Hello fellow human beings. I am a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, Certified EMDR Therapist, and EMDRIA Approved Consultant that specializes in treating emotional trauma. My hope is that this site will clearly explain my philosophies as a therapist to help you decide if I would be the best fit to show you how to meet your emotional needs. The following is a general introduction to psychological trauma, and how I treat the many ways it may manifest within a person. More about the types of therapy I use, and personal information about me can be found using the links at the top or bottom of the page.

What is Trauma and the Purpose of Trauma Informed Psychotherapy

Psychological Trauma has been defined in many ways, but is most commonly referenced and well known through the list of symptoms for the most well known diagnosis associated with the term trauma, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder(PTSD). Many of the client’s that I have treated for other presenting symptoms such as depression, anxiety, panic disorder, phobias, or that maybe even don’t meet criteria for any specific diagnosis, but still struggle with maintaining healthy relationships, anger management, trust issues, social anxiety, or any other behaviors or extreme emotional responses that they identify as preventing them from living a more peaceful, genuine, functional life have most of the time discovered these symptoms to be rooted in a traumatic experience or experiences. When these traumatic experiences are identified and worked through successfully in therapy their associated symptoms tend to lessen substantially, and allow the person to function more adaptively under stress and feel more in control of their lives and how they respond to their emotions instead of reacting to them in ways that can be more detrimental to us long term. What seems to happen when someone experiences something traumatic is that the part of their brain that has been referred to as the fight, flight or freeze response, or what I call the protective Tripple F part of our nervous system is activated due to the detection of a possible threat. If the the emotionally disturbing components(beliefs, thoughts, feeling, emotions, images, sounds, body sensations) of the experience is not integrated and the symptoms do not dissipate or extinguish on their own, the parts of our brain that controls the Triple F response starts to trigger this response at times that there is not a physical threat, generating an emotional response in the sub cortical structures of our brain that we may even ourselves percieve as being disproportionate to the current situation that in some way shape or form reminds us of a past traumatic experience. At this point these emotions generated from the Triple F response being activated in a seemingly disproportionately extreme way are not always able to be made sense of by logical or rational parts of our brain that are meant to differentiate between actual potential threats to our physical safety(like a car driving towards us) from non-physically threatening situations(like public speaking). Both can cause our Triple F system to switch on, however, for some the intensity of unpleasant emotions might be substantially more intense and persist, even in spite of us being able to acknowledging the extreme intensity as being disproportionate to a situation such as in the case of social anxiety. Most people feel somewhat uncomfortable about speaking in front of groups of people, but some may actually faint from the anxiety or have a panic attack. The purpose of trauma therapy is to allow the logical part of our brain that exerts functions like impulse control, and logical reasoning to re-engage in spite of experiencing any emotional disturbance so we can have to opportunity to choose how to respond to our emotions more adaptively and not have them control our behavior, so we can engage in emotionally difficult tasks.

My Philosophy

My Philosophy is rooted in the newer notion that is less commonly referenced in media and pop culture that mental health symptoms that serve as the basis of Psychiatric Diagnoses such as depression, anxiety, make more sense when perceived through the lenses of the unhealed traumas that gave rise to them. Some may disagree with this as they may not be able to readily identify any specific traumatic experiences or would want to even if they could, that they can directly relate to the onset of their emotional disturbance or behavioral symptoms or diagnosis. I do not believe someone is depressed or anxious or experiences any unpleasant symptoms for no reason. Just because we don’t know the reason someone experiences mental health symptoms doesn’t necessarily mean there isn’t one. The avoidance of the experiences that may be causing or influencing current symptoms and their corresponding thoughts, emotions, and beliefs can lead to emotional distress, internal conflict, and a lower degree and or quality of internal and external connection we have with ourselves and the world. While the aversion serves the purpose of keeping us at a greater rather than lesser level of functioning, for some it can have side effects that cause them to have trouble succeeding in various areas of their lives sometimes even to the point of them becoming functionally impaired and even fearing improvement or success. This means they may have trouble taking care of their responsibilities consistently such as sustaining healthy relationships or employment and can even reach the point where they feel like they can’t survive without an effective, but usually unhealthy means of emotionally coping such as substance abuse, or other behavioral addictions done in excess like binge eating unhealthy foods or not eating at all, over exercising, gambling, or excessive promiscuity(self defined or clearly yielding an unpleasant collateral effect), among others that distracts or floods them with the emotions they have become disconnected from or are unable to avoid.

I believe this emotional distress, internal conflict, lower degree of internal and external connection resulting from unprocessed trauma can become progressively more problematic for the relationship we have with ourselves and our external connections with our friends, significant others, parents, co-workers, or even our own children. Facilitating a process of improving the quality of connection a client has with themselves utilizing the orientations in the Therapy section of this site has shown through research to yield reductions in emotional distress, intrusive thoughts, and internal conflicts along with increased feelings of relief, inner peace, and calm, which in addition to improving our relationship with ourselves can of course also have a positive effect on our external relationships.

These results for some, however, may not be worth engaging in the process necessary to obtain them as therapy is understandably usually not something most people may be excited about engaging in given the experiences they on some level of consciousness know they have had or the time it might take for this work to be done. This ambivalence is something that can be processed in therapy itself, however. In addition, there is the conscious or unconscious tendency to avoid the very emotions that arise from just thinking about attending therapy or how attending therapy would cause someone to perceive themselves differently that can adversely affect the decision to actively seek out, and attend psychotherapy. This can cause us to minimize our symptoms for the benefit of allowing us to justify them not being unpleasant enough that therapy would be warranted, which can be another example of adaptive avoidance. This may be why individuals don’t end up seeking therapy until their symptoms are so severe that they become intolerable to the person or the person becomes functionally impaired, as mentioned previously, or until they struggle enough from the collateral effects of the way they have tried to cope with their trauma and avoided or ignored the symptoms that may be indicative of their desire to heal from these experiences.

While waiting until symptoms feel like they are the worst they can be before making the decision to actively seek therapy does not mean that someone will ever be “too broken to heal”, the longer one allows the things that have caused them to struggle can lead to symptoms continuing to worsen, and the more subject matter may be accumulated necessitating an increased length of therapeutic processing. The analogy given for trauma by Francine Shapiro the creator of one of the therapies I utilize called EMDR is that trauma is like an emotional wound. Like a physical wound that is not cleaned and dressed can become infected and weaken the body, emotional wounds that remain ignored, unprocessed, or avoided can continue to worsen and make the current accumulation of other emotional wounds more likely and weaken the person physically, mentally, and spiritually. In this weakened state we can negatively affect those around us, which can be why when some start to struggle more and more they begin to isolate willfully and push others away to avoid hurting them or being hurt by them or others may distance themselves. This unfortunately is the complete opposite thing someone who is struggling emotionally usually needs, but can sometimes be the catalyst for change. Therapy is a form of support that can be effective in helping someone recover from trauma, but cannot compare with the support close friends, family and loved ones can provide as a support system in their capacity to keep us from feeling as alone in dealing with our trauma if that support is available. That being said therapy is a road that is most beneficial when done of a client’s own free will when they make the choice to do something different, which some may not feel or believe is possible and actually may sound quite unpleasant as it is new, and unknown, which can be scary. It is ironically usually when that fear is outweighed by the feeling of being sick and tired of being sick and tired that one braves this new territory and allows themselves to entertain the possibility of a more fulfilling and pleasant existence or at first maybe just a less unpleasant one. When this shift occurs the bars of our self built jail cell can begin to feel more confining and less protective, which is reflective of growth and change itself. One needs only the seeds of willingness to grow a tree of possibility. If you bring the seeds I will show you how to tend to them so your tree can grow until it’s potential manifests into reality. You have the necessary sunshine, water, and soil. You just maybe were not taught how to use them. Let me show you how.