Trauma therapy in Oregon & Washington
You are not what’s happened to you.
Are you tired of feeling “broken,” or like something’s wrong with you?
You’re experiencing the pain of living a life where your trauma is behind you, yet your trauma symptoms are with you every single day.
You don’t understand or recognize yourself.
You’re suspicious of other people and have a hard time feeling close to anyone.
You’re struggling with being fully present, often dissociating or overall feeling numb.
Your feelings can change out of nowhere. One minute you feel normal or numbed out and the next you’re hit with a wave of emotion that feels like a flash flood.
You’re tired of walking on eggshells around others, and going above and beyond to please others who don’t even treat you well.
You find yourself constantly on edge in your relationships.
Seasonal and Hallmark holidays celebrating parents are difficult because you’re balancing the boundaries you’ve put in place for your own sake and the constant pressure to spend time with and celebrate your family.
You’re overextending yourself to be “nice” and accommodating towards others, but also feeling exhausted from carrying the brunt of the responsibility in your relationships - always doing the reaching out, always doing the planning of the hang outs. You want to tell someone how you’re feeling, but you also don’t want to hear “why didn’t you say something?”
Similarly, you often think about setting boundaries in your relationships, but you’re afraid of hurting others’ feelings for even one moment. Worse yet, you worry others will push you away if you do make your needs known. Worse still, you can’t let go of the thought that they’ll just forget what you said and you’ll have to have the same conversation over and over, and you’d rather just not.
You’ve struggled with this for as long as you can remember - you don’t remember a “before.” You’ve gotten so used to making yourself and your needs small in your relationships. You’re simultaneously not surprised and completely let down when others don’t get you or don’t show up for you. You might feel stuck between a desire to create some kind of change and thoughts of “it doesn’t even matter.”
Your needs do matter.
It may feel impossible now, but you can feel whole again (or for the first time). You can have a great relationship with yourself and chosen others. You can put trauma behind you. And I can help you get there.
Areas of Expertise
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series of events that occur/occurred repeatedly over time, such as:
childhood abuse/neglect
domestic violence
abuse of any kind
chronic neglect, abandonment, or gaslighting
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ongoing events within a close relationship, such as:
abuse of any kind
neglect
enmeshment
sexual harrassment/non-consensual sexual experiences
discrimination/oppression
bullying
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events during childhood such as:
parental divorce
controlling parent(s)
physically/emotionally unavailable parent
parent with mental health difficulties or poor boundaries
adult children of alcoholics (ACOA)
children of emotionally immature parents (EIP)
generational trauma
I often hear people who have experienced trauma say:
“I know it wasn’t my fault or I shouldn’t feel bad… but I still wish I would have done something differently.”
“I know I’m not a bad person… but I can’t shake that thought.”
“I know what I’m doing isn’t working… but I don’t know what else to do.”
My approach to therapy is focused on how we get that logical “knowing” to seep down into deeper parts of the brain so that you don’t have to keep feeling conflicted between your “logical self” and “emotional self.” Instead, you’ll feel more aligned with genuinely believing those things you “know.”
I help clients engage in a more meaningful level of processing than traditional talk therapy offers. With somatic approaches such as Brainspotting and EMDR, you’ll learn how to tap into your brain’s natural healing processes to heal from trauma and all of the ways trauma has held you back from living your life.
I’ll help through this process, tailoring each step to your unique needs and circumstances.
I’ve spent years researching and working with attachment and trauma, and have a particular passion for working with attachment trauma.
My approach to trauma therapy comes from a place of considering all aspects of who you are as an individual: helping you to gain and maintain an authentic mind-body connection with yourself so that you can feel more stable, secure, and able to trust and rely on others again - or for the first time.
We’ll spend time in therapy helping you understand the relationship between your past and your present feelings, and understand how much of your emotions and patterns today are about the past and how much is about what’s happening today so you can learn to heal from your past and respond to the pain today in a more helpful way.
And with my certification as a Clinical Trauma Professional Level II, you can trust you’re working with someone who thoroughly understands how to show up for you and support you in therapy.
Therapy for trauma can help you…
Have a safe space to unpack uncomfortable experiences
Develop healthy and effective coping strategies
Reconnect you with your authentic inner self and your body
Create safe, secure, vulnerable relationships
Move through your life as an emotionally resilient, more confident, and more self-compassionate person
Feel more empowered to honor your self-worth and set the boundaries you need with others
Approaches
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Brainspotting
“Where you look affects how you feel,” and we can harness this phenomenon and help you find deep, meaningful, long-lasting change.
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EMDR
Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing can help make painful thoughts, feelings, and memories more bearable.
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IFS
Internal Family Systems helps you heal your relationship with yourself.
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Intensives
If weekly 50-minute therapy hasn’t yet helped you find peace, learn how 1-3 days of focused trauma therapy can change your life.
You don’t have to live life feeling disconnected, misunderstood, and alone.
I’m here to help.
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Frequently asked questions about trauma therapy
FAQs
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Trauma means different things to different people. Ultimately, I see trauma as something that has happened to us that has interfered with our ability to cope.
Here are some specific symptoms that may sound familiar:
flashbacks or nightmares
dissociation or lapses in memory
difficulty regulating emotions
feeling on edge
struggling in interpersonal relationships
low self-esteem or negative self-perception
avoiding people, places, or scenarios that upset you
difficulties with self-esteem
problems with setting or maintaining boundaries
difficulty maintaining healthy relationships
social anxiety or generalized anxiety
difficulties being alone or fear of abandonment
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Therapy for trauma can look a number of different ways, and how we spend each individual session might look different.
I have been trained in multiple trauma-focused modalities and utilize pieces from traditional talk therapy and modern somatic approaches to meet your specific needs and goals.
For example, you and I may utilize Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) to learn skills to manage intense emotions; mindfulness skills to learn to attune to your mind-body connection; or Brainspotting or EMDR to dive deeper into your emotions and life experiences to finally feel free from what’s been holding you back.
We will always begin by forming a solid therapeutic relationship as I want you to feel comfortable in our connection. And I always encourage feedback about ways to make your experience better!
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I’m excited about the opportunity to support you on your journey towards trauma recovery! We’ll start with a free 20 minute consultation so that we can meet and see how we connect.
I truly believe the connection between therapist and client makes all the difference in therapy, so if either of us decides we are not the best fit, I will be happy to provide you with referrals.
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It really depends on what your needs and goals are. I’ve worked with a number of trauma survivors for a short period of time (6-8 sessions) or longer (20+ sessions).
I am trained in forms of therapy (Brainspotting and EMDR) that tend to help people experience relief more quickly than traditional talk therapy.
While some people come to therapy to focus on one specific event (and therefore might finish their course of therapy in a shorter period of time), others choose to meet with a trauma specialist for an extended period of time to process multiple traumatic events or simply to have a safe space to come back to as needed for when triggering events happen.
In-person therapy in Eugene, OR
We operate out of The District in the 5th Street Alley in Eugene, OR. This is a co-working space, meaning we have a private office in a suite of other businesses.