Trauma Healing Therapies

About Somatic Experiencing®

(Excerpted from www.traumahealing.org)

The Somatic Experiencing® method is a body-oriented approach to the healing of trauma and other stress disorders.  

Somatic Experiencing® is a treatment modality that releases trauma stored in the nervous system; a gentle and profound system of sensation and mindful awareness, developed by renowned trauma specialist Peter Levine, PhD. (Waking the Tiger and In an Unspoken Voice). 

SE™ facilitates the completion of self-protective motor responses and the release of thwarted survival energy bound in the body, thus addressing the root cause of trauma symptoms. This is approached by gently guiding clients to develop increasing tolerance for difficult bodily sensations and suppressed emotions.

SE™ does not require the traumatized person to re-tell or re-live the traumatic event. Instead, it offers the opportunity to engage, complete, and resolve—in a slow and supported way—the body’s instinctual fight, flight, freeze, and collapse responses. Individuals locked in anxiety or rage then relax into a growing sense of peace and safety. Those stuck in depression gradually find their feelings of hopelessness and numbness transformed into empowerment, triumph, and mastery. SE™ catalyzes corrective bodily experiences that contradict those of fear and helplessness. This resets the nervous system, restores inner balance, enhances resilience to stress, and increases people’s vitality, equanimity, and capacity to actively engage in life. 

About DBT-PTSD

DBT-PTSD is tailored to treat complex post-traumatic stress disorder following interpersonal violence such as childhood sexual or physical abuse.  Most individuals requiring this treatment experience severe problems in emotion regulation, negative self-concept, dysfunctional memory processing, and difficulties maintaining interpersonal relationships.  

DBT-PTSD merges multiple evidence-based elements: DBT principles, trauma-specific cognitive and skills assisted exposure-based techniques, compassion and mindfulness focused interventions, and behavior change procedures. The treatment program is designed to be delivered in 45 weeks and research has demonstrated it to be significantly superior to Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), one of the most well researched trauma treatments. DBT-PTSD primarily aims to help people revise their fear of trauma-associated primary emotions, question whether secondary emotions like guilt and shame fit the facts and radically accept the fact of trauma in their lives in order to establish a life worth living.

Additional Trauma Healing Therapies

In addition to SE and DBT for PTSD, Megan utilizes a variety of clinically proven methodologies for working with complex trauma, including Internal family systems, compassion based mindfulness interventions, sensory-motor psychotherapy, DBT prolonged exposure protocol and trauma informed yoga.

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