Edwin Ancarana

Trauma is our neurobiology’s way of protecting us when we are overwhelmed. Left untreated, it can last an entire lifetime. I help clients understand their experiences, build cognitive and emotional resources, and reprocess traumatic memories so that they become useful instead of overwhelming. Safety is paramount so as to not trigger the client into a traumatic episode. I use CBT, EMDR, and Narrative Therapy as my approach to understanding and processing trauma in a safe and effective manner.

Our entire lives we are told what our gender, orientation, and sexuality, our innermost identities, desires, and passions should be. So what do we do when our experiences don’t match our expectations? I specialize in helping clients navigate through their emotions, preconceptions, beliefs, and values around their gender identity, sexual orientation, and behavioral expressions of their desires, fantasies, practices, and lifestyles. I am LGBTIQ, poly, and kink friendly and knowledgeable.

We learn how to be close to one another from our earliest childhood relationships: mother and father, brothers and sisters, extended family and friends. We bring those experiences and expectations into every relationship we create. And when those relationships break down, we can feel betrayed, hurt, violated. I use Emotionally Focused Therapy, Non-Violent Communication, and Narrative Therapy to reframe experiences and expectations and make the relationship a place of safety and intimacy.

“People are not disturbed by things, but by the view they take of them:" Epictetus, Stoic philosopher Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is arguably the gold standard for modern psychotherapy, from which all other therapies are derived, related, or in reaction to. It takes a direct look at the relationships between thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, how they influence our beliefs about ourselves, others, and the world, and what we can do to change those relationships for the better.

“Although many of us think of ourselves as thinking creatures that feel, biologically we are feeling creatures that think:” Jill Bolte Taylor, neuroanatomist. Emotionally Focused Therapy recognizes that our emotional lives are the source of our desires, values, sense of meaning and purpose, and attachment to self, others, and the world. Its goal is to help clients effectively acknowledge, cope with, and regulate their emotions in order to enrich and transform their lives.

"The problem is the problem, the person is not the problem:" Michael White and David Epston, psychotherapists, founders of Narrative Therapy Narrative Therapy is a postmodern approach to therapy. It helps the client reframe their difficulties as primarily social and outside of themselves, which gives them more options for personal agency and effective change.