virtual therapy for trauma and ptsd in ontario and across canada.
It’s time to finally come up for air.
nothing feels safe anymore.
Maybe you can’t pinpoint exactly what happened or when it happened—or maybe you can, and that’s the damn problem.
The memory of it plays on a loop in your mind, and the only way to shut it off is to distract yourself.
Having zero boundaries with work.
Scrolling endlessly on your phone, especially at night.
Drinking every day.
Eating WAY past fullness.
Experimenting with drugs.
Maybe you’re even hesitant to leave your house because who knows what might happen if you do?
You’re numb and that feels manageable. You’re at a point where you avoid feeling at all costs because feeling something—feeling anything!— isn’t safe. It’s too scary, and your mind and body know it, because the few times you’ve let yourself feel, you’ve spiralled down into a deep, dark hole and had to claw your way back out.
Or maybe you’re still down there, feeling trapped, alone and terrified.
You may think of trauma as experiencing a significant event, like an accident or being in a war zone. While those situations can certainly result in trauma, for most people, trauma happens with small, seemingly everyday events that build up and affect us over time.
You may notice that you’ve been avoiding certain people, places and situations because it just doesn’t feel right.
This might look like physically and/or emotionally pulling away from people you once felt okay around. You might participate less and less in activities you once found entertaining. It might feel more and more difficult to keep your patience with your kids, or to even engage with your loved ones at all—which then affects both the quality and quantity of your relationships.
Focusing at work and hitting deadlines has become more difficult for you because your concentration just isn’t what it used to be. Sometimes, you might even find yourself daydreaming or zoning out to the point where you don’t remember how long you’ve been sitting where you’re sitting or doing what you’re doing. You snap back to reality and wonder, ‘Whoa. How did I get here?’
The result is a smaller life, one based in fear. You restrict the things in your life that feel out of your control and your self-confidence, self-esteem, and self-trust break down.
But there is a part of you that knows living this way isn’t okay. The problem is, choosing to face the root of all this feels… impossible. You’re stuck, and you feel like you’ll stay stuck.
how trauma therapy works
When you come to therapy with the intention of healing trauma, you’re giving yourself the opportunity to come up for air. While there is no way to know how long it’ll take to feel better, you may notice that you:
Physically feel more relaxed and less rigid
Fall asleep faster and stay asleep longer
Feel rested when you wake in the morning
Want to play with your kids, be present with your partner, socialize with others
Set boundaries with work so you’re no longer using it to avoid your life
Become less anxious while out in public
Can concentrate and focus, making tasks easier to complete
my approach
Trauma affects us all differently, so there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to trauma therapy. A few different ways we will work together to get you unstuck include:
Cultivating body awareness
Detaching from unwanted, unsafe or intrusive thoughts
Breathing in a way that helps your body and mind restore feelings of safety
Using mindfulness techniques to get curious about what’s happening and why you’re feeling/thinking the way you are
To accomplish these things and help you heal, I’ll approach our sessions from a perspective based in Adlerian therapy, Internal Family Systems, and Somatic techniques.
Therapy for trauma and PTSD can help you…
Understand how you got to where you are
Stop blaming and shaming yourself
Improve your self-awareness
Trust yourself
Release the feeling of stuckness that’s been plaguing you for so long
Reconnect with yourself, your loved ones and your life
Feel strong, capable and safe
your trauma is not who you are.
Be strong. Be confident.
come alive again.
FAQs
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When it comes to how we process and manage trauma, it can feel easier (and way less scary) to continue on like nothing happened and pretend you’re fine. And maybe, for a while, you convince yourself that you are.
But pretending your trauma doesn’t exist only works until it doesn’t. Ignoring things like your inability to feel emotions, withdrawal from your family or social experiences, unexplained body aches and pain, nightmares, or hypervigilance isn’t you dealing with it. It’s your mind and body’s desperate attempt to tell you help is needed.
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This is not the Trauma Olympics, my friend. Just because other people have experienced trauma you deem “worse” than what you’ve been through doesn’t mean you don’t deserve to heal. In fact, you deciding to attend therapy to heal may encourage those other folks to start therapy, too!
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I’m gonna be honest with you: you can’t go back. Not only because humans have yet to break through the space-time continuum but also because you are not the same person now as you were before. Part of the work we’ll do in therapy is helping you recognize who you are now, what the difference is compared to who you were before, and how each version of who you are is an integral part of your healing.