My Approach

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My approach to therapy emphasizes compassion, respect, curiosity, and collaboration. I see my role not as an expert offering a one size fits all solution to resolve symptoms, but as an active partner, working together with my clients to explore what it is they are most wanting for themselves and their lives. Often, the seemingly simple question, “what is it that you want for yourself?” uncovers great inner complexity and the lens of complex trauma helps us to better understand and navigate this complexity.   

       

Complex trauma can be viewed as anything that happens to us that impairs our growth and development. Complex trauma shows up in many ways, but at the core of whatever symptoms or behaviors someone may be experiencing, there is some sort of injury to one’s sense of Self. For example, it is well documented that children who grow up in homes with many adverse childhood experiences or (ACES) generally continue to struggle mightily in many ways throughout their lives. 

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Many people equate the word “Trauma” with the concept of Shock Trauma or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and believe that some type of extreme event such as exposure to war, violence, famine, severe abuse, or some kind of life threatening event has to occur in order for someone to experience trauma. But with complex trauma, vs shock trauma, we now know that this is often not the case. 

 

For example, even in homes where a child’s basic needs are met, and where there is no extreme or overt abuse, many children still experience chronic mis-attunement from their caregivers and from their environment.

 

Chronic Mis-Attunement can occur when parents/teachers, caregivers etc. who are often stressed, overworked, overwhelmed, and often dealing with their own unresolved complex trauma, fail to provide the level and quality of attunement children need for ideal Self-Development. Without this level of attunement, which is the foundation for secure attachment, and healthy development, many children grow up without ever having had all of the necessary foundation, to develop a truly secure, stable, confident, and cohesive sense of Self.

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In my many years spent exploring both the roots of my own struggles, as well as working with a wide variety of people, with all sorts of varied and unique challenges, I believe the concept of complex trauma helps us to understand what is so often at the root of much of our collective suffering, as well as hope for healing from it.

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I have spent the last several years studying a cutting edge new approach to treating complex trauma called the Neuro-Affective Relational Model (or NARM).​

To find our more about NARM, please visit my NARM resource page.