About Therapy
A gentle approach to healing…
Trauma is stored in your body. You don’t need memories or words for it to be your lived experience. To heal, you need to address that trauma without re-experiencing it.
I’m here to help you do that!
First, we’ll tap into the wisdom of the body by teaching you how to calm your nervous system.
This will give you the experience of being in a peaceful body. You’ll learn how to release trauma and tension on your own, leaving you feeling empowered and hopeful.
Second, we’ll focus on your relationships.
Relationships are made of rupture and repair, and we’ll heal those ruptures by giving you a safe environment where you feel unconditionally accepted. This also calms your nervous system, allowing your body to heal those attachment wounds.
This is your “one-stop shop” for healing.
I’ve been in the field for a long time and have been trained in various techniques to heal and release the trauma stored in your body.
Bioenergetics
We’ll work with the musculature of your body where your traumatic emotions and memories are stored.
For example, maybe you’ve had a lump in your throat, like a cork keeping your emotions in. We will work with the lump through sound, breathing, and movement to release “the cork.”
Or maybe you’ve felt like you wanted to cry but couldn’t. I have specific exercises that will help you work through this sensation.
Somatic Experiencing (SE)
We’ll use this approach throughout your treatment. SE addresses your trauma-related stress responses through “bottom-up” processing – accepting that feelings or body sensations happen first. We don’t just focus on the primal part of the brain.
Touch Work
If you feel burdened by pains and uncomfortable experiences without knowing the root cause, you may have experienced preverbal trauma. If you experienced trauma before you could talk, touch work is an approach we can take to address it.
During touch work, you’ll lie on a massage table, and I’ll place one hand under your kidney. My hand doesn’t move, and your body will respond to the touch.
We will also talk along the way.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
EMDR involves moving your eyes in a specific way while you process your traumatic experience.
If your emotions feel overwhelming or you tend to shut down when you feel an emotion, you may not be ready for EMDR treatment. However, the previously described modalities can help get you ready.
EMDR is not necessary to heal from your traumatic or distressing experiences, but it can be a powerful tool if it’s right for you.
Let’s give you a new lease on life!
Some people hope for one big cathartic experience that will take their trauma away and change their lives forever.
Your body doesn’t work that way, so it’s not a safe approach to therapy.
Instead, we’ll gently and safely touch into your trauma, helping you integrate it into a new way of being.
You will experience vitality and aliveness in your body… perhaps for the first time.
I would love to meet you and discuss how I can help. Call today for your free consultation: (480) 677-1198.
About Me
I participated in talk therapy for 20 years.
Sound familiar? Hopefully not.
I got information and coping skills from talk therapy which was very helpful. It was nice to have someone to talk to, someone who knew what was happening in my life. It helped me feel not so alone.
I was still anxious much of the time and depressed. I had issues with my digestive system, which were debilitating. Doctor after doctor told me there was nothing wrong with me.
After doing trauma/tension-releasing exercises, I wondered if this was how normal people felt. I had never experienced this level of calm in my life. It was exhilarating, hopeful, and the beginning of my journey with somatic therapy.
Next was bioenergetics, a five-year training program followed by two years of clinical supervision. You work on yourself and your own issues for the first three years and then learn how to work with others. It was a life-changing experience. I learned about repair from bioenergetics.
Relationships are made of rupture and repair, and I experienced repair during those years. When I had an issue with one of the trainers, we would talk about it.
Talk about it? This was unheard of in the family I grew up in. Not only would we talk about how whatever happened made me feel, but we would also talk about it repeatedly, and the trainer would ask if there was anything else.
I felt heard and seen for the first time in my life.
I also learned that I had created a chronic muscular tension pattern, my posture to adapt as a child. This posture carried into my adult life, giving my brain the same information it received in childhood, causing me to repeat unhealthy patterns.
I did not feel anger as an adult. I didn’t have access to that feeling. “You look angry,” I was told but I didn’t feel it.
It wasn’t until my posture and muscle tension pattern changed that I was slowly able to feel anger. The safe environment also helped a lot.
After Bioenergetics, I trained in Somatic Experiencing, Touch Work, and EMDR. My passion is to help others find healing through these modalities.