My goal is to support clients to shift old ways of being and move toward how they wish to be in their lives. I provide support and guidance to heal past trauma by following how it manifests in the client’s life in the present moment. Each persons story is important, however it is not necessary to regress to past experiences in order to heal. I work with the whole person, mind, body and soul.
I work with what I refer to as the “not knowing mind,”meaning that I resist working with my own ‘diagnosis’ of what is going on for the client. I am open to what is being communicated to me through the whole person, their story as well as sensations, movements and contractions in the body. I invite the client to become aware of what is happening in their experience, what they notice as they speak their story. I am looking for activation of the sympathetic nervous system and work to engage the parasympathetic nervous system in order to down regulate any overwhelm in the physiology. My intention is to establish regulation in the nervous system and thus deactivation of the trauma held in the body from traumatic experience. I am working with the sensations that the client experiences, images that may arise, behaviours, emotion and the meaning of their experience. I am also working to ‘untangle’ traumatic experience from beliefs, thoughts, emotions and so on. For example, every time I hear loud noise, I get overwhelmingly frightened. This may be the result of being in a situation where I suffered trauma and a similar loud noise was present. I have then ‘coupled’* the sound with the fear I felt when I experienced the trauma. I work to separate experiences and to discharge the associated fear. This basic example can be reflected in many aspects of our lives where we have set up associations that we are often unaware of. These associations can create a lack of freedom in our lives.
When we suffer a traumatic event, everything goes so fast that our body and mind often don’t have time to process the experience. As such we work very slowly in order to give the client’s mind and body time to re-organise and therefore renegotiate the trauma. It gives the client time to be a witness to what their body needed to do during the traumatic event but couldn’t. The body’s instinctual response is often thwarted and held in the body as contraction. By following body movements and slowing them down, we can release the held contraction which also sets-up an opportunity for thoughts and belief systems to be renegotiated.
When people suffer shock it can prevent them from grieving a loss. The shock needs to be discharged from the system to allow the natural process of grief to take place.
Should a client have suffered abuse or neglect as a child, a lot of work needs to be done on awareness of their own needs, connection to self, recognising and changing unhealthy core belief systems and awakening them to their personal power.
I aim to bring each client into contact with their own knowing. I am deeply respectful that each person knows intuitively what is best for them. It is my job to help my clients to find their way back to their intuition which may lay under years or decades of hurt and unhelpful belief systems.
Methods I have been trained in include Somatic Experiencing, Touch Therapy for Trauma, Somatic Resilience and Regulation (Developmental Touch), Somatic Experiencing for Kids, Somatic Experiencing and Addiction, Systemic Constellations, Holistic Counselling & Psychotherapy, Eye of the Needle Masterclass with Peter Levine.
I love working with all people who are pursuing change for themselves.
* Peter Levine Somatic Experiencing