What are Trauma Support Sessions?

Throughout all our sessions, I offer you a space to land and to be met in companionship. This is the foundation of all of my work, whatever else we do together.

These sessions offer you a space to return to while you navigate life in a body that holds trauma and the complex intersections with your being human (e.g. chronic illness, mental illness, grief, oppression…) and as you navigate all of the other cultures, systems, communities and relationships involved in your life, along with your relationship with yourself.

This is a space for your to be met in your complex reality, and to be seen as whole and fully human throughout it all. You get to bring talk through and be witnessed in whatever aspects of your life you want to bring to this space.

As part of this my companionship support, you are also welcome to email me between sessions (this is not a crisis service and I ask clients allow 72 hours for a response, unless otherwise notified about my availability).

As a Trauma Informed Embodiment Practitioner, I can provide support around resourcing and exploring safeness and stabilization in our bodies.

This work includes:-

• exploring the nervous system and body's trauma responses,

• exploring your internal and external resources,

• safety planning

• practical exercises, tools, learning and support in nervous system soothing & regulation,

• grounding, presencing and re-orientation.

• explorations of slowing down, pacing and managing discomfort

While there can be a natural progression within this approach, these sessions will honour your pace and needs throughout. It is also work that we can return to over and over as we live with trauma, so it might be appropriate for us to return to certain parts of the work throughout our time together.

It is also important that we are practicing resourcing/regulation work before we enter into any deeper body reclamation or therapeutic healing, so that we have resources we can return to over and over while we navigate potentially challenging experiences.

This work supports you in finding tools for stabilization and a sense of safeness as you live your life with trauma.

When we experience trauma, we often have complex experiences of disconnection from our bodies.

Trauma-Informed Embodiment practices, or Body Reclamation, is about reclaiming what is already yours: YOUR BODY.

It is about reconnecting with and exploring what it means to live in your body. It is about learning to trust and care for and stay with your body, returning to what that means to you (even where that means needing to check-out sometimes). It is about exploring and reclaiming your complexities as a human in a body. It is about reclaiming your body while living with trauma and all the complex intersections of your being human.

I will always encourage us to explore Resourcing before and throughout any deeper Embodiment or Body Reclamation work, as intentionally doing this type of work can bring up a lot as we reconnect with our bodies. AND as with all the services I have explained here, this work of Body Reclamation is not linear, and is work we can return to at deeper layers throughout our lives.

This process can include work and explorations around the following areas:-

• resourcing (returning to - none of this work is linear)

• grief, trauma and the body

• boundaries & consent

• taking up space

• touch & reclaiming the body

• oppression & collective liberation

• complexity & identity

• being seen & heard

• movement

• creativity, pleasure & play

• sensory connection & listening

• parts work

Whether we are aware of it or not, we are all impacted by the cultures we live in. The cultures we are impacted by are wide ranging, including societies, communities, systems, families, workplaces, institutions, social groups etc.

Many of these cultures can impact us in ways that can be harmful, abusive, oppressive and sometimes traumatic - to ourselves and to others.

Throughout our sessions I will gently invite you to unravel beliefs, behaviours and conditioning that might stem from abuse or oppression, inviting you to reclaim your own voice, beliefs and identity, and to engage in examining potentially new ways of being and belonging.

I always enter into this work from a places of compassion, non-judgement, non-shaming and accountability - which is different to punishment - allowing for our human complexity and offering space to unravel that which might be harmful to you or others, and space to explore possibilities and entry points to your own understanding, self-compassion and collective liberation.

Many of the cultures we live within do not welcome complexity. They want us to exist in a binary - to be or feel or experience one thing or another, or to fit into boxes that do not allow for the fullness of our humanity.

This, and other ways we might experience trauma, also often creates a disconnection and sometimes fragmentation of our parts of our identity and being. Often having the impact of asking us to hide parts of ourselves away (even from ourselves) or to only allow certain parts of ourselves to be seen in certain spaces.

Whether you want to enter into specific embodiment work (see above) or not, throughout our sessions I will offer space for you to explore your own complexities - exploring the complexity needs, emotions, feelings, relationships, identities, memories, experiences and all other aspects of our being human. Unraveling the conditioning or survival responses that might have meant it was safer to exist in a way that was disconnected from much of your complexity, and allowing space to begin acknowledging and listening to the complexities of your experience as a whole human being.

This work might also bring in Parts work - working with and connecting to different parts of your body or self (e,g, younger parts of you).

When we live with trauma, we are often treated as ‘disordered’ and/or we might not understand why we are impacted or responding in the ways we are. Throughout our sessions I will try to humanize the experience of trauma, supporting you to understand your own trauma responses and the impacts of trauma on your life, and, if wanted, providing guidance around how we might begin to change patterns, or find more ease, or find compassion for yourself.

Person-centered meaning you get to decide what support you need and what direction we go in from the beginning and in every session. I hope to create a collaborative relationship with you where I do not sit as ‘expert’. I will not assume to know you or your experiences better than you, and I believe you and your knowing of yourself first and foremost, including in whether you want to work with me.

Consent-based meaning I will continuously check-in with you throughout our work (including in the consultation phase) and even, or especially, during sessions to ask for consent before we enter into/continue with a particular kind of work, and I will listen for non-verbal indicators that a No might be present. And I encourage and celebrate your No, as well as your Yes. (In addition to how exploring consent in and of itself is a huge part of this work.)

Non-pathologizing meaning I do not believe you need to be fixed, or that there is anything wrong with you in your trauma responses. Trauma begins with our bodies doing what they needed to do to keep us alive and any impacts of trauma thereafter do not indicate that anything is wrong with you or your body, but rather you are human and impacted. A huge part of my work is in trying to normalize these human experiences, while acknowledging how we all need support and offering support while you navigate your human experiences and needs (often in a culture that repeatedly pathologizes us).

I will not (and cannot) diagnose you with any health condition (mental health or otherwise) and I will explore your support options with you, should you want and need them. I will acknowledge and try to work with the times when labels are useful in accessing support, and when certain labels or diagnoses make a conversation more accessible or understandable, and I will always explore what this means for you and continuously be in conversation with you around the meaning you place on words, diagnoses, labels or terminology.

Anti-oppressive meaning I am dedicated to working towards collective liberation and I am continuously unraveling the layers of my own oppressive conditioning, including in the work I do and in the cultures/sectors/professions I work within/alongside, and that I can meet you in exploring how oppression has impacted you (including its traumatic impacts) and in unraveling your oppressive conditioning, too, should you feel safe enough to explore these areas with me.

When we live with trauma, we often live with deep shame. All of my work tries to unravel this conditioning and ‘rewire’ our brains and bodies towards practices of compassion. Even where we enter into accountability processes, I believe we can and should bring in compassion. (And I always work with the complexity of this and encourage clear boundaries where needed.)

I do not prescribe to models of ‘healing’ that try to get us to a place of ‘fixed’ or ‘fully healed’ or that mean we cannot ever be impacted by our trauma again. I believe trauma to be more complex than this, and while the work I offer might be therapeutic and healing at times, I do not believe this is ever linear, nor are the practices we may enter into, and encourage us each to go at our own pace, to trust our own non-linear processes and to have compassion for the ongoing impacts trauma might hold in our lives.