Trauma Therapy

What is Trauma?

"Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness."

- Dr. Peter A. Levine, founder of Somatic Experiencing and author of Waking the Tiger

"Trauma is a psychic wound that hardens you psychologically that then interferes with your ability to grow and develop. It pains you and now you're acting out of pain. It induces fear and now you're acting out of fear. Trauma is not what happens to you, it's what happens inside you as a result of what happened to you."

- Dr. Gabor Maté, author of In the Realm of the Hungry Ghosts and When the Body Says No

“Being traumatized means continuing to organize your life as if the trauma were still going on—unchanged and immutable—as every new encounter or event is contaminated by the past.”

- Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

Trauma Treatment Modalities We Use

Somatic (Mind-Body) Treatments
EMDR
IFS (Internal Family Systems)
CBT
DBT
Client-Focused Therapy
Role Therory
Psychodrama

WHAT WE WILL DO TOGETHER IN THERAPY

Plan and develop an individualized treatment plan to help you reach your short-term an long-term life goals
Understand how past experiences and traumas may have shaped your current symptoms and behaviors
Identify your core beliefs and thinking patterns which may be impacting your relationships and your ability to have healthy relationships
Identify and promote your innate and learned strengths that can help carry you towards healing and wholeness and wellbeing.
Learn healthier communication styles and skills to speak more effectively to ourself and others, thereby allowing for the mending any rifts, misunderstandings, and damage already caused in your life and relatinships
Develop trust in yourself, your decisions, your thinking patterns, and your behaviors.
Develop and learn to maintain healthy boundaries so that you protect yourself and create a sense of safety and wellbeing in your life.
Learn to cultivate real intimacy and familiarity with yourself.
Overcome anxious, negative thoughts about yourself that stop you from seeing yourself as worthy of love.
Develop your ability to be spontaneous, relax more, and have more fun with yourself, with others, and with Life!

Somatic Experiencing

The Mind-Body Connecction

“Traumatized people chronically feel unsafe inside their bodies: The past is alive in the form of gnawing interior discomfort. Their bodies are constantly bombarded by visceral warning signs, and, in an attempt to control these processes, they often become experts at ignoring their gut feelings and numbing awareness of what is playing out inside. They learn to hide from them selves.”
― Dr. Bessel van der Kolk

Somatic experiencing is a method of alternative therapy for treating trauma and stressor-related disorders like PTSD. The primary goal of SE is to modify the trauma-related stress response through bottom-up processing. Somatic Experiencing aims to restore the body’s ability to self-regulate in order to achieve balance and integrity.

One of the most effective treatments for trauma and PTSD is helping the client (re)cultivate a felt sense of safety in their bodies. This felt sense of internal safety, with proper guidance from a skilled therapist, can often expand outwards, helping the client feel safer in their immediate environments and the world at large. SE can help restore a person's felt sense of bodily safety.

SE resolves symptoms of stress, shock, and trauma that accumulate in our bodies. When we are stuck in patterns of fight, flight, or freeze, SE helps us release, recover, and become more resilient. The large majority of people worldwide have traumatic experiences in their lifetime, which can have major impacts on their health and well-being.

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a cutting-edge psychotherapy treatment that was originally designed to alleviate the distress associated with traumatic memories. It is not a traditional talk therapy that asks the patient to recount traumatic events in detail. Instead, EMDR uses eye movements and other bilateral stimulation techniques to desensitize and reprocess traumatic experiences and unhelpful inner-negative cognitions. EMDR is effective in treating trauma, addiction, attachment wounds, stagnation and emotional paralysis, and more.

During EMDR therapy the client attends to emotionally disturbing material in brief sequential doses while simultaneously focusing on an external stimulus. Therapist-directed lateral eye movements are the most commonly used external stimulus but a variety of other stimuli including hand-tapping and audio stimulation are often used.

EMDR therapy facilitates the accessing of the traumatic memory network, so that information processing is enhanced, with new associations forged between the traumatic memory and more adaptive memories or information. These new associations are thought to result in complete information processing, new learning, elimination of emotional distress, and development of cognitive insights. EMDR therapy uses a three pronged protocol: (1) the past events that have laid the groundwork for dysfunction are processed, forging new associative links with adaptive information; (2) the current circumstances that elicit distress are targeted, and internal and external triggers are desensitized; (3) imaginal templates of future events are incorporated, to assist the client in acquiring the skills needed for adaptive functioning.

EMDR

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a cutting-edge psychotherapy treatment that was originally designed to alleviate the distress associated with traumatic memories. It is not a traditional talk therapy that asks the patient to recount traumatic events in detail. Instead, EMDR uses eye movements and other bilateral stimulation techniques to desensitize and reprocess traumatic experiences and unhelpful inner-negative cognitions. EMDR is effective in treating trauma, addiction, attachment wounds, stagnation and emotional paralysis, and more.

During EMDR therapy the client attends to emotionally disturbing material in brief sequential doses while simultaneously focusing on an external stimulus. Therapist-directed lateral eye movements are the most commonly used external stimulus but a variety of other stimuli including hand-tapping and audio stimulation are often used.

EMDR therapy facilitates the accessing of the traumatic memory network, so that information processing is enhanced, with new associations forged between the traumatic memory and more adaptive memories or information. These new associations are thought to result in complete information processing, new learning, elimination of emotional distress, and development of cognitive insights. EMDR therapy uses a three pronged protocol: (1) the past events that have laid the groundwork for dysfunction are processed, forging new associative links with adaptive information; (2) the current circumstances that elicit distress are targeted, and internal and external triggers are desensitized; (3) imaginal templates of future events are incorporated, to assist the client in acquiring the skills needed for adaptive functioning.

IFS

INTERNAL FAMILY SYSTEMS

The Internal Family Systems Model is an integrative approach that understands that the mind is made up of relatively discrete subpersonalities, each with its own unique viewpoint and qualities. IFS focuses on healing the wounded parts and restoring mental balance and harmony by changing the dynamics that create discord among the sub-personalities and the Self.

IFS is a transformative, evidence-based psychotherapy that helps people heal by accessing, becoming familiar with, and loving their protective and wounded inner parts.

According to IFS, the mind is naturally multiple and that is a good thing. Just like members of a family, inner parts are forced from their valuable states into extreme roles within us. We also all have a core Self that has its own unique sets of positive and healthy qualities.

One of the goals of IFS is to restore the leadership of the Self in a person, thereby allowing the person to tack and make healthier more effective actions and choices.