Trauma Support

Trauma-informed psychotherapy involves keeping in mind the possible ‘root cause’ of any symptoms and distress that a person may be struggling with. While a mental health diagnosis can help us make sense of and treat, especially medically, a group of symptoms, if we disregard the life story and experiences that have likely had an impact, we are only treating the symptoms and not enabling that individual to make sense of how their past is impacting them in the present.

Using a neurobiological approach to understand these traumatic experiences and current symptoms, I help my clients see that many of their responses in the past, and their symptoms in the present, were at one time ‘adaptive’ coping mechanisms that helped them get through challenging times to the best of their ability. I help people become aware that their symptoms are not their body betraying them, but rather were their brain and nervous system’s best chance at preserving their safety, integrity, and ability to make sense of a senseless and chaotic experience. Current symptoms such as emotional dysregulation and difficulties in relationships are simply the brain continuing to use these same coping strategies, which worked in the past for a different situation, but which no longer serve the individual in positive ways. 

Healing occurs when we are able to move through emotions and thoughts, with a ‘safe other person,’ that we may never have allowed ourselves to experience before, due to simply surviving and coping. Using brain-based, trauma informed modalities increases the chances for people to operate from a whole, integrated brain that uses the emotional and memory information of the past to create positive change in the present. These changes then happen with less effort as one grows in their sense of self and the brain and nervous system spend more time in a place of ease, rather than hyper vigilance.

A trauma-informed approach involves more than just talking as sharing our traumatic experiences in detail can sometimes be re-traumatizing, so I take great care to work with my clients in ways that allow them to feel safe and in control of their healing and growth. The approaches I use for working with trauma – EMDR, Brainspotting, and the Safe and Sound Protocol – are known as ‘bottom-up,’ body to brain, therapies resulting in deep processing of emotions. 

Trauma reprocessing allows people to understand in an embodied way (versus only intellectually) that the traumatic experiences they lived through, occurred and impacted who they are today, and that are now in the past and not longer occurring in the present moment. After trauma treatment, people often express no longer feeling a visceral, body-based feeling when thinking about their trauma – as though they can look back and know it happened but it is no longer scary, all-consuming, triggering, confusing, or running the show. From there, clients continue the healing journey by making sense of their story in new and positive ways, seeing, perhaps for the first time, their resilience, strength, tenacity, as well as the possibility of hope for a different type of future.