Trauma

Trauma is anything that rips through the expected banality of our everyday existence to illustrate exactly how vulnerable and powerless we are to life circumstance at times.

I am a trauma-informed therapist in the sense that my goal is to provide safety, compassion, hope, strength, and relief for those who have experienced traumas during their life – longstanding or recent. Additionally, I am trained to assist clients in safely recognizing their trauma history, even if they’ve never considered their experiences as traumatic. Human beings  learn to cope with whatever life experiences we are born into or experience along the way – these experiences simply seem “normal” to us as we have nothing with which to compare them. However, when those experiences include physical or emotional abuse, neglect, systemic discrimination, tragic loss, the requirement to “adult” far earlier than should be expected, witnessing violence, being the victim of an assault, growing up with an addicted caregiver, or facing devastating medical diagnoses for self and/or loved ones, it is important to recognize them and tend the wounds left behind.

As part of my trauma-informed practice, I will always let you take the lead. I want you to feel completely safe and be able to trust in the process we will be working through. As your guide in that process, I don’t need or expect you to walk through each detail of a painful or traumatic experience unless (or until) you feel safe in doing so. In order to create that safe space, we will work together to establish coping skills, incorporating  boundary setting, grounding tools, a sense of empowerment and agency, as well as hope for relief of your symptoms. Trauma survivors have often developed inspired and creative ways to turn down the volume and mitigate the impact of painful or threatening experiences in their lives. Or, you may be walking through the world on constant high alert to any potential threat, real or imagined. Both of these coping styles provide a sense of protection and control, which is often absent during the traumatic experience. Although these means of coping often served to sustain you in the moment, in the long term turning down the volume on the painful stuff or maintaining hyper-arousal means you also turn down the volume on joy, connection, happiness, and fulfillment. It’s a package deal. As such, my goal is to help you work through this, carefully and at your own pace, so that we can reopen up the space for hope, optimism, healthy connection, and a sense of well-being to return.