“What progress, you ask, have I made? I have begun to be a friend to myself” -Hecato

Are you struggling with anxiety or feeling disconnected from yourself and others? Have you faced confusing challenges within relationships with your parents or previous romantic partners? If you are looking to improve the quality of your relationship with yourself and with others, let's connect. My focus is helping women who are beginning their journey as a young adult and who have experienced developmental and/or relational trauma (traumatic or stressful experiences that have occurred within the context of your family or romantic relationships). I aim to help you find more fulfillment in your relationships, provide you with a safe space for processing experiences and feelings, help you obtain a calmer baseline in your mood, gain more self-confidence, and help you understand and better manage your physiological responses to stress and trauma.

‘Classic’ PTSD versus Relational Trauma

Many people know the word ‘trauma’ to be associated with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. The word ‘trauma’ actually refers to a lot more than just the catastrophic, single event experiences traditionally labeled traumatic (war, car accidents, rape, natural disasters, etc.). Additionally, not all trauma causes Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Individual differences in personality, biology, quality of support network, and other factors play a large role in whether an adverse, toxic, or highly stressful experience leads to the develop of clinically-diagnosable PTSD.

New research is continuing to show us that trauma responses can also develop from betrayal in relationships, emotional neglect and abuse in relationships, and from experiences earlier in life with parents who were over-controlling, or who were physically and/or emotionally unavailable for us. We refer to this type of trauma as ‘Relational’ trauma. You may also hear it referred to as ‘Developmental’ trauma if it occurred in childhood, or as ‘Attachment’ trauma because this type of trauma has a deep and complex effect on how we are able to connect and form bonds with other people.

This is the type of trauma that my practice focuses on helping you recover from. It often manifests differently from ‘classic’ PTSD symptoms; the effects of relational trauma can be observed more so in how we relate to others, the quality of our relationships, how secure we feel in relationships, how comfortable we are with our own emotions, and our anxiety levels regarding connections with others.

Relational trauma is also categorized as a type of complex trauma, which develops after repeated incidences of emotional abuse (gaslighting, stonewalling, lying, betrayal of trust, etc.), emotional neglect, enmeshment (where personal boundaries are not acknowledged, respected, and become blurred between family members or partners), or emotional coldness or abandonment (a parent or a partner shuts you out repeatedly, does not communicate, does not validate your emotions, is not receptive to feedback or efforts to have emotional closeness).

My Approach to Treating Relational Trauma & Anxiety

My therapeutic approach is geared towards helping you understand more about your unhealthy relationship patterns & about the emotional impact that your emotionally negligent or emotionally abusive relationship experiences have had on you from a trauma-informed lens. We do this through therapy that focuses heavily on creating a safe and comfortable relationship between us (therapist and client), and that focuses on education surrounding the nervous system and trauma/stress responses while utilizing somatic therapy techniques that help us regulate our nervous systems and work towards feeling calmer and safer.

I consider myself a relational therapist who incorporates both somatic therapy and elements of “part-work” therapy (aka Internal Family Systems therapy). A relational therapist is a therapist who focuses on the influence of both past and present relationships in our life and our mental health, as well as a therapist who believes that cultivating a safe, trustworthy, and authentic relationship between counselor and client is crucial in healing relational wounds and trauma.

My style of somatic therapy is based on the tenets of the Trauma Resiliency Model, which is a model of treatment that uses a specific set of skills to help recalibrate the nervous system and process trauma and stress somatically by tuning into our “felt sense”, aka the bodily awareness and experience of sensations. The TRM is heavily based on Peter Levine’s therapeutic model of Somatic Experiencing. The basic concept of this model is that trauma occurs when the nervous system becomes overwhelmed and stuck, and to heal we need to allow the body to express emotional and physical energy it has held onto through periods of high stress and trauma.

A typical therapy session with me will usually involve some exploration and discussion of the issues you are experiencing, followed by the application of somatic skills and techniques to help you build your internal awareness and tolerance of both pleasureable and unpleasureable emotions and sensations. We will process your trauma in digestible chunks as to not overwhelm your nervous system further. This model differs from more traditional therapy models in that we are observing the body and the presence/changes in sensations throughout session versus only talking about problems on a cognitive level. The pace is also much slower than traditional talk therapy.

Another type of therapy I incorporate is “parts-work” therapy, which is a style of therapy most recently popularized by Richard Schwartz. This type of therapy helps us learn to recognize the different parts of ourselves (our “sub-personalities”) and allows for a creative and non-shaming therapeutic process of addressing the roles of each of our parts and how we can work with them (instead of against them) to become “unblocked” and heal.

Somatic therapy requires the client to be interested in learning to slow down, and to be present and curious about their physical reactions and experiences through noticing sensation in the body (tension, tightness, vibration, increase in fidgeting, urge to cry, lightness, colors, imagery, etc.) in the moment, versus only talking about the issue.

If you are not particularly interested in working towards being able to acknowledge and tolerate uncomfortable emotions associated with trauma or stress or in gaining a deeper understanding of your sense of self through a trauma and attachment informed-lens, another style of therapy may be better-suited for your needs. If working with physical sensations and the energy of emotion in the body does not sound compatible or helpful to your needs or personality, I may suggest looking into a cognitive or behavioral style of therapy. Therapies like CBT, DBT, and ACT are cognitive/behavioral therapies that may be a better fit if you are someone who is looking for a therapy to implement behavioral changes, thought pattern changes, examine errors in thinking patterns, etc.

Somatic therapy and parts-work, combined with a relational approach to therapy, work really well together and they can be helpful in reducing shame, feelings of ‘stuckness’, states of hyperarousal (high anxiety, irritability, agitation, worry, panic, etc.) and states of hypoarousal (low energy, feeling dull or numb, feeling down or depressed). These therapeutic approaches help foster a deeper sense of connection with the self and the physiological processes of the body.

Anxiety

Stress, worry, nervousness, fear, and panic deserve a safe space for exploration and support. I am here to help you feel less alone and more hopeful.

Improving Insight, Self-Compassion, & Self-Regulation Skills

Relational trauma, a type of trauma that can occur from unhealthy relationship dynamics or experiences, can leave use feeling unfilled, overwhelmed, anxious, or struggling to commit in romantic relationships. I aim to provide a safe space for healing while also providing education on the effects of such trauma on the body. By teaching my clients about the role of the nervous system, we will work to have a deeper respect and understanding for how our body and brain work and we will learn how to work with them, not against them. This will ultimately lead to a reduction in the shame and guilt we often feel and struggle to manage.

Attachment & Relational Trauma Issues

Our early relationships pave the way for our other relationships later in life. If our very first experiences with relationships were stressful or otherwise interfered with, often times we will find ourselves struggling with relationships as an adult. Therapy involves a focus on exploring the connections between our relational experiences throughout our lives with the goal that we can learn to relate to others in a healthier, more secure way.