her time between Mexico City, Brazil and Florida, Ivana encountered Qoya, a movement that embraced all the pillars of the healing movements. In Costa Rica, she completed her teaching of QOYA, where she embodied the fundamental resonance that movement is medicine, the voice for the body.
Between intensives, groups and individual sessions, Ivana continues to expand her knowledge by holding space for families, couples and individuals to do their work to give birth to their higher selves. We, at Core, call her “Gaiavana,” as she uses mother nature elements, anchoring energy to practice the remembrance of our mindfulness and take the resilience gift from each ancestor that contributed to our lives
Sarah Morales
CPC, CRC, APSATS-CPC
Certified Professional Coach
Certified Relationship Coach
APSATS Certified Partner Coach
Sarah is a certified professional and relationship coach, with focus upon helping others to know, trust and empower themselves—especially those who have lost themselves due to experiencing gaslighting within their relationships. Sarah is trained and certified by World Coach Institute and the Association of Partners of Sex Addicts Trauma Specialists. In collaboration with our team at CORE, Sarah engages her role as a gaslighting specialist and consulting group coach, supporting clients who come to CORE for individual, couples or small-group intensives. Sarah creates a space where self-awareness (and awareness of others) can be curiously taught and sought, providing clients with tools to help them know their values, hold their boundaries, and communicate with more certainty and efficacy than ever before.
Sarah lives in Austin, Texas, with her two teens. In her spare time, you’ll most often find her running on her favorite trail down by Lady Bird Lake. Sarah loves spending time with her favorite people—talking, laughing, cooking and enjoying the richness of healthy relationships. She also enjoys reading a good book, and occasionally playing on her ukulele.
Puzzle
Certified Service Dog
Unconditional Love & Affection Therapist
Empath
Puzzle fulfills many roles at CORE, among which are: Chief Barketing Officer, Provider of Moral Support, Happiness Director, Executive Attention Seeker and Director of First Impressions.
Puzzle knows when someone needs his undivided love and attention. A grounding force, he has an innate ability to be present for someone who is in pain or needs to be shown that they are lovable and worthy. He and his accompaniment (usually a young puppy service dog in training) also help provide clinical assistance in CORE's canine groups where clients interact and help train the dogs so that they can go on to be somebody's arms and legs, alert provider and guide. In this way, clients can truly know what it is to be of service to another - a beautiful way to engage in their own healing as well.
Puzzle's calm demeanor and undeniable charm make him a client favorite. It's impossible not to be head over heels for Puzzle the minute you meet him. He is an expert at helping clients navigate through life's "ruff" transitions, and if you need someone to talk to, Puzzle is all ears -- although he expects you to scratch them while he listens to you.
As a prolific ball stealer and an avid squeaky toy enthusiast, no ball, toy or stuffed animal is safe around Puzzle. He will not share, so don't even ask. On his days off, Puzzle enjoys poetry, long walks on the beach and spending time with his family. Puzzle is particularly fond of belly rubs, head pats and snuggles. His favorite song is Don't Stop Retrievin'.
Puzzle loves people and enjoys introducing himself to office visitors. Should you ever visit CORE's West Palm Beach office, you'll be sure to have a loving welcome!
Consultants
Cat Etherington
CPLC, ICF-ACC, APSATS-CPC
Certified Professional Life Coach
ICF Associate Certified Coach
APSATS Certified Partner Coach
Cat is a uniquely skilled life and recovery coach, with advanced training in addiction recovery (including female sex and love addiction), nonviolent communication, group facilitation, betrayal trauma and relational healing. Cat is trained and certified by Impact Coaching Academy, the International Coach Federation, and the Association of Partners of Sex Addicts Trauma Specialists - where she holds the distinct honor of being APSATS' only fully credentialed partner coach in all of Europe. With an intensely practical-yet-passionate personality, Cat's authentic and experienced approach creates and celebrates shame-free spaces of awareness and action, moving clients toward long-term, sustainable change. In collaboration with our team at CORE, Cat provides tangible tools and exercises, each designed to help our clients process (move through and beyond) their most paralyzing triggers and problematic sticking points.
Cat lives in Durham, England with her husband and children, consulting for CORE via video conferencing—along with an occasional in-person visit (lucky us!) from "across the pond."
Additional Consultants include an EMDR-supervisor/trainer, an Alternative Therapies specialist (including Somatic Emotional Release), and a Gaslighting specialist. All are highly trained in addiction and trauma work.