Although you have survived, you’ve lived in a state of tension, anxiety, and fear that has lingered long after the trauma occurred. You have a hard time realizing how courageous you are because you had no other choice but to find ways to move forward and function despite being in a state of distress. You’ve struggled to feel safe enough, secure enough, and free enough to show up authentically in your life and in relationships in the ways you most desire. You’d give anything to fully experience joy, connection, safety, and trust, but you are constantly sacrificing yourself and your needs in fear that something terribly wrong will happen. You might even tell yourself that what you are feeling is a result of something being terribly wrong with you. You want to be able to express your needs without fear of judgment, rejection, or abandonment. You want to full embody and express your authenticity without feeling a sense of shame when you take a step toward being, seen, known, and vulnerable but, something inside holds you back.

What is Trauma?

Trauma is a complex and deeply impactful experience that can alter the course of a person’s life. Traumatic experiences overwhelm an individual’s ability to cope, resulting in lasting psychological and physiological distress. Trauma is an injury to the body and mind, rather than a mental illness. The body retains the memory of trauma long after the mind has tried to move on. Trauma can stem from a variety of sources, including physical abuse, emotional neglect, betrayal, natural disasters, and even medical procedures. Trauma is not necessarily the event itself but rather the body’s response to the event. Trauma disrupts the normal functioning of the autonomic nervous system (ANS). This can lead to a state of hyperarousal (overactivation) or hypoarousal (underactivation), which affects an individual’s ability to self-regulate and feel safe.

Trauma Manifests in Our Lives in Various ways:

In your best attempts to cope; you may have disconnected from your needs and the core of who you are. Not because you wanted to, but because you had to…to survive. Your history may have taught you to ignore your instincts, leaving you with feelings of insecurity about trusting yourself. At times, you may feel disconnected from others and detached. Trauma can deprive us of some of our most basic needs such as connection, playfulness, safety, and trust.

Your Responses Are Natural Not Pathological

The first step is recognizing that you are not broken, you are not alone, and that your responses are natural. Trauma symptoms can be understood as survival mechanisms because they are often the body’s and mind’s way of coping with and responding to extreme stress or danger. These reactions can be seen as the body’s way of staying alert and protecting you from potential threats. Hypervigilance helps in detecting danger quickly, a crucial survival trait in threatening situations. Feeling detached from reality, or having difficulty experiencing emotions, or feeling numb can make it possible to endure situations that would otherwise be unbearable. Intense emotional responses can be the body’s way of processing and reacting to trauma, which often involves strong emotions. The difficulty in regulating these emotions may stem from the need to quickly respond to danger.

I believe that underneath all of the heartache and fear that you’ve endured, there is a wise and centered you, one that emanates calm and wisdom. Your purest form of Self already exists. All of this time it has remained intact, but it has been buried by your experiences and all the many ways you’ve had to protect yourself.

Support is Crucial for Healing from Trauma

Therapy is a courageous decision. It is a commitment to embarking on a journey of integrated change and restoration. I specialize in holistic trauma treatment, and my goal is to guide and support you in facing your fears, to offer a space for you to bring all of who you are and what you have been through and to support the embodiment of your authenticity. Building a trusting relationship with a therapist creates a sense of safety, deconstructs shame, provides comfort, and practical assistance. When this happens our overall physiology settles into its natural healing capacity and from this, authentic well-being can blossom and we can face the hard things. Therapy is a pathway to overcome, learn, rise, and expand. With gentleness, direction, and compassionate support it becomes much easier to see that we are on our way to transcending our way of previously being. Imagine if you could find compassion and a new understanding of every part of who you are.

Whatever your unique story, I am passionate and motivated to help you unlock your full potential, and I offer a sacred space for you to move past your shame and rebuild trust with your inherent healing potential. You can tap back into your innate goodness and your inherent wisdom. It would be an honor to guide and support you on your recovery journey.

Approach

I utilize an integrative approach in my work as a trauma therapist as a means to restore a sense of calm and centered connection within the brain and body. You already have a wellspring of wisdom within you; one of my main goals is to help you reconnect with it. I believe that with support, and guided practices, we can land deeper in the safety of an embodied and regulated Self.

Key components of My Integrative Trauma Therapy Approach Include:

Internal Family Systems Therapy

• Experiential Therapy: Such as Internal Family Systems (IFS), therapists often use guided imagery to help clients visualize the internal landscape of their mind. This technique creates a vivid, experiential dimension to the therapy, making abstract concepts tangible and relatable. IFS emphasizes the connection between mind and body, encouraging clients to tune into their physical sensations and emotions as they interact with their internal landscape. This somatic awareness enhances the experiential quality of the therapy, grounding the work in the present moment.

EMDR

• Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR): Utilizes bilateral stimulation to process and integrate traumatic memories. EMDR therapy involves an eight-phase process that includes history taking, preparation, assessment, desensitization, installation, body scan, closure, and reevaluation. This process helps reprocess traumatic memories and integrate them into your psyche.

Somatic Experiencing

• Somatic Therapies: Somatic Experiencing Therapy addresses the physical manifestations of trauma through body-based techniques. Trauma can cause disconnection from bodily sensations as a way to cope with overwhelming stress. Somatic therapies help individuals reconnect with their bodies, allowing them to sense and understand their physical responses to trauma. Trauma can trap energy in the body, which can lead to physical and psychological symptoms. Somatic therapy techniques help to release this trapped energy, often through small, controlled movements or guided exercises.

Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy

• Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy: PTSD often involves intense emotional numbing and avoidance of trauma-related thoughts and feelings. Ketamine can help break through these barriers by reducing the brain’s default mode network (DMN) activity, which is associated with self-referential thinking and rumination. This reduction in DMN activity allows patients to access and process deeply buried emotions and memories, facilitating a more comprehensive and healing therapeutic experience. *For those that meet eligibility criteria.

Emotion Regulation Techniques

• Mindfulness and Relaxation Techniques: To enhance emotional regulation and stress management.