Our Core Values support our Mission:
SAFETY: Safety is the bedrock for which this work is done. We believe slower, smaller steps are always better. Our aim is to stretch you, without stressing you. We go at your pace, always.
CHOICE: Agency and choice is foundational to any trauma informed work. You are the expert in your own life, it's our job to support you in those choices.
CONTEXT: Much of our work will be supported by psychoeducation, giving you greater context into what's happening inside of you, because of what happened to you.
COMPASSION: When we have the context that our emotions, thoughts & behaviors make complete sense, based on our need to self-protect, we're able to replace our old shame-narratives, with compassion.
CONNECTION: Trauma often disconnects us from ourselves, others & the world. Our job is to hold a regulated space for you to safely explore connection again.
SOLUTION-FOCUSED: We help you build up your strengths, healthy beliefs, and positive coping strategies rather than just extinguishing “negative” behaviors and beliefs.
PRESENT-ORIENTED: Our work is anchored in the present, not the past--as we can only change & control the present. We'll focus on today and how past trauma is still affecting you.
INCLUSION: We are an inclusive community that values its diversity of humans from all walks of faith, ethnicity, age (our members range from 19-60+), gender and sexuality.
I created The Healing Hub to be a safe space for survivors to learn, heal and be in community.
ABOUT MEAccording to science, you're not broken, & you don't need fixing. In fact: you're right where you're supposed to be. What you call self-sabotage, science calls self-protection.
These are the pillars of the Healing Hub, the resources & insights that inform our practice.
Survival Mode
At some point, we experienced pain or a break in emotional, psychological or physical safety. In response, our Nervous System came to our defense in the form of fight/flight/freeze/shut down. This is our beautiful self-protective circuit operating how it's supposed to.
The problems arise when we fail to find internal or external safety following the experience, and a dysregulated Nervous System takes over. That armor that once protected us starts to hinder our behaviors, thoughts and emotions, as our brain and body perceive anything similar as a threat IE intimacy, being seen or heard, authority figures, etc.
Bottom-Up Beings
Do you ever wonder why you can't talk yourself into calmness? The answer: your body's in the drivers seat, not your brain. Over 80% of the messages coursing through us is from Body-to-Brain. Moreso, when Survival Mode is activated, our "thinking/cognitive brain" goes offline and the Survival Operating System takes over.
Trauma is a Somatic Experience meaning it's experienced, stored and relived in and through our bodies in the form of sensations, behaviors and feelings. So, "change your thoughts, change your life," isn't enough. Healing requires us to first SHOW, not tell, our Operating System that we are safe.
Are you still surviving, or thriving?
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SYMPTOMS OF HEALING
Healing is not one-size-fits-all.
The complexity of trauma requires a collaborative approach amongst multiple modalities. Scroll through my areas of expertise below.
"Feeling safe is the treatment, and creating safety is the work."
- Dr. Stephen Porges
Developed by world-renowned researcher Dr. Stephen Porges, Polyvagal Theory focuses on what is happening in the body and the nervous system, and explains how our sense of safety, or danger or threat, can impact our behaviors, emotions, and thoughts. The PLV Theory provides an updated version of the nervous system, which is separated into three categories or states: Ventral Vagal (safety and connection), Sympathetic (fight or flight), and Dorsal Vagal (freeze or shut down).
When trauma becomes stuck (ie our NS fails to restore a sense of internal or external safety following trauma) or connection is unavailable, our Autonomic Nervous System becomes dysregulated (stuck in fight, flight, freeze, shutdown).
Using PLV Theory as a framework, we are able to train our nervous systems to be more aware, Regulated and resilient.
"Trauma is about loss of connection, first to the body and self, and second to others and the environment."
- Peter Levine
Trauma is experienced, processed, stored, and relived through our body—or somatically. In response, we must show not tell, our protective parts that we are safe, through Somatic Experiencing. When an individual gets stuck in a Survival response (ie fight, flight, freeze/shutdown), the individual will continually sense danger when danger is not present, or completely shut down and lose capacity to live in the present. This results in an unbalanced Nervous System.
Somatic Experiencing’s aim is to help one access the body memory of the event, so that they can safely and slowly complete the incomplete experience, and come back to present-moment safety. The SE approach offers a space to assess where a person is “stuck” and provides body-oriented tools to turn off the threat alarm that causes severe dysregulation. This is accomplished by slowly and gently discharging survival energy and restoring safety— allowing us to attune to our bodies, connect with others, and come into a regulated Ventral State in our nervous system.
"We're only as needy as our unmet needs."
- John Bowlby
Let's talk relationships. Do you ever wonder why you keep ending up in the same scenario, even with different partners? Are you often clingy or jealous? Are you always less involved than your partner? Maybe you desire connection, but as soon as things get emotionally intimate, you run?
If you've noticed relational patterns that don't seem to serve you, you may have unhealed attachment wounds.
John Bowlby's work on attachment theory dates back to the 1950’s. According to his theory, your early relationship with your caregivers sets the stage for how you build relationships as an adult. Based on the our caregivers' ability to attune and meet our emotional needs for safety, we form attachment styles for future relationships. Adult attachment styles can be identified as: 1. anxious 2. avoidant 3. disorganized 4. secure.
One of our core missions will be to heal childhood attachment wounds, so that we can come into secure attachment with others and ourselves.
Each of us has a variety of inner child parts, spread against the backdrop of different ages, experiences, feelings and pain. Wounds, hurt, grief, shame—what we experience in childhood often gets unprocessed, and the inner child which desperately needs compassion and healing gets locked away and inaccessible for healing.
The product of those inner child wounds can be displayed when we feel ourselves reacting to stressful situations in “childlike” ways. Perhaps at a family get together, mom raises her voice, and before you know it you’re back to feeling like you’re 7 years old again, cowering in the corner. Maybe our partner doesn’t agree with us, and we soon find ourselves throwing a temper tantrum. The mission of inner child work is to allow the Younger You to be finally seen and hard.
It first takes compassionately acknowledging these traumatized parts, then providing your Younger You with the affection, empathy, understanding and safety you lacked all those years ago.
Integration is the final step in the healing journey. It’s the process of learning to coexist with the pain, of understanding that our past wounds may effect our present, but that we no longer have to live in the past.
In other words, life continues on after the pain. The goal of integration is to find sustainable ways to live with it. Using clues from past meaningful experiences, we can visualize and ultimately strategize a brighter tomorrow through the implementation of an Individual Sustainability Plan. Through the work of integration, we can build a life that feels even better than before. A life that brings joy, connection, deeper understanding, purpose, and more.
