Trauma, PTSD, and Dissociative Disorder Therapy
What is Trauma?
When talking about trauma and recovery, I try to find a balance between the language of science and the language of metaphor because I think both are important in understanding how we heal.
The term trauma itself has gone through an evolution of meaning. What used to be considered solely a soldier’s malady has now been recognized to also affect people who have suffered abuse in relationships, witnessed or experienced violence, and those who have survived natural disasters, catastrophic and sudden life changes, or medical emergencies.
How Trauma Can Affect You
If you have experienced trauma, you may find yourself struggling in the aftermath with feeling like you are unable to get out of that experience. It may be so severe that at times you literally think it’s happening again, or it may manifest as nightmares, intrusive memories, or gaps in memory. You might find yourself feeling jumpy and on edge, having mood swings, or just plain feeling numb, lost, and out of it. You might be losing yourself in distractions, avoiding things you previously liked, and shrinking your world to cut out as many reminders of the event/s as possible.
Often trauma memories themselves will feel fragmented, with sensations separate from images, which may be separate from emotions, all of them like the frayed edge of a torn tapestry. The more severe this fragmentation, the more you may struggle to feel a coherent sense of self, perhaps even at times feeling like a passenger or bystander in your own life. At its most severe, you may even find it hard to remember where you've been or what you've done for significant periods of time.
Trauma, in short, can turn your world upside down, shattering your sense of self, disrupting your relationships, and leaving you locked in a fragmented hell of sensations and memories of the worst moments of your life.
Post-traumatic conditions, including PTSD, are most easily conceptualized as a fragmented, dysregulated, and stuck adaptive response. Your nervous system is trying to do what it should, which is to learn from, master, and prevent future similar threats; however, it’s not able to do that job properly. Left untreated, you may find yourself stuck on a loop between fight/flight and freeze, one feeding into the other over and over. It can lead to life-long struggles and even be passed down generationally through culture and behavior as well as genomic changes.
This is far from the only or even the final story. Recovery and growth are also possible with treatment!
I have close to a decade of experience in helping those affected by post-traumatic stress and dissociative conditions resulting from various traumatic experiences, including accidents, war-related trauma, childhood abuse, relational abuse, sexual assault, and human trafficking.
Trauma Treatment Modalities
Because trauma is held in both the mind and the body, I take a holistic, integrative approach to working with both. Together you and I will work to:
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Calm and regulate your nervous system, building the internal resources you need
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Process traumatic material in a contained, paced way that honors your capacity at every step
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Help you develop a coherent sense of identity and wholeness — stitching the fragmented threads back into something recognizable as you
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Create meaning, rebuild relationships, and grow a new vision for the future
One common feature of trauma is the difficulty in finding words to talk about your experiences; therefore, I offer a host of modalities to assist with the dual goals of regulation and expression, including talk therapy, dialogue-based mindfulness, active imagination, somatic exercises, nervous system tools, art, sandtray, music, and story-telling.
These modalities will include a range of bottom-up (working with the nervous system to affect the mind) and top-down (working with the mind to affect the nervous system) approaches to ensure we’re working with the whole of you — not just the story you can tell, but the one your body is still holding.
Fees and Location
I offer both in-person sessions at my office in Williston, VT and telehealth therapy for patients across Vermont.
Individual sessions are $200. I am primarily private pay and do not work with commercial insurance panels. If you have out-of-network benefits, I'm happy to provide superbills you can submit to your insurance for reimbursement. I reserve a small number of slots for sliding scale fees or individuals on Medicaid.
“This is the beginning of a road whose end is totally unknown and totally known.”
Marion Woodman