Monica Fuentes Carbonetto (She/Her/Hers)

I provide gender-affirming care to members of the trans+ community so they can safely explore their identities, clarify their goals, have support to facilitate their access to gender-affirming treatments (including writing letters of support), strengthen their ability to cope with the challenges they may face during their medical and social transitions, heal from rejection and internalized stigma, and live happily and proudly as their authentic selves.

Nací en Sudamérica y vine a los Estados Unidos ya siendo una adulta. Como Latina, me siento feliz cuando puedo ofrecer mis servicios a personas que hablan Español, y procesar con ellos sus historias de aculturación, incluidas las pérdidas humanas y materiales, el desarraigo, la adaptación, y las oportunidades que conlleva inmigrar a otro país.

I believe that all of us have the capacity to heal, but sometimes that capacity has been overloaded because the experiences that we are trying to heal from, took place too early in our lives, and/or were too painful, too unexpected, or too repetitive. In order to process those experiences, we need to recover a sense of safety and, since trauma lives in parts of our brain that are difficult to access by talk therapy, we need a bodily-aware modality that can help the processing in a deeper level.

EMDR helps to access and reprocess past traumatic events that are affecting their life. The responses that our nervous system may have developed to survive or adapt to those experiences were helpful at that time. But probably, they are insufficient or detrimental when we try to feel at peace with ourselves and with others and are not contributing to make our life better. Being able to reprocess those memories could help clients to feel less triggered and have more adaptive responses.

EMDR is a type of treatment that, by using bilateral stimulation and maintaining a dual awareness, helps us to reach a more adaptive resolution of our past. A more adaptive resolution integrates traumatic or adverse experiences without feeling neither that they are happening now (so we are in constant danger) nor that we are stuck in the moment when they were happening (so we are inevitably helpless).

Our mental health is a manifestation of differing forces that come from biological, cognitive, affective, unconscious, environmental / behavioral and systemic paradigms. The influence of these forces can explain the origin and maintenance of psychological maladjustment, but can also work to achieve positive change. It's essential to make a holistic analysis and identify opportunities in each paradigm to maximize the effectiveness of the therapy.

CST is about becoming more aware of our unconscious biases as therapists and cultivating our humbleness to listen and support our clients, without imposing labels, norms or standards that work for us but not necessary for them.