Leave the past in the past.

Trauma Therapy

In-person in Rochester & online throughout NY

Do you feel like your past still has to define you? Or you can be nothing more than what happened to you?

This is a common belief when you’ve had some serious shit happen in your life. Your brain did what it needed to survive. When something worked at some point in time and it helped create safety the brain is going to remember this and keep doing it over and over again. Maybe you keep feeling anxious “for no reason.”

There’s a way to feel different about your past.

A big reason you feel stuck in your trauma is avoidance. The memories, thoughts, and sensations feel too scary, painful and uncomfortable so you try to avoid thinking about them. You avoid being reminded of them, going near any person or place associated or feeling anything related. You can’t talk your way out of it. Every time avoidance happens this is an experience-based message to the emotion brain telling it these memories are still dangerous. It’s not your fault. The human mind is a pain avoidance machine. If you work with me we’ll find a way to help change this.

WHAT WE’LL DO TOGETHER

How my experience can help you:

Accelerated Resolution Therapy

A very different and direct approach that is especially suited to address trauma experiences. We’ll use back and forth eye movements (or using the Theraptapper if eye movements don’t work for you) to reprocess a past trauma event, change the associated images, release the stored emotional energy and help you feel different about it (sometimes right away, sometimes a few days later). Bonus point, you do not have to tell me what happened to you for this therapy to be effective!

Written Exposure Therapy

If ART is not a fit for you we can also use written exposure therapy. This is a brief trauma therapy that uses writing to help re-process a past trauma event. Through the structure of the therapy you will have an opportunity to safely approach the memory and reduce the impact avoiding the thoughts, feelings and sensations has been having to keep your life stuck.

Somatic based techniques

We’ll review a number of simple body based techniques meant to generate safety signals at the body level and sent back to the emotion brain. This is important because the emotion brain speaks the language of experience not words.

Common questions about trauma therapy:

  • If we use ART you do not need to talk about what happened to you. I repeat, for ART to be effective you do not need to talk about what happened to you.

  • It’s a simple device with two hand held parts that will do back and forth vibrations. It helps your brain access what’s called bilateral stimulation. We would use this if the eye movements don’t work for you.

  • Yes it can. Grammar, spelling, punctuation don’t matter for this therapy. The point is to give your brain the experience of writing and allowing the associated emotions.

Your unhealthy habits were just survival mechanisms that you held onto to protect yourself. You aren't trying to be self destructive! Your brain is just telling you that danger is imminent so you prepare accordingly. But you just need to slowly build new, healthy habits because you aren't in danger anymore.