These overwhelming thoughts and feelings will be less powerful when spoken aloud. Many people think they are struggling with depression and anxiety but are experiencing trauma symptoms. The work is not easy, but it is possible to feel better. We would be honored to help you through the next stage of your healing. Together, we will get to know the parts of you that are hurting and help them in finding peace.

How we help

The models described below may be part of your treatment. Each therapist collaborates with the client to choose the best treatment techniques for each client's needs. Below are descriptions of several models that may be used in your treatment.

Internal Family Systems (IFS) 

Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy asserts that we are not only one thing. Rather than being traumatized, IFS therapy believes that we have parts of us that carry adverse memories, negative beliefs, emotions, sensations, and energies absorbed through traumatic experiences. Our various and unique features live in or around the body, and IFS, therefore, centers the body's innate knowledge and wisdom in its healing process.

Instead of solely focusing on emotions, such as anger and fear, we are invited to gently and safely witness and dialogue with our body's feelings — the physical sensations beneath emotions. Where does anger live, and what does it feel like in the body, for example. Perhaps anger is experienced as pressure, heat, tingling, or a hollow feeling in the chest. These sensations are often the residual energies from distressing experiences, which can be used as a blueprint for past experiences and future healing. 

IFS therapy is transformative because it invites us to release energy from our body that carries distressing or harmful memories and beliefs. This happens slowly over time and with permission from our protective system so that the release feels safe and stable to our minds and bodies.

Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR)

EMDR works by helping a person with trauma overcome mental blocks and raw pain centers that come with distancing the self from the traumatic incident. Usually, a full-fledged EMDR-based treatment plan is broken into 8 phases consisting of 12 separate sessions. The sessions start with reviewing the patient's history and trauma and then progress to systematic stages of planning, assessment, treatment, and evaluation.

Patients who have been through EMDR therapy can integrate negative emotions, body reactions, and behavior patterns in a better way. The treatment also teaches new and personalized ways of coping with life challenges. Some coping skills learned by EMDR are healthy behavior, enhanced understanding, and positive thinking. 

EMDR works on the Adaptive Information Processing model that rests on the fundamental belief that mental health sustenance needs positive experiences. Individuals can handle fresh challenges when the brain is trained to process the traumatic incident. The Department of Veterans holds EMDR therapy as one of the best-recommended treatment plans for PTSD. 

Brainspotting

Brainspotting is based on the profound attunement of the therapist with the patient, finding a somatic cue and extinguishing it by down-regulating the amygdala. It isn't just PNS (Parasympathetic Nervous System) activation that is facilitated; it is homeostasis.

-- Robert Scaer, MD, "The Trauma Spectrum"

Brainspotting is a powerful, focused treatment method that works by identifying, processing, and releasing core neurophysiological sources of emotional/body pain, trauma, dissociation, and a variety of other challenging symptoms. Brainspotting is a simultaneous form of diagnosis and treatment, enhanced with Biolateral sound, which is deep, direct, and powerful yet focused and containing.

Brainspotting functions as a neurobiological tool to support the clinical healing relationship. There is no replacement for a mature, nurturing therapeutic presence and the ability to engage another suffering human in a safe and trusting relationship where they feel heard, accepted, and understood.

Brainspotting gives us a tool, within this clinical relationship, to neurobiologically locate, focus, process, and release experiences and symptoms that are typically out of reach of the conscious mind and its cognitive and language capacity.

Brainspotting works with the deep brain and the body through its direct access to the autonomic and limbic systems within the body's central nervous system. Brainspotting is, accordingly a physiological tool/treatment which has profound psychological, emotional, and physical consequences.

Expressive Arts Therapy

Expressive Arts Therapy combines psychology and creative processes to promote emotional growth and healing. This multi-arts, or intermodal, approach to psychotherapy and counseling uses our inborn desire to create; such a therapeutic tool can help initiate change. For some people who have difficulty articulating their feelings, self-expression through art can be helpful. Expressive arts therapy draws from various art forms (drawing, poetry, movement), and this integration of methods can help patients access their emotions. Meanwhile, art therapy tends to be based on one particular art form.

Expressive art therapy can be accomplished by creating different art forms; the commonality is using multiple senses to explore your inner and outer worlds. A therapist or counselor helps you communicate feelings about the process and accomplishment of making art, and together, you use the creative process to highlight and analyze problems and difficulties. Therapeutic work is based on the creative process rather than the final result; therefore, having a background or training in the arts is unnecessary to benefit from this expressive therapy. Throughout the process, you learn new and different ways to use the primarily nonverbal language of creativity to communicate inner feelings not previously available to you by simply thinking or talking about them.

"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."

-Maya Angelou