Complex Developmental Trauma
You’re struggling with:
Chronic shame and guilt
People pleasing tendencies - putting toxic people before your own wellbeing.
Trusting other people
Feeling isolated and alone, like no one could understand
The fear of being judged for your experiences
Relationships that are abusive (mimicking your childhood)
Communicating your feelings and emotions in a healthy way
Feeling out of control emotionally (i.e., anger, hopelessness, shame)
Loss of meaning and purpose
What is Complex Trauma (C-PTSD)?
Trauma comes in many forms. We often think of people with trauma as military vets with PTSD or sexual abuse survivors. But there are many of us in the world who have not experienced these two types of trauma who carry complex trauma from lesser known experiences.
Complex trauma forms over many years of being in an abusive or neglectful environment. As children in these situations, we cannot leave and must rely on the environment that is causing this abuse. This causes long-term, and wide-ranging effects on our emotional, physical, and mental development and wellbeing.
Complex trauma forms from ongoing emotional or physical neglect, abandonment, disconnection from family due to your identity, verbal or emotional abuse, physical or sexual abuse, parentification (taking care of your parent as a child), religious trauma through brainwashing and shame, witnessing domestic violence or abuse, experiencing civil unrest or genocide, and cultural dislocation.
It’s time to truly heal…
Whatever type of trauma you have, it is valid and so are your emotions and responses to that trauma.
The old ways of working with complex trauma don’t stand up over time and often don’t address the core issue. Your therapist or healer either washed over the trauma, trying to instill new skills for distress tolerance and emotion regulation or they dove headfirst into re-experiencing the trauma and possibly re-traumatized you in the process. Utilizing IFS trauma informed practices, I meet you where you are and we collaborate to decide when you’re ready to begin processing the trauma in a compassionate way.
Our Trauma-Informed Approaches
To begin our work, we provide accurate trauma-informed education around the body’s response to trauma. Our reactions, behaviors, and responses to traumatic events have a natural, adaptive reason for existing. Then we can begin to soften and bring compassion to our system, knowing it is working properly and taking care of us during these times. Once we have this understanding, we can begin to shift and heal using the above modalities.
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ART utilizes similar approaches to trauma healing as EMDR but in a shorter time frame. Clients will be directed to replace negative memory images with more positive images of their choosing - effectively eliminating the negative charge that these memories hold.
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Internal Family Systems (IFS) is a powerfully transformative, experiential, trauma-informed, and evidence-based model of psychotherapy. In IFS, our minds are naturally multi-faceted and made of parts. Our goal is to understand these parts. We are not here to make them go away, to eliminate them, or tell them they are bad. We are simply here to understand, listen, and build a relationship. In working with trauma, there is no need to go back into the experience and relive what happened in order to provide comfort and compassion to that little one who experienced the trauma. Often times, that isn’t what these parts need or want. Instead, we provide them with what they didn’t receive in the past - often safety, support, and acceptance.
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This model is a present-focused therapy that helps clients create safety after traumatic upbringings by learning coping skills, grounding techniques, and bringing in trauma-informed care.
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In Expressive Art Therapy, we use the creative arts as a form of therapy with a focus on the process of creation rather than the final product. We believe that people can heal through creative expression. We feel change comes through creative expression and accessing the imagination to examine our bodies, minds, and emotions.
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Utilizing mindfulness allows us to tap into our present-moment awareness, increase our self-compassion, and strengthen our resiliency through self-soothing and regulation. These are all skills needed to build a strong foundation for trauma recovery.