My Approach
Creating Internal Safety after Chronic Stress, Illness, and Trauma
I personally know how difficult, isolating, and even debilitating it can be to live with illness while also carrying years of stress and trauma in your body.
I spent over a decade taking healing-based programs, working with different practitioners, and trying to understand what was happening with me. But I found that very few approaches were designed for people who were dealing with both physical illness and the effects of long-term stress and trauma.
That gap is a big part of why I chose to train specifically in this work.
Because if you've had a history like mine - there's a good chance that you already understand why you feel the way you do. You may have talked about it in therapeutic settings, read about it, taken courses, or even spent years trying to heal it. But unfortunately so many of us were never taught that only understanding your stress responses intellectually does not actually help your body to feel any safer when symptoms and overwhelm are always there.
This is exactly why I chose to study and professionally train in somatic (body-based) approaches that help you work directly with these responses while they're actually happening. So you can begin feeling safer and more at home in your body, respond differently when stress and symptoms come up, and have more capacity to move toward the relationships, goals, and parts of life that matter deeply to you.
If you're curious about these approaches, I've shared more about each one below.
REGULATING YOUR NERVOUS SYSTEM (WITH POLYVAGAL THEORY)
You can intellectually know that you're safe, but your body doesn't always seem to respond that way:
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You wake up exhausted but already bracing for the day.
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Someone’s tone changes or they make a weird comment and your entire body tightens.
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A symptom starts to worsen and suddenly you cannot focus on anything else.
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You really want to do something, but your body feels completely frozen or shut down and you can't seem to make yourself do it.
And when these responses are happening regularly, it can become incredibly difficult to feel calm, connected, and present in your own life.
Polyvagal Theory, developed by Dr. Stephen Porges, gives us a framework for understanding the 3 main states our bodies move through in response to stress, safety, and perceived threats. These states directly affect how we feel, think, behave, connect with others, and experience our bodies:
IMMOBILIZATION / COLLAPSE (DORSAL VAGAL STATE)
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This is the state where you feel shut down, disconnected, numb, exhausted, foggy, helpless, or like you just can't make yourself do anything.
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You might have difficulty thinking or speaking, feel disconnected from your body, or spend hours scrolling, lying in bed, or avoiding everything because you simply can't engage.
MOBILIZATION / FIGHT OR FLIGHT (SYMPATHETIC STATE)
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This is the state where you feel anxious, fearful, panicked, angry, restless, tense, or like everything needs to happen RIGHT NOW.
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You may notice racing thoughts, a rapid heart rate, heat, clenching, buzzing, difficulty focusing, or a strong urge to move, fix, solve, or get away.
SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT / SAFETY (VENTRAL VAGAL STATE)
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This is the state where you may feel more connected, present, curious, engaged, steady, capable, relaxed, content, or open to what's happening around you.
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You have more access to connection, pleasure, curiosity, and the ability to respond to what's happening instead of automatically reacting to it.
When you've experienced chronic illness and longterm stress, your body may move into Dorsal or Sympathetic (our self-protective states) very quickly, sometimes even when there isn't an immediate threat, and stay stuck there for long periods of time. Understanding these states can help you first recognize what's happening in your body, instead of judging or blaming yourself for how you're responding.
From there, you can begin practicing ways of working WITH your body's responses rather than fighting them, so you can have more choice in how you respond to difficult emotions, symptoms, and everyday stressors. This is also what makes it possible to finally feel present, connected, and able to fully enjoy your life - and to move towards the relationships, experiences, and goals you are deeply wanting.
CREATING SAFETY IN YOUR BODY (WITH SOMATIC EXPERIENCING)
When we've experienced ongoing trauma, illness, or difficult experiences that were too much for our bodies to fully process at the time, we can continue to carry the effects of those experiences long after they're over.
In our day to day lives, this can look like automatically bracing with fear and worst-case-scenarios when a symptom appears or shifts, feeling frozen when we try to respond in a relational conflict, becoming shut down whenever we try to move towards something we're wanting, or suddenly becoming extremely anxious when trying to express a need.
And oftentimes, these stress responses don't lessen or disappear even if you've spent YEARS in therapy, talking about your childhood or medical trauma, processing difficult experiences, or trying to understand why certain situations affect you so strongly.
This is where Somatic Experiencing, developed by Dr. Peter Levine, can be so helpful in filling this gap. It is a body-based approach that helps us work with these types of stress responses in small, manageable ways.
Instead of only talking about what happened, we pay attention to what's happening in your body right now. You might notice tension, tightness, shaking, heat, numbness, an urge to move, or a feeling that you need to get away.
By slowing down and working with these sensations gradually, you can begin to experience more safety, calm, and choice in your body and in everyday situations without becoming overwhelmed or engulfed by the stress.
One of the things I love most about Somatic Experiencing is that you don't have to continually revisit every difficult experience you've been through. Instead, we work with what's happening in the present moment, at a pace your body can handle (and work with the past in a way that's not just overwhelming rehashing).
Over time, this can help you respond differently when stress, difficult emotions, physical symptoms, or old patterns show up, so you can feel more present, connected, and in control in your everyday life.
CREATING SAFETY IN YOUR RELATIONSHIPS (WITH SOMATIC ATTACHMENT WORK)
Our early relationships teach us a LOT about what closeness, connection, and safety feel like. If you've experienced relational trauma, you may have learned that getting close to people isn't always safe or predictable. And those patterns can continue showing up in your adult relationships, often without you consciously choosing them.
You might feel unsafe when someone gets too close, pull away when a relationship becomes more intimate, or become very anxious when someone takes space or seems less available. You might desperately want connection but find yourself surrounded by people who aren't really able to meet you there.
And when you're already living with chronic illness, pain, or the effects of prolonged stress, relationships that feel unpredictable or emotionally draining can become even harder to navigate.
Your relationships shouldn't have to be another place where you're managing stress, taking care of everyone else, worrying about how someone will react, or wondering whether it's okay to ask for what you need. Instead, they should provide a space where you can ask for help, receive care without feeling like a burden, and trust that someone's emotional presence isn't going to disappear when things get difficult. Because when you're already managing so much physically and emotionally, having someone you can say “I need help” to, and trust that they'll actually show up, can make a HUGE difference.
Somatic Attachment Theory gives us a way to work with what happens in your body during closeness, conflict, vulnerability, distance, and connection. Instead of only understanding your attachment patterns intellectually, we pay attention to what happens in your body during those moments and practice staying connected to yourself while you're connecting with someone else.
Over time, this can help you begin experiencing relationships differently:
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Someone needing space doesn't automatically mean you've done something wrong.
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You can ask for help without rehearsing the request for three days.
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You can receive care without immediately feeling like you need to repay it.
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You can disagree with someone without automatically becoming overwhelmed or shutting down.
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Someone being upset with you doesn't automatically mean you're bad or deserving of punishment.
So you can begin building relationships where you feel safe enough to communicate what you need, allow yourself to be deeply seen and known, and receive the kind of support that makes your life feel fuller instead of more stressful.
HEALING CHILDHOOD RELATIONAL WOUNDS (WITH SOMATIC PARTS WORK)
Sometimes it may feel like you're suddenly much younger than you actually are. You might feel small, incapable, ashamed, terrified, alone, or like you don't know what to do, even when the situation you're in doesn't seem like it should feel THAT overwhelming.
And if you experienced significant relational trauma, lack of emotional safety, or difficult experiences very early on in childhood... then you may find that you feel this way most or all of the time.
These reactions can feel so difficult and confusing in the moment, because you understand intellectually that you're an adult who's safe now and that so much has changed, but your body can still respond as though you're right back in the same situation again from 20, 30, 40 etc. years ago. This can also make reactions to family feel disproportionate to the current situation, as well as feel more out of control or intense than we'd like.
Somatic Parts Work gives us a way to connect with these younger parts of ourselves directly through what's happening in the body, rather than trying to reason with them or simply understand them intellectually.
We can slow down, notice what you're experiencing, and begin creating the safety and connection you may have been missing in your earliest and most formative years.
This can help you to understand why certain situations affect you so strongly, and to begin responding from who you are now, rather than automatically falling back into old patterns that keep you feeling stuck, scared, and overwhelmed.
If you've tried traditional inner child or parts work before and found it difficult to connect with, this approach may feel very different. Instead of trying to imagine or think your way into a connection with your younger self, we pay attention to what's actually happening in your body currently and work from there.
LEARNING TO HONOR AND NOT OVERRIDE YOUR LIMITS (WITH SOMATIC BOUNDARY SETTING)
If you grew up without enough safety to be fully yourself, you may learn to disconnect from your needs, limits, wants, preferences, and even the parts of your personality that didn't feel acceptable in your environment.
You learn to pay attention to what other people need. You learn what keeps the peace. You learn what gets you approval or connection.
And eventually, it can become really difficult to know what YOU actually want. This can show up everywhere in adult life - and can make it really difficult to live a life with chronic illness or pain that is not constantly over-riding your own limits.
You might struggle to know when you need rest, which medical treatments are working or when it's time to change course, what kind of relationships actually feel good to you, how much you can realistically take on, what you want your work or purpose to look like, or how you'd actually like to spend your free time.
Somatic boundary setting gives us a way to start reconnecting with those internal signals.
Instead of immediately overriding what you need or talking yourself out of what you want, we can slow down and notice what happens in your body when you consider a boundary, a decision, a desire, or a change. We can also pay attention to how your body tells you that you are doing too much.
From there, you can begin practicing small ways of expressing what you need and want, while staying connected to yourself and your body at the same time.
And for someone living with chronic illness or pain, this can be especially important because your body has real limits and needs. Your energy changes. Your capacity changes. Your body may needs things you weren't prepared for. Your life may need to look different from what you once expected.
Learning to recognize those limits, communicate them to other people, and build your life around what actually works for you - can make it possible to create a life that feels deeply fulfilling and meaningful without constantly pushing yourself past what your body can handle.
TRAUMA-INFORMED CHRONIC ILLNESS / PAIN SUPPORT
Living with chronic illness or pain can be an incredibly difficult and scary experience, especially when you're also carrying a history of trauma or long-term stress.
You're dealing with physical symptoms, uncertainty about your health, changes in what you can do, medical appointments, difficult experiences with providers, and the constant question of what your body is going to do next.
And the experience of being unwell itself can become a source of ongoing stress.
When you don't have context for why something is happening, choice around when you get to feel better, or connection with other people while you're experiencing it, your body can have a much harder time feeling safe.
This is why trauma-informed support can be such an important part of chronic illness and pain work. A huge part of my work is helping you recognize what happens in your body when a symptom appears or your pain gets worse.
You might immediately become afraid. You might start monitoring the symptom, searching for answers, checking whether it's getting worse, or trying to figure out what you should do. Or you might feel completely overwhelmed and shut down.
The goal isn't to convince yourself that your symptoms aren't real or to think your way out of being triggered by them. Instead, we work with the response that's happening in your body while the symptoms are actually present.
Over time, this can help you create more space between a physical symptom showing up and immediately being pulled into fear, panic, overwhelm, or dissociation - which then allows you to still deeply enjoy and stay present to whatever you are doing in the moment.
And because chronic illness can be so isolating, we also pay attention to what helps you stay connected to the people and parts of your life that deeply matter to you, even when your health makes things more difficult.
It's about helping you have more support, more choice, and more connection while you're living with something that can be extremely challenging to navigate (as someone who has gone through it for decades myself and who really understands).
