What I Do

I specialize in recovery from physical or emotional trauma. Because trauma so often affects relationships, I also provide couples therapy when requested.

Trauma can isolate a survivor in a prison of painful internal experience. It can overwhelm and leave survivors unable to accurately recognize, understand and manage emotions. As a result, trauma treatment presents a specialized set of challenges to both client and therapist. Successful treatment requires a holistic multi-pronged approach. The therapy I offer integrates somatic, emotional and mind-based approaches, drawing upon the capacity for healing that resides at every trauma survivor’s core.

Neurological and biochemical research shows that there is a very real physical basis for the way trauma survivors experience their internal world. Trauma establishes entrenched neurological pathways in the brain that serve well in survival situations, but channel perception in ways are not appropriate when one is no longer in danger. Trauma also changes body chemistry in a way that makes it difficult to manage stress and affects the immune system in measurable ways. Consequently, trauma survivors live to one degree or another as if they are always in danger. Constant vigilance redirects energy away from fully experiencing a rich and nuanced daily life.

New research in neuroplasticity and on the physiological effects of psychotherapy and meditation shows that our brains and bodies are constantly changing in response to new experiences. New experiences, be they physical, emotional, mental or relational, actually rewire our brains and change our biochemistry. Research also shows that treating trauma through pharmaceutical or intellectual modalities alone is not sufficient. Effective trauma therapy must integrate body-based and emotion-based experiential modalities.

My approach is about “opening.” It is about creating safety and coming home to oneself. My approach utilizes the brain’s amazing ability to rewire itself. Through safe, skillful exploration in the context of an open, authentic therapeutic relationship, you will find new ways of seeing, feeling and being day-to-day within yourself, with others, and in the world.