Storytelling - Psychodynamic / Attachment Theory / IFS / Feminist Psychology

Our early childhood experiences shape our relational tapestry in adulthood. We are often unconscious of ways that we perpetuate unhealthy relational patterns from our family systems. We will explore your experience of self and connection with others and uncover some of your patterns at play. We will be tender with these younger parts of you and have compassion for the strategies that they employ to feel safe. Being able to see the pasts influence on the present will provide more space for awareness and different ways of relating to self and others.

We will explore needs (and the challenge to identify them and receive them), boundaries and consent and all the hard stuff that comes with that. We will be curious about ways that dominant culture impacts your self-worth and relational landscape.

Embodiment and Presence - Sensorimotor / Polyvagal Theory / Mindfulness

Western culture places great importance on the cognitive mind, often at the detriment of establishing a flourishing emotional and creative relationship with the body. Bodies that have spent a lot of time on alert as children often adopt disassociation as a strategy to sustain. Bodies that are living with the impacts of trauma often do this as well. Trauma is the bodies response to real or perceived harm, it lives in our mind and body and travels across space and time.

We will ease into noticing the body, and build an understanding of the role of the nervous system and its relationship to our brain. We will practice being embodied together and build more allowance for hard feelings and beliefs.

Embracing Complexity and Facing Grief

As you increase your ability to feel and stay present with your emotional landscape, your ability to hold the complexity of your existence broadens, stretching your emotional flexibility and expanding your resiliency. This engenders greater self-acceptance, discernment, and compassion for others.

A main part of healing from trauma is grieving. Grieving what was never had, grieving what was. Grieving is hard and does not feel good, it is often scary and confusing. We’ll go slow in touching into, naming and metabolizing grief from your past.