Our Approach
Our approach to therapy and coaching is relational, process-oriented, and includes a deep belief in your ability to heal. Our goal is not to tell you what to do, but to instead walk alongside you with compassion, and help connect you with your own internal resources and wisdom. The name of our practice- Unraveling Free- comes from that place of believing that together we can unravel the hurt and trauma and move towards freedom.
In our sessions, we will start by getting to know each other and build safety within the counseling relationship. We will become curious together about who you are and what is getting in the way of you living the life you want to live. We may talk about the role of your nervous system- how it has supported you through perceived danger throughout your life, and how you can more quickly get back to places of calm and safety. Because we are people who live in bodies, we will pay particular attention to how your body communicates with you about what you need.
You are not a problem to be fixed.
You’ve adapted in ways that took a lot of sacrifice and a lot of pain in order to make it to where you are now. Your symptoms are marks of your survival. We get to work together on helping you know how deeply okay you can be without those same survival strategies that you’ve now outgrown.
Ultimately, you always have full autonomy and agency over your sessions, and we will never expect you to do or explore something that you do not agree to. Additionally, we understand and celebrate wherever you are in your faith journey and will never impose our own beliefs onto you. We aim to celebrate humans of all identities and abilities. We want everyone to feel affirmed in who they are regardless of sexual orientation, gender, or preferences.
HOW WE DO WHAT WE DOTherapeutic Modalities
Beyond processing your experiences together, there are additional modalities we often bring into sessions to help deepen the healing process and to help with areas of “stuckness.” If you want to learn more about the specific therapeutic modalities we bring into sessions, you can read more about IFS, Brainspotting, and Somatic Experiencing below.
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IFS or “parts work” is an evidence-based model which comes from the idea that rather than our personalities being singular, we are all born with parts of ourselves that become organized in various ways throughout our lives. These parts can seem to take over sometimes in ways that can be frustrating or even harmful to us (think about your “inner critic” or that part of you that works really hard to make sure others accept you), leading to inner chaos, rigidity, confusion, and overall disharmony. The roles our parts so faithfully take on are the result of specific environmental influences and wounds that occur as we develop. In their effort to protect us, our parts can become stuck and exhausted. In other psychological terms, parts might be referred to as “defense mechanisms.”
We are also all born with a Self that is not a part. This is the essence of who we are, our inner wisdom, and it is through our inner sense of self that we can help heal our wounded parts and free them up to be some of our greatest assets. Through our sense of Self, we can listen to the various parts of ourselves with compassion, curiosity and non-judgement rather than rejecting them or feeling taken over by them.
All of you deserves to be witnessed, validated, understood, and invited into compassion and healing.
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“Where you look affects how you feel.”
Brainspotting is a form of treatment with this idea as its foundation. Brainspotting is a neuropsychological mode of treatment in which an eye position paired with bilateral music (music that goes back and forth from one ear to stimulate both hemispheres of your brain) can give you access to deeply stored stress, trauma, and other problematic beliefs or adaptations. It allows you to enhance your body’s natural process of releasing stored up emotion and energy while knowing you are not alone, you are safe, and you have everything you need to heal within you.
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Somatic Experiencing was created out of evidenced-based research that has shown that we store stress and trauma in our bodies. By bringing awareness and connection to the way stress is stored in your own body, there are ways to help that stress move through and out of your body so that it is no longer having the same long-term impact.
Somatic Experiencing is particularly helpful for those who have experienced trauma that is still impacting their emotions or reactions, or that is causing chronic pain or a disconnection from self. Often these symptoms are due to nervous system dysregulation. By helping learn how to regulate and connect to our bodies, we can begin to experience deeper healing than we do with only talk-based therapies.
You can find more information about Somatic Experiencing here.
INTERESTED IN WORKING WITH US?