THERAPIST · COFFEE LOVER · TRAVELER
Marti Burton, MA, LPC, NCC, EMDR-T
You Are Doing Everything Right. And It Still Feels Like It Is Never Enough.
Marti Burton is a therapist at Empower Counseling who specializes in teens, college students, and young adults navigating anxiety, perfectionism, depression, and the disorienting in-between moments — the ones that look like progress from the outside but feel like falling apart on the inside. She brings clinical depth, genuine warmth, and a steady belief that knowing your worth is not a reward for getting everything right. It is something you were always allowed to have.
Her approach draws on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and EMDR — evidence-based methods that help you shift your relationship with difficult thoughts, calm a dysregulated nervous system, and build a life that actually feels connected to who you are.
Marti Burton, MA, LPC, NCC, EMDR-T
EMDR Therapist · Women’s Therapist
If You Have Found Your Way Here,
You Might Recognize Some of These.
Maybe it’s the pressure to have it all figured out — the sense that you’re somehow behind, that the goalposts keep moving, that the relief never quite arrives. You’ve done everything you were supposed to do, and still the feeling follows you.
Maybe it’s the overthinking that won’t turn off — the replaying, the second-guessing, the mind that won’t let you rest. You’re trying to stay safe, trying to get it right. But living inside your own head this much is a kind of tired that sleep doesn’t fix.
Maybe it’s the gap between how capable you look and how lost you feel. You’ve gotten very good at functioning, and that distance has become its own kind of weight.
Maybe it’s a transition that was supposed to feel like a beginning and instead feels like loss — becoming someone new before you know who that person is. You are not failing at your life. You are in the middle of it. And the middle is exactly where good therapy meets you.
Whatever brought you here — you do not have to have it figured out. You just have to show up.
What It Feels Like to Sit Across From Marti
Sessions with Marti feel unhurried — there is room to breathe before you even begin to speak. She is the kind of therapist who can hold what happened to you without flinching, without rushing to interpret it or move you past it before your body is ready. The work moves at the speed of safety, not the speed of urgency.
Women who work with Marti often describe feeling something they haven’t in a long time: the sense that their reactions make sense — that what they’ve been calling overreaction is actually information, that the body is not the enemy. From that ground, the deeper work — the EMDR, the values work, teaching the nervous system that the past is actually past — becomes possible.
What Marti Helps With:
- Complex trauma and PTSD
- EMDR therapy for trauma
- Anxiety, overthinking, and chronic worry
- OCD and intrusive thoughts
- Nervous system dysregulation and chronic hyperarousal
- Perfectionism
- Life transitions and identity shifts
- Depression
- Counseling for teens, college students, and young adults
In-person in Birmingham · Online throughout Alabama · Accepting new clients now
What happens when you reach out
Your first session with Marti is not a test and it is not an intake form brought to life. It is a conversation. Marti will want to understand what has been hard, what is showing up in your body and your mind, and what you are hoping for — even if what you are hoping for is simply to feel less braced. If you are coming in for trauma work specifically, she will explain how EMDR works and answer your questions about it before anything begins. She will not start that work until you feel ready.
Over time, sessions become a space you can count on — consistent, confidential, and built around the pace your nervous system can actually tolerate. As trust deepens, the work goes deeper too. Many of Marti’s clients describe a turning point when the thing they were most afraid to say out loud — the memory, the thought, the reaction they could not explain — finally gets spoken and starts to lose its grip.
What Marti believes about you
She believes you are not broken. She believes the reactions you have been calling “too much” are not character flaws — they are evidence of how hard your mind and body have been working to protect you. She believes you are not stuck in what happened to you.
She also believes the relationship between therapist and client is not incidental to the work — it is the foundation that makes the work possible. That you do not heal by being analyzed; you heal by being met. And that every woman who walks into her office deserves a therapist who can hold what she has been carrying without asking her to carry less.
You Deserve Support. Marti Is Here.
Whatever you are carrying right now — the memories that will not stay quiet, the thoughts that will not slow down, the body that will not let you rest — you do not have to manage it alone.
Marti is accepting new clients now. In person in Birmingham · Online throughout Alabama. You are not alone. Let's begin.
How Marti Helps
The approach: Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT) and EMDR
Marti’s clinical foundation is Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) — a well-researched, evidence-based method especially effective for the anxiety, depression, OCD, and perfectionism that show up in her practice.
ACT does not ask you to push your thoughts away or talk yourself out of how you feel. It teaches you to notice your inner experience without being controlled by it — to recognize when your mind is hijacking the moment and to choose your next move based on your values rather than your fear. For women whose minds will not give them peace, ACT gives them something to do with the noise instead of fighting it.
For trauma work, Marti uses EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) — an evidence-based therapy that helps the brain process memories that have stayed too vivid, too charged, or too present for too long. EMDR does not erase what happened. It changes how it is stored. Most clients describe a noticeable shift: the memory is still there, but it stops carrying the same weight.
Marti is also trained to read what is happening in your body. The tightness in your chest, the way your shoulders climb toward your ears, the exhaustion that does not match the day — these are not random. They are information. Much of her work is teaching the nervous system, in small and safe steps, that what was true then is not true now.
Her goal with every client is the same: to help you understand what your mind and body have been doing, build skills that work in real life, and reconnect with the values that have been waiting underneath the noise.
Background & Training
Marti Burton earned her Bachelor’s degree in Psychology at Samford University and her Master’s degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She is a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) in the state of Alabama and a Nationally Certified Counselor (NCC).
She is trained in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and in EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) for the treatment of trauma and PTSD.
Marti was drawn to trauma and anxiety work because she believes the women who walk into her office are often the most capable, conscientious, and quietly exhausted people in their own lives. They have been holding everything together for everyone else for a long time. They deserve a therapist who can do the deep work with them — not just talk around it.
She offers in-person sessions at Empower Counseling’s Birmingham office and online therapy for women throughout Alabama.
A Little More About Marti
Outside of the therapy room, you will most likely find Marti with London — her 15-pound miniature Schnauzer who is, by Marti’s own description, equal parts pure sass and the most loving dog you will ever meet.
Marti is a traveler at heart, especially when the destination involves the ocean. The sound of the waves and the smell of the salt air are two of her favorite forms of regulation.
She is a longtime fan of Friends and Schitt’s Creek, a devoted reader of the Harry Potter series, and a quiet enthusiast of any meal that involves Mexican food or pasta — though chicken fajita quesadillas hold a particular place in her heart.
She started her career because she believes the women who carry the most are often the ones who ask for help the least — and they deserve a therapist who can meet them where they are, hold what they have been holding, and help them put some of it down.