Therapy with me is not just pushing you into overwhelm or just talking about your past or "triggers". We work together to help your mind, your nervous system and your inner world work together in a more regulated and supported way.
My work is guided by the following framework, which I adapt based on your individual needs and pace:
STABILIZE
We start by helping your nervous system feel more regulated, grounded and supported. This will include resourcing and building a sense of safety in the body. We will use breathwork, vagus nerve interventions, gentle movement, mindfulness, and increasing the "window of tolerance" using bottom-up regulation strategies. Creating stabilization in the body helps the amygdala to fire less easily, helping the body to stop scanning for threats constantly. This increases access to the thinking brain, allows for better emotional regulation and increases psychological flexibility. We will spend a lot of time creating safety in the system.
UNDERSTAND
This phase focuses on understanding and gaining more clarity about your internal patterns, We will explore and identify different "parts" of you that hold emotions, beliefs, or protective roles and help you to befriend those parts and help them to feel heard and understood. Here we will also create a "target sequence plan" for addressing traumatic and distressing memories, events, images, feelings, sensations, beliefs, and any other dysregulating material that needs to be processed.
PROCESS
This phase focuses on deep processing of experiences that are still stuck in the nervous system and feel active or unresolved. When you are ready and resourced, we may use EMDR processing (bilateral stimulation) to help the body and brain process, or "digest" the experiences so that they are no longer held with the same emotional intensity. This phase is where your system updates how those experiences are stored, allowing them to feel more distant, less activating, and more integrated. They become memories you no longer try frantically to forget or push away, but instead, experience in a new way.
EXPAND
This final phase focuses on integration and forward movement. In EMDR this includes a "future template", and includes strengthening belief shifts, rehearsing new responses from a regulated state, and strengthening new patterns of responses, increasing self trust, and strengthening inner connection amongst parts.