What would life look like if you gave yourself permission to begin the process of healing?

“Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness.”

- Peter Levine

Trauma is stored, relived and experienced in and through our bodies. 

Somatic Experiencing is designed to support you in processing trauma in a tolerable way that allows for integrated healing to transpire. It brings freedom from the overwhelm that past traumas have left you with.

When you have experienced traumas and if they have yet to be resolved they will cause problems in your bodies, relationships, purpose and overall life. Somatic healing work is foundational in healing trauma.

“Polyvagal Theory, developed by Dr. Stephen Porges, offers a way to understand the human autonomic nervous system and directly engage with habitual patterns of response. Through a polyvagal lens we can learn to listen to our embodied stories.”

-Deb Dana

Your Autonomic Nervous System is your own special operation team. This incredible protective force within you is here to protect you from threat and danger and also support you in experiencing safety.

When traumas are stored and/or an insecure attachment style is developed, your Autonomic Nervous System becomes dysregulated. It is a brilliant and beautiful way to self protect. This is experienced by spending the majority of our time in either our Sympathetic Nervous System or our Dorsal Vagal Complex. This means being in fight/flight/freeze/immobility or shut down for long periods of time. A dysregulated nervous system is an incredibly common experience and is a primary marker for unhappiness in our lives.

Through the application of Polyvagal Theory you will begin to regulate your nervous systems, which will allow you to step into the life you want to be living and support you in feeling more in control of your internal experience, so that outside circumstances aren’t chronically effecting your state.

“Most of us received some version of the message ‘just put it behind you—let it go’ from well-meaning family and friends. So we exile the fallout from dreadful episodes in the past. But in doing that, we’re not only exiling memories, sensations, and emotions, we’re also exiling the parts of us that were hurt most by those events.”

- Richard Schwartz 

Internal Family Systems is a non-pathologizing (does not seek to label), psycho-spiritual model that believes that you have an internal system with 'parts' that have distinct roles and the best intention for ensuring safety. These roles are often adaptations you’ve had to develop in response to upsetting events that have happened within your life. You might have a part that functions as a people pleaser, a part that strives to be perfect, or a part that self-harms. You might have a part that experiences extreme worry or a part that refuses to experience stillness. In the IFS model, we consider each part as important and necessary. A goal within IFS, is to get to know each part with the goal of integrating them in to the system to become self lead rather than part lead.

When you are self lead, you are able to function from a resourced and centered place. The parts can take comfort in feeling the presence of self so they don’t have to work as hard. 

This model is helpful in understanding adaptations in response to trauma. With the belief there are no “bad” parts and all parts are welcome, it allows compassion to come through in the midst of parts that might cause you to experience discomfort. 

Trauma can trick you in to viewing the world in black and white, believing you are all one thing or another. You may catch yourself thinking I am bad, holding this belief for all of you. When we acknowledge the human complexities, that there are many parts of us, it helps bring some ease—to recognize you are not all one thing. 

For some, it may be hard to access self compassion. Offering compassion in small doses to parts can make the concept feel less daunting.

"It's never too late to have the childhood we deserve."

-Peter Levine

Inside each of us, there are many parts. Each of those parts have ages and if they were subject to trauma of any kind that was not able to process through, those parts are then left to relive that experience over and over.

 Trauma can be stem from not being emotionally seen, or attuned, being left alone to process their hurt and pain without an empathetic witness, or being a parentifed child and much more.

“Wisdom and freedom require the ability to allow the natural flow of emotions to come and go, experiencing emotions but not being controlled by emotions. Always having to prevent or suppress emotions is a form of being controlled by emotions.”
― Marsha M. Linehan

DBT is a skills-based therapy. DBT allows an individual or family to learn new, more effective ways to move within their world (internally and externally) to achieve a life they desire. DBT skills are designed to decreased suffering, increase your ability to control your emotions, and build more satisfying, healthy and thriving relationships.

DBT was designed traditionally for individuals with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), and is the primary treatment that has scientific research demonstrating its success with BPD. Currently, DBT is being used to support individuals experiencing: intense emotions, depression, anxiety, anger, trauma, thoughts of suicide, self-harming behaviors (such as cutting), other dangerous or risky behaviors, and a history of intense or unsatisfying relationships.

“Early-life experiences lay the blueprints for attachment patterns. When the primary childhood caregivers are unable, for whatever reason, to meet the child's needs of safety, trust, attunement, love etc., a secure attachment is inhibited."

- Diane Poole Heller

This lack of a secure attachment with our primary childhood caregivers results in the development of insecure attachment styles in order to cope and find safety. 

These include anxious, avoidant or disorganized. We all have a combination of all four attachment styles with one being more predominant. Insecure attachment styles are here to serve the purpose of providing safety among other things. An intrinsic part of healing is coming into a secure attachment with others and ourselves.