While both PE and EMDR have showing effective treatments in patients with a PTSD diagnosis, I feel that PE is a better long term solution for my patients to achieve lasting success based on the outcomes associated with remission in PTSD patients using PE specifically.
Through the portal you can pay with a credit, debit, FSA, and an HSA card. At this time I am not taking insurance but I offer set reduced fees.
The trauma stories told in talk therapy are missing the nonverbal aspects that are generally the ‘triggers.’ Some examples of nonverbal symptoms are hypervigilance, rage, anxiety, nightmares, irritability, and emotional numbing. I believe "just" talking about the struggle will not eliminate these symptoms.
My technique places emphasis on co-regulation. Our nervous system is wired to react to the nervous systems of others. When two people share a space (online or in person), one is talking about something difficult and upset, and the other is partially mirroring that distress - just enough for the first person to feel heard - but remaining calm and reassured, the first person's nervous system becomes calmed and reassured, which helps them learn that the difficult event is in the past and they are safe now.
This is how children learn to recognize and manage their emotions in the first place - via interactions with their caregivers, in which their parents recognize and resolve their pain with compassion. The child learns what's bothering them, how to solve it, that it's okay to have needs, and that if they can’t do it alone, it’s okay to ask for help. This is what someone who has been abused or neglected as a child may have lost out on.
Some mental health professionals take a complete trauma history and have the necessary expertise to cope with traumatic stress, yet most counseling programs focus on teaching coping skills and dealing with current challenges rather than the underlying causes, which are frequently rooted in traumatic occurrences. For example, clients who are emotionally neglected in childhood are not supported to develop a good connection to their emotions and body, which means that by the time they get to the point of needing therapy, they already over-rely on thinking to deal with distress. This doesn’t mean therapies such as CBT or DBT are not helpful, it means they are more powerful when used alongside somatic interventions.
Sensorimotor Psychotherapy requires an additional 93 credit hours of professional training. Through the “somatic narrative"—gesture, posture, facial expressions, eye gazing, and movement—I connect the nonverbal experiences to words and integrate them into the verbal story, aiming to finally bring the struggle to an end.