I have worked in social services for over 20 years in St. Louis. I found that our family of origin and experiences growing up have an affect on us as adults. The effects of being neglected, physically, emotionally, sexually abused are far reaching into how a person responds to life; and sets us up for many of the reasons people seek counseling. Instead of treating symptoms, I wanted to go to the core of the issues and offer relief and release.
Why this is important to me
Every person deserves to lives a life with out emotional pain. In my private practice, South City Counseling STL, I've have stayed my roots in social services, I help people who have experienced trauma incurred from childhood, neglect, abuse, molestation as well as, adults abused by family, friends, partners, employment, and places of worship.
Over the years I've noticed that reoccurring themes in therapy are: boundary violations being blamed for parents or family problems internalized self hate anger to keep people away hyper vigilance and worry about how they affect other people (caused by poor boundaries in childhood, children feel they are to blame for everything that goes wrong and and that carries in to adulthood.)
Shame, blame and and anger are survival skills. I want to work side by side with you how to move trauma out of your body so you find/raise your your voice,boundaries and build/reclaim your personal power.
Education and Training
During and after graduate school I worked in a psycho-social/clubhouse model for persons with severe and persistent mental illness.
After getting my License as Professional Counselor in 2010. I worked as a Military and Family Life Counselor for active military and their dependents for topics of deployment, reunion, communication, parenting, copings skills while a parent or loved one is away.
in 2017 entered three years of training of Dr. Peter Levine's Somatic Experiencing tm.I learned about our nervous systems ability to keep us safe through trauma.
This changed my life! I finally had the tools through somatic experiencing therapy to move all the noise in my head and body out.
I had further training with: Diane Poole Keller Attachment Trainings Dierdre Faye's Becoming Safely Embodied certification. Memory reconsolidation for Trauma from Courtney Armstrong Nuerolinguistic Programing from Dr. Matt James, student of Tony Robbins
Bottom line how I help people move out their trauma experiences:
For eliminating graphic visuals and sounds I use somatic experiencing to find where the trauma is stored and together we move it out. I also use NLP to move the memory from the limbic system to the frontal cortex where you can get control over it. For attachment disregulation from the adults that were supposed to teach us emotional regulation I use Diane Poople Keller's reattachment protocol. For anger and emotional disregulation I validate and help the anger as a survival response.
