Trauma Therapy
Your past doesn’t have to define you.
Maybe you have difficulty developing healthy, fulfilling relationships because you have this sense of not being able to trust or depend on other people. Perhaps you’re quick to leave relationships or situations because your initial response to uncertainty or discomfort is to escape. Or maybe you’re struggling with nightmares or physical tension in your body that never seems to leave. On some level, you have suspected for a while that the deeply unpleasant thing that happened to you that one time (or many times) is at the root of all this, but you don’t know what to do. You might be asking yourself if it “even counts” as trauma because it was “not serious enough.”
Whatever it is that you’re experiencing, you’re beginning to notice the impact of this in every facet of your life:
you have a hard time establishing strong relationships (of all sorts) and, once you do, you have an even harder time maintaining them
you’re getting criticism at work or in school, which sends you into a whirl because it brings back all of those unpleasant, unhelpful feelings and beliefs about yourself
fun things aren’t fun anymore because you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop, so you’re isolating and not feeling fulfilled
Trauma therapy and EMDR can help.
It may feel impossible now, but you can move forward.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a form of therapy with a ton of research behind it. It’s used to decrease the effects of painful memories and experiences. Using tapping or eye movements, EMDR bridges both sides of your brain in order to desensitize the feelings and emotions you’re experiencing, helping your brain to reprocess and re-store the memories in a way that helps you versus keeps hurting you.
EMDR is an incredibly powerful form of therapy, and one of the best parts is you don’t have to rehash the details of what you’ve been through. You don’t even have to share them with me if you don’t want to. This method taps into your brain’s own abilities to heal itself; I’m simply here as a guide on that process.
When you’re able to sit with and work through the impacts of your past, they begin to lose their power over you.
You begin to feel like you can move forward, like you can respond differently to the people you love, like you can thrive in spite of what you’ve experienced. EMDR can help make that a reality.
You have been through hard, sometimes even truly awful things, but those things and your past do not have to define or control who you are today. I can help you.
Q. How do I know if I’ve experienced trauma?
A. Trauma comes in all shapes and sizes. By that, I mean, there are huge experiences that we normally think of when we think about trauma (e.g., being in a combat situation, sexual assault, abuse, natural disasters, etc.), but there are also smaller things that maybe on paper don’t seem to “fit” what we think of as trauma, but they’re experienced that way (e.g., divorce, moving, break-ups, really harsh criticism from someone we looked up to, the death of someone we love, etc.).
If it happened to you and you’re still feeling its effects on you now, like you can’t move past it, then it counts. It absolutely counts.
Q. How is trauma therapy/EMDR different than regular therapy?
A. EMDR, which is my primary method for treating trauma is very different to what people usually imagine therapy to be like. Traditional therapy involves a lot of talking and verbally processing experiences in the past, in the now, and looking ahead. EMDR, though, involves significant internal work. I will be guiding you through the tapping or eye movements, but it’s your brain that is making the new connections and doing the healing. For trauma, in particular, this can be incredibly powerful.
Q. How do I know if EMDR will work for me?
A. While I cannot guarantee any particular outcomes in therapy, EMDR has a wealth of research and practical application behind it and I have worked with many, many people to heal through this form of treatment. It is the most highly regarded trauma therapy out there right now.
Q. How do I get started?
A. Reach out to schedule a free consultation. You and I will chat a bit about your situation, what’s bring you to therapy, and what your specific struggles are, along with what your goals are for therapy. I’ll answer any questions you have about me and/or my approach to working with trauma, and together, we will decide if I’m the right therapist for you. If we are, we’ll schedule your initial intake session and go from there. If we’re not, I’ll help you connect with another therapist who may be.
