Trauma

Trauma stems from real or perceived life-threatening experiences that leave you feeling out of control, overwhelmed and powerless. The degree to which you register the trauma is determined by your subjective experience of the threat. The more helpless, vulnerable and unprepared you felt during the time it occurred, the more likely you will be traumatized. Unresolved trauma, whether it is acute trauma (shock) or chronic trauma (relational/attachment), damages our view of the self, the body, others, and the world.

Trauma is registered in the mind and body. Negative fixed beliefs are formed during a traumatic experience and become frozen in time until they are reprocessed. On the physical level our body’s nervous system creates an enormous surge of energy to either fight or take flight.

When our body is not able to carry out its desired action plan, unresolved physical and emotional tension from the event become stuck in the body. Muscular tension sits in the body, stagnates and wears on the nervous system. When the desired action plan at the time of the trauma (like fight or flight) is not processed through the body, we continue to unconsciously experience the terror as if the trauma were still occurring in present time.

When working to heal trauma I take a collaborative and compassionate approach. Initially we seek to establish safety, grounding and greater body awareness. My goal is to assist clients in the process of restoring intrinsic healing resources, and ultimately release and transform traumatic energy trapped in the nervous system.