THE RESEARCH
The scientific foundation beneath everything we build.
For decades the behavioral health field has…
Operated from a foundational assumption worth reexamining — that emotional dysregulation is primarily a disorder to be managed. Jodee's research asked a different question: what if dysregulation isn't the problem, but the consequence?
Her doctoral research explores what happens when early emotional development is disrupted, by dysfunctional systems, absent conditions, and environments never designed to support healthy growth. The consequences don't resolve on their own. They compound across the lifespan. And they show up, reliably, inside the very systems meant to address them.
This is not a repackaging of existing theory. It is a new framework. One that changes what the field should be asking, assessing, and doing.
What her research addresses
Her research sits at the intersection of three questions the behavioral health field is only beginning to ask:
Why do emotional struggles persist despite treatment? Most clinical interventions target symptoms. This research examines the developmental root beneath the symptom, and why treating one without addressing the other leaves so much healing still waiting to happen.
How do systems often replicate the same problem they are trying to solve? Organizations built by humans carry the developmental patterns of the humans who built them. Understanding that connection changes how we design, assess, and transform behavioral health systems.
What would it look like to actually prevent this? The research points toward a prevention-first framework, one that requires a fundamentally different understanding of human development than what currently informs clinical training and organizational design.
Her research is entering the public record. Three bodies of work, each examining a different layer of the same systemic failure.
IED: A New Theoretical Framework SSRN Preprint | Link to publication
When Systems Fail SSRN Preprint | Under peer review, Humanities & Social Science Communications / SpringerNature Link to publication
Applied Relational Healing Published Link to publication
Why It Matters
The gap this fills.
Developmental psychology has long understood how early experience shapes the capacity for regulation, attachment, and growth. Clinical psychology has built an entire treatment infrastructure around the symptoms that emerge when that development goes wrong. What has been missing is the bridge between them, a framework that connects the developmental interruption to the clinical presentation, and points toward what intervention actually needs to address.
IED is that bridge,
Who This Is For
The systems we build to treat behavioral health challenges are often the same ones that unknowingly exacerbate them. IED theory helps explain why, and points toward what needs to change.
Clinicians & Researchers The IED preprint is peer-reviewed, freely available on SSRN, and offers a theoretical foundation for reexamining how emotional dysregulation is understood, assessed, and treated. Read the Research →
Behavioral Health Organizations IED theory has direct implications for how your organization understands the people it serves, and the people who serve them. Training and consulting built on this framework are available. Schedule A Conversation