“I believe in a model of therapy that integrates psyche and soma, that recognizes we cannot separate mind and body — we can only work with human beings as whole systems that function within the broader context of our connections with others”.
When animals are confronted with novel or life-threatening situations, they respond naturally with fight, flight or freeze. Apart from our well developed thinking brain, our innate responses to threat are identical to those of other animals but due to the nature of most human trauma, and our “thinking” brains, we are not always able to respond in the natural way. The excess energy that has prepared us for survival-based action may remain in our nervous systems, resulting in dysregulation and symptoms.
- Trauma involves the entire organism: the brain and nervous system, and the body: trauma stories live in the body and can often be told without words.
- Current advances in neuroscience and psychobiology indicate that trauma and stress affect us — physically, emotionally, cognitively, and in our relationships.
How is trauma affecting your life?
- Do anxiety and panic limit your choices and ability to live fully?
- Do you experience chronic pain and/or health problems?
- Do you have problems sleeping or often feel exhausted?
- Do symptoms of whiplash or other injuries rob you if your ability to enjoy life?
- Do you experience symptoms of post-traumatic stress, associated with abuse, violence and assaults, or with the type of work you do (police, military, emergency response personnel)?
Eric Kandel, winner of the 2000 Nobel prize for Physiology or Medicine says that up to 80% of human decisions are made at an unconscious level!
- Recent advances in neuroscience and biology have led us to new ways of understanding human behavior and development, and how our early experiences affect us over the course of our lives.
- Our early relationships form the foundation for our sense of self and how to be with others. Many circumstances in our early development influence our sense of self, and how we regulate our emotions.
- Many of the behavior patterns that characterize our lives are non-conscious. We keep doing the same things over and over, in spite of negative results!
How might early childhood experiences be currently affecting you?
- Do you struggle with issues of self-esteem and self-worth?
- Do you measure your value by how much you do for others?
- Have you struggled with how to express feelings, or manage their intensity?
Our ways of responding to others have roots in our early attachments. In some ways we recreate our early environments in our relationships. Remember the old adage "You marry your father (or mother)?" It is more true than you think!
- Do you want to change unhealthy patterns (ruts!) in your behavior?
- Do you want to change the unconscious “dances” of your close relationships?
- Do you feel you have married your father or mother?
- Do you seem to repeat the same relationships over and over?
Therapy is a mutual agreement between client and therapist to address specific areas of concern. It involves a mutual development of goals and strategies to meet them. Therapy works to reduce symptoms, change behaviors, and to increase the capacity to live more fully and joyfully.
CONNECTIONS COUNSELLING utilizes a holistic, integrated and systemic approach that:
- Builds on individual and family strengths
- Utilizes state of the art trauma treatment including Self-Regulation Therapy (SRT), Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, and other mind-body approaches based in current research
- Provides individual (adult and adolescent), couples and family therapy
The good news is: the human body has a natural capacity to heal and restore itself through restoring balance in the nervous system.
Somatic Therapies are non-cathartic mind-body approaches that integrate talk therapy with body-centered interventions in the treatment of trauma, attachment and developmental issues.
Self-Regulation Therapy (SRT) has its basis in neurobiology and reflects our innate capacity to respond flexibly to novelty and threat. SRT enables the nervous system to integrate overwhelming events without retraumatization, and restores balance to the nervous system, resulting in joy, vitality and resilience.
Sensorimotor Psychotherapy is a powerfully effective body-oriented therapy that involves a broad repertoire of somatic interventions specifically designed to help clients tap into the wisdom of their bodies.
- Addresses the individual person — including nervous and emotional systems and the body.
- Brain-Mind-Body Connection helps to relieve traumatic stress symptoms through stabilization of the nervous system and emotional system.
- Therapy works with the natural defenses of the body to restore a sense of safety, connection and efficacy in the body.
- Brain-Mind-Body Connection therapy provides understanding of development and trauma that reduces feeling of blame, shame and guilt.
- Helps couples and families to change unhealthy patterns in a non-blaming and supportive wasy.
- Brain-Mind-Body Connection is about skills development
CONNECTIONS COUNSELLING specializes in the treatment of:
- Trauma
- Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
- Anxiety and mood disorders
- Physical health problems related to trauma
- Complicated and traumatic loss (accidents, suicide, homicide)
- Vicarious trauma
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