What is trauma? For some, it is an easily recognizable event or chain of events that left a deep, hard-to-heal wound -- perhaps a catastrophe like an earthquake, or a violent action, or serving in a war overseas. We call those "Big T" traumas, because they are well-defined, external incidents we are able to pinpoint without much hesitation. For others, however, trauma is a fuzzier affair: maybe an interaction we had as children left our self-confidence permanently scarred; perhaps we were the victims of emotional abuse at the hands of a narcissistic parent; we may have been sexually harassed or assaulted; we may even not remember clearly what happened to us. There is no single event, but a series of confused memories that together make us feel broken, or incomplete -- we call that "litte T" trauma, or "complex trauma."
Whatever its form, trauma affects the way we see the world, the very core of our belief system. It can lead to depression, anxiety and substance abuse, among other things. It is like constantly wearing a pair of dark, deforming glasses.
I work with both kinds of trauma, using a mix of traditional talk therapy, somatic techniques from the Trauma Resiliency Model (TRM), as well as EMDR (Eye-Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing). I help children, teens and adults.