What is trauma?

Traumatic events are ones that cause us to feel a sense of threat, as well as a sense of powerlessness in the face of that threat. This combination overwhelms our survival instincts, leading to trauma. Trauma, however, is not so much about the event itself, but the wounds it leaves behind. 

Much of these wounds take root in parts of our brain that exist outside of logic, language, and consciousness. Instead, trauma is largely held in our emotions, sensations, and physical impulses. It shows up as fear, shame, emotional reactivity, a hyper-active nervous system, difficulty connecting with others, and attempts to numb feelings that seem too big to handle. 

The wounds of trauma are triggered whenever we encounter something reminiscent, on some level, of traumatic events. Quickly and unconsciously, emotions and sensory experiences related to the event flood our system, and our overwhelmed survival instincts scramble to keep us safe. The result is interfacing with the world predominantly through survival strategies, the ones that got us through traumatic events and developed to protect us from emotional and sensory flashbacks. 

How does therapy help trauma?

My approach to therapy addresses the ways in which you continue, here in the present, to experience the wounds traumatic events have left behind. By understanding and shifting automatic, unconscious responses to reminders of traumatic events, we can create space for more of your authentic self to emerge and respond to the world, rather than your survival strategies. 

What’s the difference between PTSD and Complex PTSD?

PTSD is usually the result of a single traumatic event, such as an assault, accident, or disaster. On the other hand, Complex PTSD develops from chronic, repeated traumatic events, which are often interpersonal in nature. 

PTSD and Complex PTSD share many features, however, Complex PTSD tends to be more strongly characterized by reactive emotions, relationship difficulties, and negative feelings and beliefs about oneself.

What is developmental and attachment trauma?

In our early years, we’re wired to seek safety and comfort in our primary caregivers. This instinct is rooted in our survival, since we can’t care for and protect ourselves when we’re little. If we receive predictable and consistent care we develop healthy self esteem, learn to regulate our emotions and nervous system, and trust that we can depend on others when we need to. 

When care is inconsistent, neglectful, or harmful, it’s another story. Because our relationships with our caregivers are central to our survival as children, inconsistency, neglect, and harm in these connections register as a profound threat, one we have little power to neutralize. And whenever an event is coloured by this combination of threat and powerlessness, our survival instincts get overwhelmed and the brain experiences the event as traumatic. 

While the extent ranges widely, most of us have at least some degree of developmental and attachment trauma. That doesn’t necessarily mean we had bad caregivers. It’s just that when we’re little we don’t have much capacity to effectively respond to threats, so it’s pretty easy for our nervous systems to get overwhelmed.

This means that most of us carry wounds from our past, which become triggered in our relationships and day-to-day life. Once we’re triggered, it’s not our most authentic self showing up, it’s parts of us we developed during past distress to keep safe and keep going. 

How does therapy help developmental and attachment trauma?

Therapy can help you understand where the remnants of past wounds are influencing the way you show up in your life today. It can then support you in tending to those wounds so you can show up as you, not your defences. 

In session, we’ll promote this by working to shift your automatic, unconscious responses to triggering events, which are often oriented toward protection rather than connection, joy, or growth.

How is developmental and attachment trauma different from Complex PTSD?

Both Complex PTSD and developmental and attachment trauma are typically caused by traumatic events that are relational in nature. The difference is that complex trauma can happen at any point in life, whereas developmental and attachment trauma happens specifically during childhood. Those who have encountered significant developmental and attachment trauma are likely to experience symptoms of Complex PTSD. 

Perfectionism and shame tend to go hand in hand. Relentlessly striving to get everything right, excel and exceed, and avoid failure or mistakes often traces back to a chronic, nagging feeling that we’re not enough or there’s something wrong with us.

Maybe we were told this outright, or maybe we came to believe this subconsciously as a way to deal with painful things that happened to us. Either way, shame is an incredibly uncomfortable emotion. It can feel like it defines who you are as someone fundamentally broken, unloveable, or bad. It can also lead to self destructive behaviours, because we feel like we deserve them. 

That’s why perfectionism can serve as a powerful strategy. By shaping ourselves to reflect only the traits we believe are acceptable we hope to avoid that persistent, uncomfortable sense of not being enough, along with the emotional distress it brings. And in some ways it works, but the cost is high. Perfectionism is often accompanied by heightened anxiety and a greater risk of burnout. We run ourselves into the ground trying to get ahead of every slip-up and go every extra mile. 

How does therapy help perfectionism and shame?

Therapy can help you notice when the voice of perfectionism shows up, and support you in shifting to a more compassionate inner dialogue. 

My approach to therapy deepens this by exploring the roots of shame. By processing through past experiences that left shame as their residue, you can start to see yourself in a different light. And when you know yourself as someone fundamentally whole, loveable, and good, mistakes and failures can become easier to tolerate, and perfectionism can start to let go. 

What is anxiety?

When the nervous system interprets something as unsafe, it activates a fear response — it’s like the alarm bell going off in our bodies. And when the alarm sounds, you might kick into action; run away; or feel stuck in high alert, too frozen to do anything at all (our fight/flight/freeze response). 

When we’re actually in danger, this fear response is super helpful. It does a good job at keeping us safe. But sometimes our body’s alarm bell can get stuck in the “on” position, and this is anxiety. 

Anxiety is often influenced by deeply held beliefs about safety. Because assessing danger is imperative for our survival, these beliefs aren’t stored in the logical mind. Logic takes time, and when our brain is trying to figure out if our life is on the line time isn’t something we have. Instead, these beliefs are stored in the faster system of implicit memory, which is comprised of our emotions, sensations, and physical impulses related to our past experiences.

Implicit safety-related beliefs can contribute to anxiety by triggering fear responses disproportional to the situations we’re in, or sounding the alarm when there’s actually no threat at all. 

How does therapy help anxiety?

My approach to therapy targets beliefs about safety and danger that are held in implicit memory. We’ll discover tools and strategies to cope with anxiety, and we’ll also work at shifting those beliefs, recalibrating your body’s alarm. 

When your anxiety is a response to real-time threats, we’ll explore ways to listen to the intelligence of that signal without it overpowering you. 

What are relationship issues?

Humans are relational creatures. We’re wired to depend on one another to survive and thrive. We’re meant to keep each other safe and move each other toward our most authentic, creative, and effective selves. 

The quality of our relationships therefore have a huge impact on our happiness and wellbeing. Good relationships help regulate our nervous system and emotions, build a positive sense of self, and have even been shown to be a protective factor against physical health issues. It can also be meaningful to know that being a good partner or friend is making someone we care about happier and more well too.

Unfortunately, building strong relationships can be challenging. Our early relationships set the stage for how we show up in relationships as adults. And if we were hurt or neglected when we were young, defensive strategies surrounding these wounds can cause us to reflexively behave in ways that kept us safe but cut us off from connection. 

Cultural and social influences can also pose challenges. In the West, independence tends to be over-valued, which may leave us with a skewed idea of relational health. Or, the adults surrounding us when we were little and learning may not have had solid relationships for us to look to as examples. And without a good model of a healthy relationship, we might not know what one looks like.

If we don’t know what a healthy relationship looks like or we’re reflexively interacting with others using protective strategies, our relationships can become a source of hurt and stress rather than happiness, wellbeing, and meaning. We might feel disconnected or distrusting, get caught in painful cycles of conflict, struggle to communicate and collaborate with others, or neglect ourselves to keep the peace. 

How does individual therapy help relationship issues?

Our work together can help you understand your patterns and tendencies in relationships, as well as process past relational hurts that contribute to these. By witnessing your reflexive behaviours, thoughts, emotions, and sensations in relationships, you can create room to choose what you want to bring to the dynamic. 

Therapy can also help you sense into what healthy relationships might look like to you, and support you in taking steps to create those. 

What is emotional and nervous system dysregulation?

Our nervous system and emotions play a central role in helping us navigate the world. When operating smoothly, they provide us with information about our environment and help us respond effectively. Being regulated doesn’t mean we’re 100% calm all the time. Instead, it means our nervous system arousal and emotional states are flexible. We can feel something, act on it appropriately, and then come back to a felt sense of safety, calm, and connection.

So nervous system and emotional dysregulation can be seen as an issue with flexibility. Dysregulation might mean our emotional and energetic states are rigid and unmoving (not enough flexibility), or chaotic and uncontrollable (too much flexibility). 

If our nervous system is dysregulated we may feel constantly jumpy, on alert, and unable to relax, or chronically tired, unmotivated, and zoned-out. Alternatively, we could experience unpredictable swings between high and low arousal, like we’re keyed up and on edge and then out of nowhere come crashing down. 

When our emotions are dysregulated, it can feel like a roller coaster. It might seem like it takes next to nothing to send you spiralling, like your emotions have control over you rather than the other way around, or like it’s hard to return to “baseline” after feeling something. On the other hand, it could feel like your emotions are numbed out or muted, and you might have a hard time knowing and connecting to what you feel. 

How does therapy help emotional and nervous system dysregulation?

My approach to therapy aims to build skill in emotional and nervous system regulation, while also addressing the underlying causes of dysregulation. We’ll practice containing and shifting energetic and emotional states, as well as explore ways to be with what comes up. Equipped with these tools, we can listen to your body and emotions to understand how your past experiences have contributed to rigidity or chaos, and what might be needed for your system to find flexibility. 

My practice is sensitive to the role that sensory regulation, which can be impacted by neurodivergence such as ADHD and autism, plays in emotional and nervous system regulation. 

What is depression?

Depression can feel like an emptiness, a profound tiredness, or a total disconnect from life. It can feel like you’re always kind of in a bad mood, or like things you might usually enjoy aren’t really worth the energy. What all these feelings have in common is they’re part of our body’s shut-down response. 

When we experience difficult situations, sometimes our nervous system moves us into a state of shut-down to dull the pain and help us get by. It’s a bit like switching your phone to low battery mode, where certain functions are reduced to conserve power. This switch is especially likely to happen if the difficult things we experience feel persistent or unavoidable. In the short-term, this shut down response might really help us get through some hard stuff. But when we’re chronically in low battery mode it can feel debilitating, and that’s what we call depression. 

In today’s world, the difficult things we experience often do feel persistent or unavoidable, because they’re often systemic. And on a personal level, implicit messages about ourselves, others, and the world that we’ve picked up along our journey can contribute to depression too. If somewhere inside we believe we’re incapable or alone, or pain isn’t okay to feel, we might default to shut-down when life starts to hurt. 

How does therapy help depression?

My approach to therapy addresses the protective function of depression. Where there’s space to witness the sharp pain of life’s difficulty, there’s also freedom to release the dullness of depression. 

While we can’t control everything in our environment, therapy can help you find the places where you do have agency to shape how you live. It can also help shift implicit beliefs and memories that keep your body locked in shut-down.