“The relationships we had with our caregivers serve as templates for our adult lives.” Michael Baldwin & Deborah Korn

Do you find yourself feeling intense emotions that do not match the situation you are in? Do you find yourself feeling angry, anxious, or low for no reason? Do you find your mind taking you back to past painful memories that you cannot seem to shake?

These intense emotions can feel suffocating, overbearing, and difficult to hold alone. It is difficult to go through our day to day lives feeling these and they can also find their way into our relationships. It can feel like this constant internal battle where a part of you wants to trust and let others in but at the same time there is a pull towards protecting yourself and not letting others in. It can be that fear of betrayal, hurt, rejection, abandonment, or never being good enough that drives this constant inner tug of war.

Often we think that trauma is this big and deeply disturbing event that happens to you such as war, a car accident, a violent confrontation, a plane crash, or the death of a loved one. This is not the case. Trauma does not need to be something big, it can be anything that we found to be overwhelming and difficult to cope with. This can include relationships, betrayal, loss, bullying, and other aspects of our daily lives. These are stressful experiences that can happen to any of us and can impact how we see ourselves, our world, and others. They can feel inescapable and difficult to manage and cope from. These experiences are often minimized, dismissed, invalidated and overlooked as “not enough,” “not that bad,” “something I just need to get over,” or “my fault and my problem,” even though the reaction is justified and understandable. These experiences accumulate and make the day to day even more difficult.

Oftentimes we shoulder feelings of sadness, anxiety, fear, shame, guilt, and anger; we may experience intrusions of thoughts, images, physical sensations, emotions that are connected to the past; we may experience nightmares, difficulty with sleeping, flashbacks, and the constant urge to avoid or withdraw. We are taught by society that experiencing negative emotions and negative symptoms in not something normal and that we “should” be able to manage despite the fact that as human beings, we are biologically wired to express and communicate emotions. We were meant to express these emotions as they are neither good or bad but just are. They are messengers from the body that serve to allow us to act and communicate with ourselves and others in order to achieve our needs.

Often culture and society can foster fear of feeling these emotions and having these experiences. We have worked with countless individuals to help them become unstuck; to enable them to overcome those voices, images, memories, or beliefs of the past and reduce those fearful thoughts and images of the future. We work with individuals to help them no longer feel stuck in the pain of the past, the hopelessness of the future, and regain control of their life.

We work towards building a compassionate and nonjudgmental space by providing a safe environment where individuals feel heard, validated, and supported. We are goal-oriented and take a collaborative approach to help you foster change and growth. I work to create an open and nurturing environment that empowers you to build a more purposeful life. Please fill out the form below or hit the “book now” button to schedule a consultation today!