Therapeutic Modalities

Attachment-Based Therapy allows us to explore your ways of connecting with yourself and others. You will learn to acknowledge patterns in your current ways of relating and trace these trends back to your earliest relationships with parents/caregivers. As an attachment based therapist, I place great value on establishing and maintaining a strong, trusting, and safe therapeutic relationship with you. A positive therapeutic relationship alone provides a new model for healthy connection and offers a safe space for you to learn and practice positive ways of relating, which you can apply outside of sessions.

Somatic Experiencing (SE) is a body-based approach to healing trauma, which was founded by Dr. Peter Levine. After decades of research, Dr. Peter Levine developed this method as a way of restoring balance to the nervous system after the effects of traumatic experiences. SE acknowledges that traditional talk therapy, which engaged the higher analytical functions of the brain, does not fully take into account the place where trauma is mostly held-the body.

Through SE, we recognize and appreciate that the fight/flight/freeze energies are self protective responses, which emerge when we experience a threat. Because traumatic experiences prevent the completion of these natural protective responses, the energy becomes ‘stuck’ in the nervous system, wreaking havoc on a person’s emotional, mental, and physical life.

SE is a gentle approach, which allows the nervous system to complete the natural protective response that it was unable to complete. One begins to understand the language of their body, access tools that will allow them to self regulate and restore balance in their nervous system.

Click here to learn more about Somatic Experiencing.

One thing we know for sure-we, humans are extremely complex; parts work helps us navigate our complexities. We all have different parts or facets of ourselves that show up in different circumstances. These parts may represent different roles we play or different emotional states we experience. Sometimes, these parts may even feel like distinct personalities, separate from our true selves. In parts work therapy, the goal is to facilitate communication and integration among these parts, promoting harmony and balance within an individual's inner world.While especially beneficial for individuals dealing with complex PTSD or early developmental trauma, parts work can also be effective in various other situations. By exploring and integrating these different parts, individuals can gain insight, healing, and connect to a greater sense of wholeness.

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is an evidenced based modality that enables people to heal from symptoms and emotional distress that are a result of disturbing life experiences.

Somatic and attachment-focused EMDR (SAFE EMDR) fuses body-centered psychotherapies and attachment theory to the EMDR process. SAFE EMDR uses specific resources to help with regulating the nervous system and increasing the feeling of safety within your own body. The process allows you to understand how you adapted to the environment that you grew up in, gain an appreciation for how those adaptations were protective at the time, and discover how those adaptations are potentially getting in your way in your adult life.

In traditional talk therapy, you may spend time exploring your thoughts and feelings about current and even past situations, but in an EMDR session, you will be able to rapidly make connections between your current symptoms, past experiences, and core beliefs developed throughout life. This process can be very eye opening for clients and they leave feeling as if they unlocked aspects of themselves for the first time as well as understand themselves and their responses from a completely different perspective.

Helpful Resources:

• Video about EMDR

• What is EMDR?

• What is the difference between tradition EMDR and S.A.F.E. EMDR?

• 8 Phases of EMDR

• Frequently Asked Questions