Carter Doyle, MSN, PMHNP-BC (he/him)

Carter joined Momma on August 10, 2026 for a live Q&A via Twitch and YouTube to talk about EMDR and IFS for LGBTQ+ & Spiritually Injured Clients

About Carter

Carter Doyle, MSN, PMHNP-BC, is a psychiatric-mental health nurse practitioner and founder of Leaf Psychiatry in Michigan. Carter integrates trauma-informed psychotherapy—including Internal Family Systems (IFS) and EMDR—with thoughtful medication management to help LGBTQ+ and spiritually injured clients heal without losing who they are. He takes a holistic approach to mental health, incorporating therapy, lifestyle interventions, acupuncture, and psychopharmacology when needed. Carter is also a PhD student at Wayne State University, where he’s studying the harmful effects of conversion therapy (also known as reparative therapy and sexual orientation/gender identity change efforts) and how people can recover from those experiences. His passion is making mental health care more human, more affirming, and more accessible. 

Socials / Links for Guest Connection

• Website - https://www.leafpsychiatry.com/

• Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/carterpdoyle

• YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@CarterPMHNP

• Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/carterpmhnp/

• Substack - https://substack.com/@carterpmhnp

References / Things Mentioned During the Stream

• Hasselblad Cameras

• NADA Acupuncture

• Richard C. Schwartz, Ph.D. - Internal Family Systems 

• EMDR Therapy

• Book Recommendation: No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma & Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model by Richard C. Schwartz 

• Leaf Psychiatry Blog 

• Favorite Poem: Beauty and the Beast Theme Song 

Episode Summary

LGBTQ+ listeners, survivors of religious harm and the therapists who work with them get a plain-English look at EMDR and IFS from a nurse practitioner who lived through conversion therapy himself.

Carter Doyle is a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner who came up through 911 calls and the ER before landing in psychiatry. He now works with LGBTQ+ and spiritually injured clients, using medication, talk therapy, EMDR and internal family systems (IFS). He also researches how people recover from conversion therapy, and he went through it himself. On this episode of Even Tacos Fall Apart, he covers his own story and the tools he uses with clients.

He starts with conversion therapy. In his experience there was no cartoon villain. The people who pushed him toward it were acting out of fear and love, shaped by deep religious belief and a generation that watched the HIV/AIDS crisis up close. That history helps explain how families who love their kids end up doing real damage. Carter says these efforts rest on outdated pseudoscience, and he hesitates to even call them therapy. He estimates one in eight LGBTQ+ people has been exposed to them, yet providers have screening tools for depression and PTSD and nothing for this. So a lot of survivors sit in therapy for years and never get asked.

From there we get into spiritual injury, or religious trauma. Carter defines it as faith, scripture or spiritual authority being used to hurt someone. For many people religion works like an attachment system, so when it turns on you, you lose your footing and start wondering what you did wrong. He pushes back on therapists who trash organized religion. Most LGBTQ+ clients want room to sort out what to keep, and some want to go back. Others have to leave a community that isn’t safe, and he says that too.

Carter breaks down IFS, built by Richard Schwartz, which treats the mind as made of parts that each learned their job for a reason. He also covers EMDR, developed by Francine Shapiro, which uses eye movements or tapping to help the brain reprocess stuck memories. He blends both with CBT and DBT, and he admits neither one invented much from scratch. They organized what therapists already knew.

You get a five to ten minute exercise to try this week. Think of something mildly annoying, notice where your body reacts, and sit with it without trying to fix anything. I admit it took me years to feel anything in my body, so if you draw a blank, that counts as a start.

We also talk about masking and people pleasing, especially for queer folks who learned to perform to get through the day. We cover borrowing calm from a pet, a partner or a friend, which Carter says is legitimate as long as you’re also building it yourself. He wants people to drop the shame around psychiatric medication, because waiting forty years to feel better means missing a lot of life. And if therapy didn’t work for you the first time, try a different therapist. Carter compares it to dessert: the first thing you taste might not be your favorite.

Listen for the conversion therapy conversation, the clear breakdown of IFS and EMDR, and Carter’s pick for favorite poem, which is the Beauty and the Beast theme from Disney and the story behind the man who wrote it.