Trauma & Complex Trauma

There is a common assumption that trauma treatment is mainly about the right technique or protocol that will make a traumatic experience stop hurting.  We find that a consistent, trustworthy relationship in which a traumatic experience can be spoken, witnessed, metabolized, instead of carried in isolation or managed through avoidance can be a powerful source of healing.

My approach draws on two traditions that work well together. A psychodynamic lens helps make sense of how trauma, whether it is a single event or accumulation of events, has shaped your self of yourself, sense of others, and ways of relating to the world around you.  Acceptance and Commitment Therapy compliments this approach well.  Rather than requiring traumatic experience be fully resolved before moving forward, ACT asks you to continue to move in the directions your values suggest.  Living life now can and does occur while deeper processing continues.

This means trauma work here is not just subtraction, or untangling what happened and why it still affects you. It's also about addition: actively building meaning, connection, and a life worth living in the process.

Deep progress when treating complex trauma is possible in a psychodynamic and ACT framework.  Intuitively, it makes sense that a high-quality therapeutic alliance would lend itself towards the accumulated impact of chronic relational injury. Hurt in relationship heals through relationship.