Trauma Therapy
Maybe something has happened in your life recently that brought up all sorts of stuff from your childhood and you are considering trauma therapy to deal with it. Or maybe you just have this persistent feeling of depression or anxiety that seems disconnected from difficult early experiences but you have a deeper sense that it is related.
If you find yourself walking around with tension in your body and your shoulders at your ears I want you to know that more and more researchers are finding the body keeps the score.
You have probably tried all kinds of ways to move past the trauma, from distracting yourself and keeping busy, to talking with a trusted friend or family member, to maybe some less healthy ways of dealing, like drinking a little too much or stuffing your feelings down so that you feel a constant low level depression or anxiety, or maybe every once in a while you explode in anger. And you still find yourself avoiding things that remind you of the trauma, having distressing feelings, images, or memories surface, or perhaps having flashbacks or nightmares.
It’s time to try something different.
What Does Trauma Therapy Look Like?
You may be thinking, I don’t want to go to therapy and talk about it more, it won’t change anything. In fact, the research agrees with you. Recent developments in neuroscience support the theory that trauma is stored in memory fragments in the brain and just talking about the trauma does not usually have any effect.
We will use meditative awareness and body-based approaches grounded in the here and now to allow for a kind of healing that supports your whole person, targets your present-day distress and encourages your brain to do its own healing.
First, we will work to create a safe space to do the work by gentle exploration, grounding, and learning more about how your trauma is held in body and mind. The actual processes we use vary from person to person, but it often combines the support and inquiry of Gestalt therapy with some EMDR (a therapy which uses gentle back and forth stimulation, not unlike the back and forth of walking or bicycling, with my direction and support to help the brain process through some of these stuck places).
The goal is to release, let go, and decrease the intensity of the emotions around these old experiences so you can move forward without old feelings, images, and experiences holding you back.
If this approach interests you, you can email me or call 347-620-2181. You can also book an initial phone consultation (15 minutes, free of charge) or an initial 45-minute session by visiting my client portal.