Sebern received her Bachelor of Science from the University of Massachusetts in 1976. She graduated from Antioch New-England with a Masters in Counseling Psychology in 1978. Sebern was one of the founders of the Family Planning Council of Western Massachusetts (now Tapestry Health) which began with one rural clinic in 1973.

From 1980 to 1997, Sebern was the clinical director of a residential treatment program for severely disturbed adolescents in western Massachusetts. At that time, it was considered to be one of the best programs in the state and the treatment outcomes were, at best, troubling. In efforts to better understand these kids and to enhance treatment outcomes, she introduced attachment theory in the mid eighties and in 1991, Dialectical Behavior Therapy. Her center became the first in the nation to adopt and implement DBT in a residential milieu.

Sebern was introduced to neurofeedback in the spring of 1996, when her friend, Kathy Zilberman asked her if she would be her first ‘subject’. She recounts the experience of a weekend of neurofeedback training in the introduction to her book, Neurofeedback in the Treatment of Developmental Trauma: Calming the Fear-driven Brain. When she went into private practice in 1997, she began to integrate neurofeedback with psychodynamic psychotherapy in the treatment of her traumatized patients. Her book published by Norton in 2014 (now also available on Audible) is a direct result of what she learned in working with her own brain and with those of her patients.

Sebern maintains a part-time private practice focused on the treatment of adults suffering the aftermath of neglect and assault in childhood in Northampton, Massachusetts. She trains and consults both nationally and internationally in the use of neurofeedback in the treatment of developmental trauma, on the central role of fear in those who have suffered these histories and on the integration of psychotherapy and neurofeedback. She is the 2013 recipient of the Joel Lubar Award for contribution to the field of neurofeedback and the 2017 recipient of the M.B. Sterman Career Achievement Award from the International Society for Neurofeedback and Research. In addition to her book, she has published numerous professional articles on neurofeedback and psychotherapy.