Trauma Therapy in Surrey, BC
Trauma doesn't always look like what you'd expect.
It's not always a dramatic event with a clear before and after. Sometimes it's a slow accumulation. The relationship that eroded your sense of self, the childhood where you learned to be small, the thing that happened that you've never told anyone. Sometimes it's the feeling that you're managing fine on the outside but something underneath hasn't caught up.
You might not even be sure you'd call it trauma because it doesn’t seem as bad as what others have experienced. But something keeps pulling you back. And it's exhausting.
Only when we identify our pain, can we can truly start to leave it behind.
Your mind and body intuitively know when something isn’t quite right.
Is there an unsettling memory that keeps resurfacing and throwing you off-balance? Or a tense feeling inside your chest that takes up too much space in your day? This can be a result of lingering past trauma. And it’s something we all experience in different ways.
Insomnia… substance use… flashbacks. You might not even label it as trauma yourself yet. But if you’re here, you recognize something painful is stopping you moving on and living your full potential.
You know you want to make a change.
In our experience working with people who have survived a traumatic experience, it can be helpful to picture there are events that can be considered as “big T trauma” or “little t trauma”.
If you think of trauma as something you weren’t prepared for and changed the way you experience life, it can encompass quite a few experiences. A “little t” trauma could be you were bullied at school. Now, you feel ashamed of the person you are, constantly questioning if people like you, and unable to forget the awful things people said about you.
On the other spectrum, a “big T” trauma is something that completely overwhelmed you, diminished your sense of who you are, and your ability to manage your emotions. In short, it left you a stranger to the person you once were. And you can no longer live in a way that feels happy or comfortable. This experience could be something like infidelity, a car accident, sexual abuse or war.
What trauma therapy with me looks like
I work in an integrative way, which means I draw from a range of approaches depending on what you need. This includes EMDR, which is one of the most well-researched methods for processing traumatic memories — I'll explain this more on the EMDR page if you want to learn about it. I also work with somatic and attachment-based approaches that help your nervous system, not just your mind, come to a place of safety.
We don't rush. We don't go further than you're ready to go. And we work toward something specific: you feeling more like yourself, more settled in your body, and more in control of your own story.
Who Trauma Therapy Is For
✓ Women carrying the weight of past relationships or experiences that have never fully healed
✓ Couples where one or both partners have trauma histories that are affecting the relationship
✓ Anyone who has tried therapy before but felt like they kept talking without actually moving
✓ Couples who are struggling to move past an event that changed the course of their relationship and want to come back together again
✓ People who are functioning well on the outside but know something needs to change
✓ People looking to understand their emotions and reactions to different situations so they can show up authentically for themselves and “their people”
Tools You Will Develop
✓ Release past trauma from the mind and body
✓ Re-establish safety in yourself and others
✓ Process and express strong emotions
✓ Find your voice, to be heard within and in your relationships
✓ Overcome triggers and stressors in a healthy way
✓ Practice self-love and connect to yourself and others again
You don't have to keep managing this alone.
Healing from trauma is possible. Not in the sense that you'll forget what happened, but in the sense that it will stop running your life. That's what we're working toward.
I offer in-person trauma therapy in Surrey, BC and online sessions throughout British Columbia.