Specialties

What is Complex-PTSD?

Trauma is any event that overwhelms the ordinary human adaptations to living (Judith Herman). Complex trauma is ongoing trauma without adequate coping and resourcing. C-PTSD is when a person’s identity becomes formed in the context of the greater traumatic events. I am a trauma specialized therapist working with survivors for the last 10 years. Doing this work is my great privilege and reason for becoming a psychotherapist.

• Re-Experiencing symptoms and Somatization (physical symptoms)

• Avoidance

• Heightened Arousal

• Emotional Dysregulation

• Disturbance with Self Organization (negative view of self, others, the world)

• Interpersonal Problems

• Dissociation

  Additional symptoms of C-PTSD may include:

  • Self harm

  • Suicidal thoughts, plans or attempts

  • Addictions

  • Emotional eating

  • Eating disorders

  • Social Anxiety

  • Difficulty concentrating

  • Impulsivity

  • Excessive risk-taking

My primary focus as a clinician has been helping survivors heal and reconnect with their bodies after trauma. Throughout our lives trauma may take shape in different forms. My role is to help safely navigate the waters of the past to continue forward with a greater sense of self and wholeness. Over time, there can be different ways of viewing what happened and a new story ahead. This work allows a person to move from surviving to living — with intentionality, presence and engagement with life.

What is Perinatal?

The period of trying to become pregnant, pregnancy, birth and following postpartum period (12 months after birth). Without attention and care, symptoms that emerge in the perinatal/ postpartum period may go unresolved for months or years. As a Perinatal Mental Health Certified psychotherapist since 2021, I have ongoing specialized training to care for women in this phase of life.

• Anxiety and intrusion

• Depression and chronic fatigue

• Loss of identity and disoriented sense of self

• Disconnection from friends and family

• Changing relationship with body, ongoing discomfort and pain

• Reprioritization of values and sense of meaning

• Anger and resentment

• Distrust of self as a mother

• Not feeling close to baby

• Disintegration of relationship with partner

• Fear and distrust of others caring for baby

• Fear of birth

• Birth trauma

• Infertility

• Pregnancy Loss

• Infant Loss

With compassion and an emphasis on building community and connecting to resources, I help women and birthing partners navigate the journey across the perinatal period of their life. Becoming a new parent can be filled with joy, excitement and beauty. It can also a time of despair, anxiety, upheaval and loss. Loss of energy, loss of routine, loss of expectations and often loss of identity or the life they knew prior. With an increase of very real stressors, fluctuating hormones and sleep deprivation it’s crucial that new parents feel held and heard in their experiences.

Flashbacks, nightmares, being easily triggered

Thinking about distressing events at inconvenient times

Intrusive symptoms from childhood that may come in the form of somatization through pain and illness

Withdrawing, isolating

Avoiding peoples and places that remind of the stress/ trauma

Using alcohol, substances, food, work or caretaking to avoid feelings

Perfectionism or being highly self critical to avoid being with messiness and what cannot be controlled

Hypervigilance, being “on guard”, startling easily