Kristina Robertson, MSW, LCSW, LCDC (EMDR-Trained)
Counselor, Burning Tree Ranch
Author of Wired for Survival: Healing Attachment, Trauma, and Substance Use at the Root
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About Kristina
Kristina Robertson serves as a Counselor at Burning Tree Ranch and is the author of Wired for Survival: Healing Attachment, Trauma, and Substance Use at the Root (Red Rock Publishers, 2026). A Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) and Licensed Chemical Dependency Counselor (LCDC), she holds a Master of Social Work from the University of New England and earned her Bachelor of Social Work magna cum laude from Northeastern State University, where she was inducted into Phi Theta Kappa and Alpha Zeta.
Her clinical focus is the question at the center of her book and at the center of chronic relapse: why knowing better has not been enough. Kristina works with the attachment wounds, trauma history, and nervous-system patterning that sit underneath compulsive substance use — the material shorter programs rarely have time to reach, and that clients carry with them into the next relapse when it goes unaddressed.
EMDR-trained and a person in long-term recovery herself, Kristina brings both clinical rigor and firsthand understanding to a population that has usually been told, many times, that it should have worked by now.
Credentials:
- Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) — Texas (License #107182)
- Licensed Chemical Dependency Counselor (LCDC) — Texas (License #16339)
- EMDR-Trained — Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing
- Published Author — Wired for Survival (Red Rock Publishers, 2026)
History With Burning Tree
Kristina joined the Burning Tree team in 2023. As a person in long-term recovery, her connection to the mission of treating chronic relapse is both professional and personal — and her clinical training as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and LCDC ensures that connection is grounded in evidence-based practice.
In 2026 she published Wired for Survival, a book drawn directly from the clinical work she does at the Ranch.
Approach to Treatment
Kristina Robertson’s clinical work at Burning Tree is defined by the intersection of evidence-based practice and relational depth. Holding dual licenses as an LCSW and LCDC, she brings a therapeutic approach that addresses both the psychological and substance use dimensions of chronic relapse — helping clients rebuild their identity and self-worth through the treatment process.
As a person in long-term recovery, Kristina carries a lived understanding of the journey her clients are on — and in Wired for Survival she puts that understanding into clinical language families can actually use. Her work in session follows the same logic as the book: identify the survival adaptation, treat what is driving it, and build the regulation and relational capacity that make a different response possible. That combination of firsthand credibility and clinical training is what the treatment of the chronic relapser demands.
Published Work
Wired for Survival: Healing Attachment, Trauma, and Substance Use at the Root
Published in July 2026 by Red Rock Publishers, Wired for Survival is Kristina’s book on why the patterns that look like failure are more often adaptations: a nervous system continuing to do what it once had to do to survive. “Some patterns are not signs of weakness, but signs of survival,” she writes.
In her book, she argues that trauma, attachment wounds, and substance use are not three separate problems to be treated in sequence, but one interlocking system. Lasting change begins when the body learns it no longer has to live in survival mode. It is written for the reader who has tried to heal before—the person who can explain their own patterns clearly and still cannot interrupt them.
That premise is the clinical ground Kristina works from every day at Burning Tree Ranch. Our clients are chronic relapsers: men and women who have completed treatment before, often several times, and returned to use anyway. Wired for Survival is a plain-language account of why that keeps happening, and of what has to be treated at the root before it stops.
Details:
- Publisher: Red Rock Publishers
- Published: July 2026
- 110 pages
- ISBN-13: 978-1807214883
- Available in hardcover, paperback, and Kindle.
Background & Education
Education:
- Master of Social Work — University of New England, 2021
- Bachelor of Social Work — Northeastern State University, 2013
Academic Honors:
- Phi Theta Kappa
- Alpha Zeta
Kristina Robertson, MSW, LCSW, LCDC (EMDR-Trained)
Counselor
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