What You Can Expect
Services
Therapy
I offer individual therapy to adults over 18 years old.
Clients who find their way to me tend to live with a variety of complex mental health and trauma symptoms which can sometimes also show up as functional disorders or syndromes which do not have a medical basis (ie fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, etc.) They have usually experienced years of traditional talk therapies (ie CBT, DBT, ACT, etc.) and continue to find themselves working hard in order to function, move along, or get anything done each day. They have diligently sought treatment from medical model providers in a range of healthcare disciplines and have taken on board their recommendations.
Sometimes there are no recommendations, or the ones that are there, they don’t seem to support shifts of the kind which allow people to have the best experience of themselves, or a sense of wellbeing. So they continue to work hard each day in order to manage their mental health and overall wellbeing. Life gets smaller or more restrictive in the service of minimising stimulation or life demands. This reflects a particular physiological capacity, which often does not match with a person’s desire to live life to the fullest. Life becomes basic, and about getting through the day.
I work with my clients to increase their physiological capacity, with the aim of supporting it to match their desire to live life to the fullest. I work directly with a person’s nervous system through the use of various, cutting edge somatic therapies, with Somatic Experiencing® as my foundational therapy. I use traditional talk therapies as well, but only in conjunction with somatic therapies. In my work with clients we talk, but do so differently from traditional talk therapists, in order to re-connect with restorative physiological action patterns, which have broken down due to stress, demand, or trauma. We work to get these systems back on track. Our nervous systems are the most high tech systems we have—we have to know how to engage them if we want to move towards wellbeing.
My clients tend to have difficulty managing distressing emotions, and often lack felt sense experiences which fall outside of these emotions. They tend to be disconnected from and afraid of their bodies, and don’t know what it’s like to feel that their bodies are a resource. They often live with chronic anxiety, panic, depression, complex post-traumatic stress disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, attentional difficulties, dissociation, intrusive thoughts, trauma related perceptual disturbances, and various syndromes and functional disorders.
Some Examples of Syndromes and Functional Disorders
- somatic symptom disorder
- functional neurological disorder
- fibromyalgia
- chronic fatigue syndrome
- irritable bowel syndrome
- migraines
- asthma
- Raynaud’s
- reflex sympathetic dystrophy
- complex regional pain syndrome
- Tourette’s or tics
As functional disorders are stress and trauma related (or do not have a medical basis), medical model practitioners can have a hard time prescribing treatment remedies, due to the lack of observable pathogenic change. At this point, people may find their way to a Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner.
For syndromes which do not have a medical basis, and may be trauma or stress derived, Somatic Experiencing® can be helpful as well.
This is because Somatic Experiencing® has its origins in anatomy/physiology, ethology, affective and social neuroscience, neuroscience, psychoneuroimmunology, and interpersonal neurobiology. It is also rooted in humanistic, psychodynamic, behavioural, and somatic therapies.
I hope our paths cross.
"For things to reveal themselves, we need to be ready to abandon our views about them."
- Thích Nhất Hạnh -
