A Team Of Trauma-Informed Psychotherapists
Stories of “what happened” give us insight and context, but talking about these stories alone is simply not enough for resolution! Emotional pain can live in our nervous system for decades, and surface without warning. And psychological change can only take place by feeling into old wounds and encouraging a somatic redo outside our habitual patterns.
This ideology forms the base of our guiding principle. So, naturally, our approach to individual therapy is embedded in relationally-oriented (“genuine human to human connection”), experiential (“change through doing at the body level”) and neurobiologically-based (“feeling at the gut and survival brain level”) methods.
EMDR, Somatic Therapy, IFS, DBR, LENS Neurofeedback, Mindfulness, Art & Sound Therapy
“For There Is Safety In Being Hidden… And A Tragedy To Never Feel Found.”
Our Expertise
From Anxiety and Depression to Complex Trauma and Somatic Symptoms.
What Is Good Therapy?
Good Therapy: Expand Your Healthy Zone!
Our nervous system is constantly reacting to the surrounding environment: difficult events, chronic stress and trauma can shrink our normal range of mental, emotional and physiological distress tolerance. Too much activation in the Sympathetic Nervous System can leave us feeling stuck on the “ON” mode.
People often report symptoms such as anxiety, feeling quick tempered, panic, hypervigilant or restless etc… Too much activation in our Parasympathetic Nervous System can leave us feeling stuck on the “OFF” mode.
Many describe this as a form of hibernation from others, feeling depressed or lethargic etc… Good therapy works with both the mind and the body to expand our healthy range of emotional experience and rebuild the nervous system’s natural equilibrium.
Good therapy aims to rebuild the nervous system’s natural equilibrium and expand adaptive range of distress tolerance. Image adapted from Ogden & Fisher, 2015.
Good Therapy: Let’s Not Just Talk About It!
You can’t talk your way out of trauma memories, chronic loss, repeated abandonment or the “never enough” belief. When we encounter high stress or trauma, the human nervous system automatically initiates innate self-defense mechanisms … fight, flight, freeze or numb out. Long past difficult events, many individuals remain chronically hyper-sensitive to their surrounding.
The reality is that our nervous system is built for survival and not always logical; the residue of our painful memories become stuck in it and we later experience these in symptoms (e.g., restlessness, lashing out, tight chest, panic, chronic pain and insomnia). For many of us, these responses are simply automatic and talking about it over and over again can feel like a Band-Aid solution at best.
Since both our mind and our body remembers difficult events, good therapy must go beyond just talk. The neuroscience research of trauma and attachment now offers other possibilities: therapies such as EMDR and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy access deeper levels of consciousness and offer possibilities for resolution from the body and the mind.
Good therapy goes beyond just talk. Good therapy reaches all levels of the brain and consciousness. Image adapted from Ogden & Fisher, 2015.
