Working with Trauma

I have been working with survivors of physical, sexual and emotional abuse for more than 20 years.  Because abuse victims largely are women and female children, my work predominantly has been with women, although, I have worked with adult men who were abused as children. Mostly my work is with adults and adolescents. I am a level II EMDR practitioner.

Working with abuse/trauma issues is time consuming, difficult, and circuitous.  Often, the end goal doesn’t match up with the foreseen end that was planned for in the beginning of the therapy.  In my early years of working with trauma, hope of a full, unblemished recovery, with no residual memories or damage was the sought after goal.  I think the truth is that recovery is absolutely possible, but no one gets away unscathed.  There is no such thing as coming through to the other side without scars or lasting aches.

I believe the goal and healing part of therapy is in being able to help someone be heard out.  And working with those words until they have no more power and the memories are just that – stories about what happened long ago.  The goal I think is to begin a different way of carrying oneself in the world.  A kind of knowing, sometimes sad, but much less burdened way of being.

It is hard work and is time consuming, and there are no short cuts.  I work conjointly with area psychiatrists for help prescribing medicines when they are indicated.  I believe that the work lies in narrating your own story, connecting with the past in a way that is cathartic, and making reconnections and relationships, where possible, with some of the non-offending relatives, especially siblings and friends, aunts and grandmothers.  But the most important relationship is with a therapist, where for perhaps the first time truth can be sought out
and heard.