About Linda Vermeulen
Thirty years as a clinician. Thirty-one years as an educator. SPP™ Companions built on a trademarked psychodynamic framework. I'm building AI tools on real clinical frameworks, testing them, and writing about what I find.
Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in California and Idaho. 30+ years working with veterans, families in crisis, and individuals navigating profound life transitions. Creator of Seven Paths Practice™, a trademarked psychodynamic framework with 385 activities across seven archetypal domains.
31 years in K-12 education spanning elementary through high school. Master Teacher designation. Created curriculum for sensitive topics including AIDS education for sixth graders (1990) and the California Missions project. Built frameworks that increased student engagement and project completion.
Built SPP™ Companions on top of the Seven Paths Practice™ framework. Psychodynamic companions for shadow work, attachment patterns, dating, licensure support, and more. Currently exploring consciousness, agency, and relationship with AI systems.
Full-time contractor with a federal behavioral health agency. Clinical consultation, program design, and community building in veteran housing services. Designed workflow architecture for a 74-unit housing program with 29 case managers.
Field Notes on Substack: weekly clinical writing on depth psychology, pop culture as case study, and the patterns worth paying attention to. Seven Paths Practice™ Discovery Logs and extensive psychodynamic framework materials.
Most conversations about AI in mental health fall into breathless enthusiasm or existential dread. I'm in neither camp. I'm a clinician with 30 years of psychodynamic practice who started building AI tools on top of her own clinical framework and discovered that the interesting questions aren't about whether AI will replace therapists. They're about what happens to the therapeutic relationship when a third intelligence enters the room.
SPP™ Companions, all running on the Seven Paths Practice™ framework I developed across 30 years and 385 psychodynamic activities. These aren't chatbots or symptom checkers. They're structured AI companions designed to surface patterns (shadow material, attachment dynamics, Enneagram fixations) that talk therapy sometimes takes months to reach.
Building them taught me more about the limits and possibilities of AI in practice than any conference panel or white paper. When you sit with a client for an hour, you bring your body, your countertransference, your silence, your 30 years of reading a room. AI brings speed, relentlessness, and zero ego. Both are useful. Neither is sufficient alone.
AI won't replace good therapists. But it will expose the ones who were never doing depth work in the first place. If your clinical practice consists of manualized protocols and psychoeducation handouts, AI can do that faster and cheaper. If your clinical practice depends on the quality of attention between two human beings, on the capacity to hold what's unspoken, on 30 years of learning to sit with someone's shadow without flinching, AI can't touch that.
The therapists who will thrive alongside AI already know the difference between information and presence. Between pattern recognition and relational knowing. Between an answer and a witness.
I build AI tools because I believe they can accelerate insight. And I keep practicing therapy because I know that insight without relationship is just data.
If your organization is thinking carefully about AI integration in mental health, I want to talk to you. I consult with mental health organizations exploring AI tools for clinical support, educational institutions developing curriculum around AI and therapy, clinicians and supervisors navigating AI in their own practice, and writers and researchers examining technology, relationship, and consciousness.
I'm not selling AI solutions. I'm offering 30 years of clinical perspective on what it means to integrate technology into the most human work there is.
I'm available for keynotes, panel discussions, university lecturing, clinical trainings, and short-term consulting engagements. I work best in rooms that value depth over convenience and questions over answers.
Not currently seeking full-time employment or long-term consulting contracts. Available for writing, workshops, keynotes, university lecturing, and focused short-term engagements that align with my areas of inquiry.
How do therapists maintain authentic presence when working alongside AI tools? I'm building AI tools on top of 30 years of practice, and I have opinions about where this goes well and where it doesn't. This talk is grounded in practice, not speculation.
Jungian archetypal work adapted for modern clinicians. Dream analysis and symbolic exploration. Shadow work, projection, and the unconscious in digital spaces. I make depth psychology practical without making it shallow.
I've designed workflows across healthcare, education, and government settings, including a 74-unit VA housing program with 29 case managers and a county co-occurring disorders treatment track. My approach: build infrastructure that supports clinicians rather than burdening them.
For clinicians, supervisors, and training programs. What does it mean to be present in a session? How do you stay reflective when the system around you rewards speed? This work comes from three decades of sitting with people and refusing to optimize the relationship.
I spent 31 years in K-12 education before moving fully into practice. I know how adults learn, especially around sensitive or complex topics. I design curriculum and training that respects practitioner expertise and doesn't condescend.
I'm available as a part-time lecturer for graduate programs in counseling, marriage and family therapy, social work, and related fields.
I hold a Lifetime Multiple Subject Teaching Credential, a Single Subject English Credential, and a Pupil Personnel Services (PPS) Credential, all from California. I was designated Master Teacher early in my education career and developed district-wide training materials. I bring that instructional precision to clinical education.
I'm interested in conversations with people and organizations thinking carefully about what comes next.