Modalities & Approaches

Some forms of trauma are not rooted in a single event, but in patterns — in the relationships and environments that shaped how we learned to feel safe, or not, in the world. Approaches including the Comprehensive Resource Model (CRM), Ego States Therapy, Structural Dissociation Theory, and Deep Brain Re-Orienting (DBR) share a focus on understanding how complex and relational trauma shapes the nervous system, the sense of self, and the capacity for connection.

These frameworks recognize that under chronic stress or relational threat, the psyche can organize into distinct states or "parts," each holding different memories, beliefs, or survival responses. Therapy involves building internal resources, approaching these different aspects of experience with curiosity, and gradually fostering greater coherence and integration.

What this might look like in session: Noticing different parts of yourself that may hold conflicting feelings or responses. Building a sense of internal safety and resource before approaching more difficult material. Experiential, felt-sense based work — attending not just to what happened, but to how it continues to live in the present and in your relationship with yourself.

Developmental trauma refers to the long-term effects of adverse early experiences — including caregiver dysregulation, neglect, and medical interventions — from in-utero through early childhood. Because these experiences occur before language and explicit memory are established, they often don't present as a clear story, but rather as patterns of dysregulation, bodily symptoms, or relational difficulties that can be difficult to trace.

Drawing on Kathy Kain's Somatic Skills approach and SE, this work begins at the level of the body's fundamental systems — the nervous system, the viscera, the skin and connective tissue — building regulation from the ground up. This is not a preliminary step before "real" trauma work; it is the work. Developing a regulated, resourced system is itself a meaningful and often underestimated part of healing.

What this might look like in session: Slow, gentle attention to physical sensations that may be subtle or hard to name. A focus on the body's responses rather than narrative memory. Building a felt sense of safety and capacity over time, often before anything more explicitly "trauma-focused" begins.

Our thought patterns, emotional responses, and behavioural habits shape how we function day to day and how we relate to others. Cognitive and skill-based approaches work with these from the top down. For some people these can be more primary instruments, with somatic awareness woven in as a grounding layer; for others they may run alongside body-oriented or relational work as a practical complement. 

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) works with the relationship between thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. By building awareness of automatic thought patterns and gently examining unhelpful beliefs, clients develop greater flexibility in how they interpret and respond to their experiences.

Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) focuses on emotional regulation, distress tolerance, and interpersonal effectiveness. It provides structured, practical skills for navigating emotional intensity and is particularly useful when feelings can feel difficult to manage or contain.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) invites a different relationship with difficult thoughts and feelings — one of acceptance and curiosity rather than struggle — while supporting clarity around personal values and committed action toward what matters most.

Mindfulness runs as a thread through all of these approaches, and through the somatic work as well. Cultivating present-moment awareness — of thoughts, sensations, or emotional states — is foundational to most of what we do together.

What this might look like in session: Identifying thought patterns or beliefs that keep you stuck. Practicing skills for managing distress or overwhelm. Engaging with cognitive exercises in or between sessions. Clarifying what matters to you and where your energy is going.

My approach to couples therapy is grounded in attachment theory — the understanding that our earliest relational experiences shape the patterns we bring into adult partnerships, including how we seek closeness, manage conflict, and repair after rupture.

Drawing from Emotion Focused Therapy for Couples (EFT-C) and the Gottman Method, the work supports each partner in understanding their own emotional experience and attachment needs, recognizing the cycles they get drawn into together, and developing new ways of reaching for and responding to one another. An important part of this process is building each partner's individual capacity to recognize and regulate their own emotional responses — because new ways of connecting are only sustainable when each person can stay present enough to access them. The aim is not only to reduce conflict, but to build a more secure, emotionally connected bond.

What this might look like in session: Slowing down conflict cycles to understand what each person is actually feeling and needing underneath the surface. Developing individual skills for managing emotional intensity before or during difficult conversations. Practising new ways of turning toward each other. Building repair skills. Working with the impact of past relational wounds that show up in the relationship now.

Family therapy draws on systems thinking — the understanding that each person's behaviour makes sense within the relational context they are part of. Rather than locating the "problem" in one individual, we look at patterns, roles, and dynamics that have developed within the family system as a whole.

My approach integrates Contextual Family Therapy (CFT) with emotionally focused principles, with attention to the influence of intergenerational patterns, cultural context, and trauma on how families function. CFT brings a relational ethics perspective — attending to fairness, loyalty, and the legacies each person carries from their own family of origin — which provides a thoughtful lens for understanding why family members relate to one another the way they do. Alongside this systemic work, developing individual emotion regulation skills is often a key component: when each person has greater capacity to manage their own internal experience, the conditions for genuine relational change become possible.

What this might look like in session: Exploring how each family member understands and experiences the same situation differently. Building individual skills for emotional regulation and communication alongside the relational work. Identifying patterns that may have served a function at one time but are no longer working. Building communication and connection that takes each person's history and needs into account.