Trauma Healing

Do you ever feel stuck in a feeling? Do your moods or your reactions sometimes not sync up with the situation at hand?

If yes, this may be your natural response to trauma.

Do you ever:

  • Find yourself feeling disconnected and detached from your body?

  • Snap and react with more agitation and anger than you used to?

  • Struggle to focus?

  • Feel uncomfortable or even scared in quieter/more still moment?

  • Act more dramatically or recklessly to feel in control again?

Whatever you may be experiencing, you are here because you are beginning to notice the impact of this shift in your day to day life, and you want to gain some sense of control again.

You don’t have to keep surviving this on your own. Together, we can heal.

Skills we will utilize together:

EMDR

  • This stands for: Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing.

  • An evidence based therapy model used to treat PTSD and trauma, depression and anxiety.

  • Utilizing bilateral stimulation (scanning eyes back and forth or tapping the body) to keep the body safely grounded in the present, while allowing the mind to float back to the past and move through traumatic and distressing memories/images.

  • The overall goal is to have something that feels disruptive, intrusive and traumatic feel like historical information.

  • It allows you to feel more in charge of your emotions and body in the present, and reduces overall judgement and criticism of yourself. It can help shift the way you see yourself and the world around you.

Somatic Psychotherapy

  • The overall goal is reconnecting the mind and the body.

  • Becoming more attuned to the somatic cues of how you feel and where you feel it in your body; i.e. a knot in the stomach signals anxiety, whereas a lump in the throat may signal guilt.

  • Somatic awareness gives another set of language to help explain what you feel, especially when cognitive language may be more difficult; i.e. I don’t fully know what I’m feeling, but I know my mouth goes dry and my hands shake when I think about this.

  • It can help us unlock insight to how trauma is stored in the body, helping us understand why you might be overreactive in a moment, or feel unable to cope with something that once felt manageable.

  • We will combine this with knowledge of the body’s nervous system and its natural stress and protective responses (hyper-activity vs. hypo-activity vs. window of tolerance).

FAQS

  • There is no one type of trauma. It is simply defined as “a deeply distressing or disturbing experience”. I work from the belief that if the experience is distressing to you, throwing off the balance of how you feel and move through your days, then we will honor and validate this experience as trauma. We will work towards helping you heal.

  • EMDR has proven to be effective in reducing anxiety and depression as well as other trauma symptoms, but this is not the only way to heal. This is your space and your therapeutic journey. You and I will collaborate to decide what is the best fit for you and make our time what you need it to be.

  • It is ok to feel disconnected from your body or your emotions. We will take growing this connection at the pace you need it to be. We will work through an open and curious lens, noticing cues without judgement.

  • The short answer is, kind of but not really. Both of these practices have regular talk therapy sessions woven throughout them. There is flexibility we have in incorporating talk therapy sessions in between processing sessions for EMDR, making sure you are getting the support you need when and how you need it.