Kathleen Dunbar Psychotherapy

Coping Rather than Living 

Sometimes we go through experiences that shake our trust in people and in life itself. Our outlook on life changes, and becomes limited in a long-term way: 

• Our bodies may feel a frequent, unsettling “charge.” 
• That charge can also be very persuasive, drawing us into harmful relationships or activities. 
• The quality of our lives becomes affected: some people have flashbacks to an event, or bad dreams. 
• Others feel a general unease and expectation of danger, but can’t pinpoint exactly what. 
• We might start to avoid people. 
• We might find ourselves seeking out dangerous situations over and over again. 
• We might get angry or cry for no apparent reason. 
• We might feel like we’re on a rollercoaster of over-intense feelings mixed with periods of numbness and “checking out.” Life turns into coping with this ride rather than choosing what we truly want.  

Getting the Good Stuff Back: 
Learning to Use Our Resources to Heal and Thrive! 

Healing from Trauma 
Healing from trauma has main three elements.

1. Recognize and use RESOURCES – “the good stuff” – and stand in your wholeness. 
2. Release the pent up charge that’s been held in the body so you can come back into balance and find a sense of calmness and renewed life-force. 
3. Live into your new and beautiful story, the one you choose now: you move from surviving to thriving! 

Resources 
Resources are anything that helps us. We learn again to recognize what feels nourishing and stay with that more and more. 

• It’s coming back to good things: friends, your pet, the warmth of sunlight on skin, a favorite piece of music, an image of a sunflower field.

In our sessions I will help you re-learn to deeply let these things be part of your daily experience through mindfulness, experiential and somatic techniques and finding your own unique expression. 

Shifting Gears – Getting Rid of the “Charge” 
When we live with trauma, our nervous system feels continually active. People often describe it as a “charge” that they feel inside. If we are traumatized, anxious, panicky, then that charge hasn’t had a chance to be let out of our arms, legs, voice, muscles, etc. 

I offer modalities based in trauma theory, neuroscience and somatics to help the charge unwind its way out of your body and be finished. When it's out, it's out, and you can more easily come back into balance and vitality, and find aliveness and joy. Along the way "what happened to you" naturally becomes located in the past and you find your true and alive self living in the present. 

Trauma includes: PTSD, Complex-PTSD, Shock Trauma, Developmental Trauma, Attachment Trauma.

The methods I use to heal trauma: 

• Sensorimotor Psychotherapy 
• Polyvagal Work  (Stephen Porges)
• Psycho-physical Therapy (Bill Bowen)
• Movement Practices
• Visualizations
• Parts Work (Parts Work in the Hakomi and Re-Creation of The Self style, a somatic cousin of IFS/Internal Family Systems)
• Attachment Work
• Healing Developmental Wounding
• Psychotherapy-Informed Tablework for those interested

Moving from Surviving to Thriving!
While we take in the goodness of life again, we tell our story to someone who believes we can be whole again and is strong and skilled enough to help us calm and remember who we are. We might find ourselves drawn into the old story for a while, but we learn to let go of that old story and pick up the new story, the beautiful, vital and unique expression of life that has always been ours and has been waiting for us to find. Along the way we’re weaving in some new elements: a caring listener, positive things in our lives, an ability to calm ourselves, and reclaiming our wholeness. At some point we find our own meaning to what happened: 

We find that what happened is truly in the past. It’s what happened to us, not who we are, or who we ever were. We know this and can start to feel more safe, supported and whole. We learn to trust and laugh again.