Trauma Therapy

Trauma can cause you a lot of pain and can really impact your life in many different ways. You may be confused about why you react in various ways and feel guilt or shame about your reactions. You may find yourself becoming easily overwhelmed over things that seem insignificant. Often, you may feel you can’t control yourself and feel stuck in your suffering.

The Struggles of Trauma

Trauma can affect every part of your life. Some of the common struggles that result from past trauma include:

• Being triggered: feel like your reactions are instantaneous and out of your control, find yourself reacting strongly to little things, or find your reactions don’t make sense of what is going on in the moment
• Always on-edge, hypervigilant, and on the lookout for danger
• Intrusive thoughts, memories, images, emotions, or sensations (may be related to the trauma or a fear connected to the trauma)
• Avoiding people, places, or things that remind you of the trauma
• Feeling numb, detached or disconnected from emotions or your body
• Increased irritability, anger outbursts, or difficulty regulating emotions
• Troubles focusing, brain fog, difficulty making decisions, or difficulty remembering things
• Holding negative beliefs about yourself, traumatic events, or the world in general
• Feeling like you can’t trust anyone, nowhere is safe, or nobody understands
• Struggles with fear, guilt, shame, and self-blame
• Feeling like you need to keep busy, that you can’t relax, or are unable to express affection
• Feeling sad, hopeless, helpless, overwhelmed, or out of control
• Insomnia, nightmares, fatigue, anxiety, panic attacks, physical pain and digestive issues.

Trauma can affect every part of your life and can feel like a weight pulling you down.

The Path Forward

There are ways to process trauma and reduce the symptoms that are causing you so much suffering. We can find healing to reduce how much trauma is affecting your life and help you find a path forward with less pain and suffering.

We can figure out a treatment plan that’s right for your trauma and experiences, so we can put your trauma in the past where it belongs and help you grow from your experiences.

Please book a free 15-minute consultation to find out how I can help you, or continue reading below.

Who Am I and Why Am I Passionate about Trauma

I’m Leona Westra and am a Registered Clinical Counsellor (RCC) with lived experience of childhood emotional neglect and trauma. I know how paralyzing and out of control the effects of trauma can be. It can limit and prevent you from fully engaging in life. Your trauma responses can cause additional pain and suffering.

Still, there are ways to reduce its impact on you. We can work together to ease your suffering, put your past where it belongs, and help you live with more ease. We can bring understanding to what you have experienced and turn the page, building you up stronger and freer than before.

I’ve trained in multiple modalities to bring you the knowledge, skills, techniques, and strategies to address your current challenges and work towards lasting change.

A Safe Environment to be Real About Your Pain

So often we hide our pain for various reasons (don’t want to be a burden to our friends and family; doesn’t feel appropriate or safe). I provide a welcoming environment where you can be real about how your struggles are affecting you. A space you can be honest enough to feel seen, heard, and validated. A space where we can work through your deepest, hidden burdens and talk about the toll they take, so you can reduce what you’re carrying.

How I Approach Trauma

Trauma can often find a way to derail your life. Things that didn’t used to be a struggle now are. You may feel out of control, not understand why you do things, or feel stuck in the healing process.

I’ll work with you to help you understand why your nervous system is reacting the way it is, and what we can do to change that. We can find ways to stabilize and increase your capacity.

Your Suffering is Real

Trauma can affect every area of your life. From the inner turmoil it causes to the changed behaviours that affect your relationships, work and social life. I understand and bring compassion to the struggles of dealing with the effects of trauma on a daily basis.

Ways to Heal from Trauma

Fortunately, there are ways to heal from trauma. We can enlarge your toolbox so that you can cope and have a plan for when your trauma gets triggered.

Trauma can often warp our beliefs about ourselves and the world. We can understand how those beliefs formed and use skills, techniques, and strategies to modify them and reduce the suffering they cause in your life. For the beliefs that are stuck in trauma, we can use modalities like EMDR and IFS to process, desensitize, and integrate them. For patterns that feel instinctive but no longer help, we can retrain your brain to default to less negativity.

How Do I Apply My Training and Knowledge to Help You with Your Challenges from Trauma

• EMDR, Internal Family Systems/Parts Work, and other trauma approaches to help you process your trauma, desensitize your traumatic memories, and put your trauma in its place so it doesn’t affect you as much
• Psychoeducation to normalize some of the consequences of trauma, validate your reactions, reduce the shame and guilt, and release some of the burdens you may be carrying.
• For relational trauma, I use psychoeducation about attachment, narcissistic abuse, growing up with emotionally immature parents, and interpersonal neurobiology to help you understand why you may be reacting the way you are and skills to help you process the relationships that can be damaging.
• Teach skills (including from CBT, DBT, and Mindfulness) to help you improve your coping strategies and give you tools to retrain your brain towards a more positive and purposeful mindset)
• Use strategies from Polyvagal Theory, Acceptance and Self-compassion to help you reduce the suffering and dysregulation associated with your trauma
• Grief therapy to help you process the losses associated with your trauma

You are not alone in this process, and I can guide you through it. I firmly believe we can work together to reduce your suffering and help you get more out of your life.

Specific Types of Trauma

Narcissistic Abuse/Pathological Relationships/Antagonist Relationships

The psychological effect on victims can involve your self-identity, self-trust, perception and self-value, as well as dealing with trauma bonds and cognitive dissonance.

Spiritual Abuse/Trauma

The manipulation of religious works and scripture to control and manipulate you. This can bring additional suffering and challenges over similar psychological abuse and trauma that come from non-religious factors.

Childhood Emotional Neglect

Childhood emotional neglect can have a huge effect on your ability to connect healthily with others because your emotional development was neglected when you were a child. This can show up as a lack of self-acceptance, people-pleasing, feeling empty, a harsh inner critic, and struggles with identity.

Medical Trauma

Medical trauma can come in different forms, from falling through the cracks of the system, a botched surgery, to medical gaslighting. Your health matters, and problems with the health care system can interfere with your ability to care for yourself, yet you don’t have the power to change it.

PTSD

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is the official DSM diagnosis for trauma. It is more focused on acute trauma, and not all trauma meets the criteria of PTSD.

Relational Abuse/Trauma

Trauma from relationships has the unique aspect of a betrayal of trust that can add to the suffering of what happened.

Complex Trauma

When you endure prolonged trauma during your developing years, it can have a profound effect on you and your nervous system. The symptoms are often more intense and ingrained than trauma that happens later in life.

Childhood Adverse Experiences

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) can have a big impact on both mental and physical health later in life. There’s extensive research on their possible effects, and therapy, along with various techniques and strategies, can help mitigate them.

What Results Have My Clients Seen

• Improved coping and feeling more in control of their lives and their emotions
• Reduction of trauma triggers, trauma symptoms, and trauma’s effect on their lives
• Increase in self-worth, self-esteem, and self-confidence
• Fewer feelings of shame and guilt
• Feeling less on-edge and reactive
• Better boundaries, improved self-care, and better quality of life
• Improved sleep and ability to relax
• Increased sense of safety and freedom
• Release of previously held burdens and trauma-related beliefs

Find Out What Healing is Possible for You

Trauma does not need to be a lifelong burden weighing you down. We can work together to alleviate your suffering, reduce your struggles, and reveal the self that was hidden by all your pain and suffering. You don’t have to do this alone; I’ll be there with you, encouraging you through the struggles and helping you toward a better path.

Take the Next Step and Get More Out of Your Life

Please Book a Free 15-minute Consultation to Find Out How I Can Help You with Your Trauma.

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