We will work toward the following objectives:

I work with individuals ages 7-adult.  I have a MS in Clinical Psychology as well as a MS in Educational Psychology.  I am a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner certified in the advanced areas of Touch Skills for Trauma Therapy,  The Resilient Child, Somatic Resilience and Regulation: Early Trauma.  I am also a certified Focusing Trainer/Therapist.  I continue to educate myself to apply cutting edge neuroscience in the most effective treatments for self-regulation and stress/trauma recovery. 

As a school psychologist and counselor providing psychological services for 30 years, I have a lot of experience with individual and group counseling, psycho-educational assessment, special education and the public school system in general.  My work with children and adolescents makes use of play, art and talk to encourage increased self-expression, resilience, safety, calm, and respectful social engagement.  Children learn to regain a sense of well-being and joy.   

A somatic approach to well-being focuses on the body and mind as one complex energetic unit, that is constantly communicating internally and with the world around us.  Somatic Experiencing® is a gentle yet effective psychobiological approach to recovering from the debilitating emotional and physical effects of stress, overwhelm and trauma.  It focuses not only on the memories and meaning held in our conscious brain, but especially addresses the stress patterns we have developed and hold in our nervous system and other subconscious parts of our brain and body. 

The client’s needs help to determine where to begin and our areas of focus.  Skills are drawn from the fields of clinical and educational psychology, Somatic Experiencing, Touch Therapy and Focusing.   A combination of treatment modalities is indicated; for instance, when working on reducing stress and anxiety, it is usually helpful to integrate Therapeutic Touch into the treatment because it deepens the healing and makes the psychotherapy process that much more effective. However, use of safe, clothed Touch Therapy is explained to the client and is ultimately the client’s decision whether to participate.  There are exceptions where it is evident that the client is not ready for Touch practices, and significant healing can still take place.

Touch Therapy is a form of Somatic Experiencing that greatly deepens the process of recovery from stressful and traumatic patterns and events.  Much of our suffering is nonverbal, because it is coming from the parts of the brain and body that are not located in the cortical part of the brain where language and meaning are processed. Additionally, many crucial experiences occurred at a preverbal time in our lives when our brain was still developing.  We may have no explicit memory of painful events, yet the survival response pattern to the pain remains in our brain/nervous system/body.  This is why talk alone is useful to an extent, but we find ourselves reliving the high stress states and repeating patterns of behavior that may have been bound within us at an early age.  Thus, connecting with the individual at the level of touch allows deeper attachment and more direct soothing.  A seemingly simple contact such as the hand held underneath the lower back near the kidney and adrenal organs can greatly reduce the need for the individual to produce stress chemicals and for self-regulation at a nonverbal and sensing level to take place.

Touch more readily facilitates movement and discharge of bound excess energy experienced as accumulated stress.  SE™ can be done without the Touch Therapy component, and although in some cases that is indicated,  I have found therapeutic touch to be extremely effective for the client who is ready and comfortable with it. In a typical session, there is some grounding and talking work done while sitting, and then we go to a massage table where the rest of the session is done.  Unlike massage, Touch Therapy is done with clothes on, except for shoes and perhaps scarves or large jewelry.  Talking, in the form of what the client and touch therapist are noticing in the current moment and in bodily sensations may continue at a deeper level.  When movements indicate discharge of energy or completion of survival responses are ready, that activity is facilitated. There is often much relief found in this mode of therapy.  After energy moves within or out of the body, renegotiation and reorganization take place as the body settles in a relaxed or coherent state.  One of the main goals of SE based Touch Therapy, like Somatic Experiencing, is to achieve a greater sense of safety in the nervous system and greater containment of high stress states.