Christina LaBond (she/her)

One's view of self influences satisfaction/fulfillment in all life domains. Stigma and oppression can cause one to struggle with doubts of self-worth, experience shame and a sense of isolation. Together we can cultivate an awareness of the problems created by discrimination, to help find and embrace your authentic self.

It is the actual avoidance of anxiety and panic symptoms that maintain it. My approach is to face it head on, by taking a bottom-up approach. This means starting with somatic work to heal the nervous system before working on cognitive restructuring. You can't simply "talk" yourself out of feeling bad, so healing must come first. I work to empower people so the feel in control of their nervous system rather than accepting the fight-or-flight survival response as baseline.

Similar to anxiety, it is the avoidance of trauma cues that maintain the symptoms. I take a bottom-up approach, first healing the lower levels of brain that correlate with the nervous system and the fight-or-flight survival response. This helps people realize they are able to control and heal the dysregulated nervous system. Once that is achieved, we work on processing trauma memories in a way that allows the person to experience post-traumatic growth, which is much more than resilience.

I have been using CBT for many years with great success. I believe it is a modality that helps most, regardless of what your challenges and goals are.

Most recent research in neuroscience shows that in order to heal, we have to start with a bottom-up approach which means healing the nervous system before we focus on cognitive restructuring.

I've received additional training on IFS and found this to be quite a powerful intervention for most individuals.