Complex Trauma Counseling and EMDR

Who’s running the show?

It depends on the day, but it seems like one moment panic has center stage, sometimes some hypervigilance, irritability from time to time, and/or perhaps fading into the distance with dissociation.

You might be struggling to manage work, family, relationships, and responsibilities with so much going on internally—it’s a lot to feel. It makes a lot of sense why you might be feeling distracted or forgetting important things.

People sometimes feel like they are one step away from a crisis; or perhaps, the crisis is already upon you.

The feelings are all consuming.

The thing about complex emotions, trauma and grief, we often struggle to find the right words to explain how we feel. There is always so much all time to say and at the same time maybe a feeling of numbness with nothing to say at all but just a feeling. It can be confusing.

Experiences from the past both good and bad swirl around like a tilt-a-whirl and seem to intrude the mind when we are engaged in other activities, or right as we are trying to get some sleep—disrupting the peace. Has that ever happened to you?

Sometimes people turn to friends or family for support and other times it’s hard to discuss past hurtful experiences with our support system. I hear often, “I don’t want to be a burden on my friends Kassondra, so I just keep that to myself”. Having trauma in our past can leave us to feel isolated and trauma is heavy to carry alone.

Holding it all has become too much.

As a complex trauma survivor sometimes holding it all, and sometimes alone, can become too much—and it’s time to ask for some help.

Imagine having the language to describe how you think and feel without tipping into overwhelm, or if you do tip into overwhelm, quickly knowing how to recover. Imagine living in the present moment without intrusive images from the past and engaging in the relationships that feel fulfilling for you. Imagine achieving your goals in life. These are all possibilities that can come from individual therapy.

What you can expect.

If we decide to work together, I will provide a safe and queer affirming space for you to be exactly who you are. My focus will be to support and guide you on the topics that you want to work on in therapy, at the pace that you want to work on in therapy.

You will have the option to engage in EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) which is a type of psychotherapy that uses eye movements to help process and release traumatic memories.

Additionally, you will be offered trauma informed talk therapy using treatment modalities informed by attachment research, internal family systems, dialectical behavioral therapy, and person centered approaches.