Trish McKenna (She/her)

Trauma is complex and unique to each individual, so treatments will require a finetune set of techniques. Our nervous system development starts in utero, and as we experience life, neuroplasticity helps us form and reorganize synapses that inform our survival instinct. Most of us experience a spectrum of trauma throughout our lives feeding our nervous system with information from which we learn to survive and cope. We can heal through seeking understanding and relearning safe coping mechanisms.

Generational trauma is traumas we identified and inexperience through how the systems in which we live identify and treat us. It lives on through implicit and/or nonverbal communication but is felt deeply. Once we sought understanding of this trauma, we are empowered to tell our stories, and seek self-compassion, we can start to heal and thrive.

While our divorce rate has gone down over the last couple of decades to 27% (CDC), over 40% of married people report they are unhappy in their marriage (Pew Research). Happy marriages can be linked to better health and wellbeing (NIH). We are each individual with our own past, trauma, and needs. Sometimes we have trouble communicating these aspects of our lives with our spouse that is keeping our relationship from growing. Together we can seek understanding and help your marriage thrive.

We all have parts that help us survive. When we seek understanding in how we survived, we can start to feel compassion for those parts and heal. Once we gain more insight into why we do what we are not aware of, we can unlearn what we no longer need and relearn what we now need to thrive.

Through understanding how our body and mind are connected we learn to become aware of our coping behaviors. DBT helps us become more aware of our behaviors and our mind to live in the moment, develop healthy ways to cope with stress, regulate our emotions and improve our relationships with others.

What is not spoken is felt. Our body keeps the scores from all our traumas, big and small. When we learn not to feel safe seeking connection, expressing our pain and suffering, we suppress them and learn to cope in other ways to survive. Psychodynamic helps us explore and understand the feelings that affect our body and how we express ourselves in our relationships.

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy is an extensively researched, effective psychotherapy method proven to help people recover from trauma and other distressing life experiences. When distress from a disturbing event remains, the upsetting images, thoughts, and emotions may create an overwhelming feeling of being back in that moment, or of being “frozen in time.” EMDR therapy helps the brain process these memories and allows normal healing to resume.

Our nervous system is the first to develop in the womb; how we experience the world from conception to birth informs our core sense of safety and inform how we cope. NARM aims to treat attachment, relational and developmental trauma, or “Complex Trauma” (Complex-PTSD or C-PTSD). This developmentally-oriented, neuroscientifically-informed model emerged out of earlier psychotherapeutic orientations including Psychodynamic Psychotherapy approaches.