I define trauma as any significant rupture in your ability to trust yourself, others, or Life.  Trauma is anything that feels like "too much, too fast, too soon," that separates you from your innate wholeness, and that impairs your ability to be creative, curious, and alive.  Whether it's one-time or chronic, shock trauma or interpersonal, developmental or recent, personal or collective, trauma can impact many areas of our lives. 

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Signs and Symptoms of Trauma Include:

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• Inner fragmentation. You experience intense and seemingly irreconcilable tension between different parts of yourself who say or want or feel different things.

• Shame & lack of worthiness.  You consistently feel not good enough, or you feel like too much.  You experience a strong inner critic, and you find it hard to feel like you're worthy of all that you long for.

• Dysregulated energy.  Either you feel too revved up and anxious, or completely flat and depressed.  You have too much energy, then too little.  You have trouble staying asleep or awake at the appropriate times throughout the day.  You're eating too much or too little.

• Dysregulated emotions. Anger, shame, fear, sadness, guilt—your emotions are big, overwhelming, and the transitions between them feel sharp and unpredictable. 

• Disconnection.  From your body, from your life force, from your people, from your purpose.

• Sense of helplessness, futility, or meaninglessness. This can be subtle or pervasive in your experience of yourself and the world.

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Healing trust starts in the therapeutic relationship.

As a trauma-informed therapist, I am always listening deeply to your body's cues as well as your words to help you understand what creates safety and empowerment for you.  I know how scary and overwhelming trauma work can feel.  We will go at your pace, first building a foundation of safety and trust before dipping our toes into the deeper waters. 

 

Trauma work is only effective if you feel safe and held in your relationship with your therapist. As we build our relationship of trust, your brain and body will be supported to regain a sense of safety and groundedness, and you will gradually release the trauma patterns that have built up over time.

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Some of what we might do together in trauma therapy includes:

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• Somatic Tools: Learn how to name what is happening in your body.  Practice tolerating sensation.  Sequence incomplete stress & trauma responses.  

• Incorporate practical, body-based tools so you can re-discover your sense of safety

• Receive psychoeducation on how the traumatized nervous system works.  This will help you release shame and normalize your experience, connecting you to a shared sense of common humanity.

• Repair your trust in yourself, others, and Life by restoring healthy boundaries.

• Be deeply seen in the ways in which you have been disempowered.  Make meaning of what has happened.  As you are ready, we might explore how and where you can create and embody an empowered narrative of your life.  

• Find healing in the inner fragmentation between your different parts & emotions through gentle acceptance and witnessing.  Learn how to listen for the wisdom within your emotions to find more empowerment as you navigate Life.

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“The transformational work of healing from trauma

asks you to embrace change,

to stand in the transitional space

between the person you have been in the past

and the person you are becoming.”

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~Dr. Arielle Schwartz

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Trauma changes us, often whether we want it to or not.  You cannot control what has happened to you, but with the right kind of support, you can choose who you want to be and what qualities you want to bring to others on the other side of trauma.  I hold the possibility of your ability to live with resilience, creativity, and sturdiness as you move through the world, even and especially in those moments when it feels hard to hold that for yourself.