Private Virtual Therapy For Clients in North Carolina (NC)
My Approach
- Affirming (Your Identity/Identities) - As an inclusive and affirming therapist, all races, ethnicities, genders, and sexual orientations are welcomed and celebrated in my care. Identity shaming is not tolerated in my life or within my practice.
- Compassionate and Justice-Centered (Witnessing Your True "I") - In trauma recovery, we need to experience processes that were chronically disrupted or disengaged from. Primarily, many survivors haven't had the experience of (or experienced very little of) being genuinely cared for, appreciated, and celebrated. Individuals may have only received care or cheerleading when and if they abided by dysfunctional rules or coercive control by perpetrators. In therapy, I believe it is your right to be authentically honored without performance.
- Goal/Purpose-Oriented (Healing Wounds of the Past) - My goal for our work together is to engage with the unconscious mind that holds onto unresolved trauma narratives, beliefs, and patterns. I believe that healing requires the facilitation of helping unconscious material become more conscious to the individual. In our work together, I will strive to help you uncover and release toxic stress that manifests as low self-esteem, inattentiveness, and disease.
Principles
- You are the expert of your experience. - When we work together, we are equals in relationship. I may have therapeutic training, but I am just another human being. You are, therefore, the expert of your own life experience, and I am both a witness and a guide in our relationship.
- Your mind is always pushing towards wholeness. - Neuroscience informs us that the psyche is always pushing toward the integration of experience. So even when we become submerged in traumatic stress, our minds are working with us, rather than against us. We can trust the psyche's process throughout the healing work that we do.
- You are not broken, but you have been (unfairly) challenged. - Humans are not broken, and as a therapist, my job is never to fix another person. Fixing isn't possible for a reason, and that reason reflects the wholeness of each individual, independent of the trauma experienced. Trauma doesn't break people, but it does challenge them. It's important that we establish this wisdom in our work together.
Style
- Treatment and Therapeutic Style - As an integrative trauma therapist, I adapt treatment to authentically practice in the best way that I see fit per each unique individual and/or relational system. I encourage deep internal reflection and processing that challenges programming and conditioning, attachment ruptures and unmet needs, dysfunctional intimacy and family-of-origin trauma, and complex trauma/dissociative symptoms. I enjoy using creative mediums, such as the sand tray, collage, and arts journaling, to process felt-sense experiences.
- How I Practice - In treatment, I will spend time getting to know you, and/or yourself and your loved ones who will attend relational counseling. Together, we will determine your specific needs, longings, and pain points, and will work slowly and compassionately towards a future in which you and/or your relationships feel more resilient. I focus on witnessing my clients by tending to and tracking emotional gestures, physical sensations, unmet needs, and longings. I help people connect to the present, their resources, their bodies, feelings, and needs, to find a home within themselves in the presence of relational attunement.
Integrative Treatment Themes (C.A.R.E)
Creative
Relational
Anchored
Practice various forms of creative arts therapy interventions, including but not limited to: collage, drawing, & sculpting.
Anchored
Relational
Anchored
Practice becoming aware of aspects of Self, and developing a compassionate relationship with young parts.
Relational
Relational
Relational
Practice healthy relational attunement and intimacy exchange to learn that regulation is available in connection.
Embodied
Relational
Relational
Practice somatic awareness, grounding, orienting, and learning to track sensation to decrease stress/trauma.
Common Therapeutic Elements
Media Exploration
Utilizing clay, paints, collage materials, and other mediums to visualize and safely process complex emotional experiences.
Expressive Journaling
Using uncensored, free-flowing creativity through writing and art-making to work through rigidity and anchieve more emotional clarity.
Role-Playing
Adopting personas or acting out scenarios to safely practice confronting personal conflicts or social interactions.
Mask-Making & Mandala-Making
Crafting masks and mandalas to explore personal identity, regulate emotional experiences, and make contact with aspects of Self.
Soul Pages & Parts Work
Mixed-media expression and dialoguing between parts of Self to provide resourcing to more vulnerable parts.
"You are not what has happened to you."
Through safe-enough connection with internal p/Parts, clients learn that who they are is separate from trauma, memories, and programming/conditioning.
Containment & Building Adaptive Internal Relational Networks
Clients will learn to understand their core-survival strategies while building resilience and the ability to differentiate between p/Parts and programming, while containing memories, to increase internal safety.
Bringing Parts Into the Present
Young p/Parts are cared for and are brought into present-awareness.
Creative Arts As Anchors
Art-making and dialoguing with parts may be used/incorporated to enhance present-orientation.
Re-processing Traumatic Memories, As Choice
Clients have choice and autonomy (self-agency) to decide if they want to process traumatic memories with EMDR.
Learning the Children's Bill of Rights
Connect to what is normal and healthy, and learn to differentiate between your own developmental experiences.
Differentiation Between Past & Present
Learn to connect to what is happening in the present, yet remaining aware of what belongs to the past (multi-directional attention).
Committed Action Towards Re-Parenting
Similar to a 12-step program, begin to take committed action that is specific and intentional towards being active with your insides (the inner-child).
Healing From Triggers
Become more comfortable with feeling your body, sensations, and emotions, and develop the ability and skill to grow within triggers, rather than feel triggered and go directly to a shame-place.
Experientials
Engage in experiential trauma healing where the past can be revisited and re-shaped with safe-enough connection and relational attunement/cohesion.
Grounding & Orienting
Learning to connect to the here-and-now (present) to allow the nervous system to settle, and develop greater capacity for present-orientation.
Tracking & Titrating Physical Sensations
Observing bodily sensations and learning to break down felt-sense activation into smaller, shorter experiences in order to de-activate stress/trauma.
Coupling & Un-Coupling
The intentional, mindful process of separating and detangling old, stuck associations, or creating associations where they were formerly separated due to traumatic experiences.
Completing Defensive Responses
Traumatic events can leave defensive responses frozen in time. Completion involves slowly and safely acting out those previously interrupted responses.
Nervous System Recovery & Integration
The nervous system learns to become more resilient. In this way, the body and implicit memory systems learn that processing is possible, and capacity for the present is much more available.
Couples & Group Therapy
In all relational work, the focus is on de-constructing shame and grandiosity narratives that get in the way of having and enjoying real intimacy. Patriarchal society is an anti-intimacy culture. All individuals who participate in relational work will learn how to first address intimacy complications that have risen as a result of how they have learned to adapt throughout their lifespan, focusing on real, essential trauma processing. Others around us and who are closest to us behave as our mirrors, that's how humans and our neurobiology rely on being in togetherness. Relationships grow people. In relational work, we will work on trauma together in real time. When people can begin to foster more presence and less protective stances, they tune into real vulnerability. Couples and group participants will learn to practice intimacy skills to be in connection.