📍 211- 1940 Lonsdale Ave, North Vancouver | 📞 (604) 674-3380 | ✉️ undacounselling@gmail.com
When the past shows up in the present
Sometimes you know something is in the past, but your body doesn't seem to have gotten the message.
You might find yourself reacting more strongly than you expect, getting pulled into old feelings in your relationships, shutting down or disconnecting when things feel too much, or automatically moving into people-pleasing, defensiveness, or control.
You may understand intellectually why you do what you do and still find yourself doing it in the moment.
Maybe you have a sense that something from your past is connected to what you're experiencing now. Or maybe you don't know where it comes from at all.
You don't have to figure that out before you come to therapy. We can start with what's happening now and become curious about what's underneath it together.
Trauma is more than what happened
The word trauma gets used a lot. I think it's worth slowing down and considering what we actually mean by it.
Trauma isn't simply the difficult or painful thing that happened to you. It's what can remain when an experience overwhelms your capacity to process it, leaving behind something your body, mind, or heart continues to protect, defend, or carry.
Sometimes trauma comes from one significant event. Sometimes it develops through repeated experiences or relational patterns over time.
You can't change the past, but you can change the ways it continues to live in you.
Looking beneath the symptom
My approach to trauma therapy is depth-oriented. Rather than simply trying to stop or change a symptom, we can become curious about what that symptom is doing for you.
The things you struggle with today may have once been ways of adapting, protecting yourself, or staying connected to the people you depended on.
Together, we can begin to explore:
What is being protected?
What might your reactions be trying to keep you safe from?
What is underneath?
What feelings, needs, fears, or experiences become harder to access when your protective responses take over?
What becomes possible with more choice?
Instead of automatically falling into an old response, what might it be like to have more room to pause, feel, choose, and respond differently?
The goal isn't to get rid of the parts of you that struggle. It's to understand them well enough that they don't have to work quite so hard.
How we work together
The therapeutic relationship matters
Trauma therapy isn't just about what happened in the past. It's also about what happens in relationship—and that means our relationship matters, too.
My approach is relational, attachment-focused, parts-informed, and grounded in an understanding of the nervous system. I pay attention to what happens between us, as well as what happens inside you, because therapy can become a place to experience something different: being seen, having choice, expressing what you actually feel, and repairing when something doesn't go as expected [Learn more about my specific approaches here].
Depending on what you're bringing and what feels like a good fit, our work may draw from relational and attachment-based therapy, parts work, nervous-system-informed approaches, experiential processing, and EMDR.
If you find yourself and your experience anywhere in these words, please feel free to connect with me for a free 15-minute consultation call to see how I may be able to be with you in your healing and growth.
"The world breaks everyone, and afterward some are strong at the broken places." - Ernest Hemingway
