Trauma, Identity & Self-Worth
Depth-Oriented Somatic Therapy for Trauma, Shame, and Self-Worth
Online sessions across BC, Alberta, Ontario, Nova Scotia & The Yukon
You know something happened. Understanding it hasn't been enough.
Maybe you've been in therapy before. Maybe you have language for what you've been through — the childhood that shaped you, the relationships that left marks, the version of yourself you lost somewhere along the way. You're not someone who avoids self-reflection. If anything, you've done a lot of it.
And still — something hasn't shifted. You still don't fully feel at home in yourself.
There's a version of you that gets triggered in ways you can't always explain. A voice inside that tells you you're too much, or not enough, or somehow fundamentally different from other people. A sense that your past is still running your present, even when you understand why.
Insight brought you this far. This is where we go deeper.
You might recognize yourself here
You understand your patterns — and you're still living inside them
You carry shame or self-criticism that doesn't respond to logic
You feel things intensely, or find yourself going numb when things get hard
Your nervous system reacts in ways that feel out of proportion — and you don't always know why
You've experienced trauma, even if it doesn't look like what you think trauma is supposed to look like
You feel like you're constantly managing yourself — your reactions, your emotions, other people's feelings
Something essential feels missing, even when life looks okay from the outside
You don't fully trust yourself — your perceptions, your needs, your right to take up space
This isn't about having the right words for what happened. It's about finally feeling different inside.
There's a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from understanding your wounds without being able to move them. You can trace the origins. You can name the patterns. And yet the shame is still there. The self-doubt is still there. The sense that something is fundamentally off about you — still there.
That's not a failure of insight. That's what happens when healing stops at the level of the mind and never reaches the body, the nervous system, the parts of you that are still living in the past.
This work goes where words alone haven't been able to reach. We work with the parts of you carrying shame, fear, and old protective strategies — not to fix or silence them, but to understand what they've been holding and help them finally rest. We bring the body in, because trauma doesn't just live in your story. It lives in how you brace, how you breathe, how you shrink or disappear when something feels unsafe.
This is where understanding becomes something you can actually feel.
What We Might Explore Together
Every person's relationship with their own story is unique.
Our work follows your pace, your nervous system, and what's most alive for you. We might explore:
Early or developmental trauma — the wounds that formed before you had words for them
Shame, self-criticism, and the belief that something is fundamentally wrong with you
The parts of you that protect, perform, or disappear — and what they've been carrying
Nervous system patterns — hypervigilance, shutdown, emotional overwhelm, or numbness
Identity — who you are underneath the adaptations you made to survive
Grief for the self you lost, or the childhood you deserved and didn't have
What it would feel like to actually trust yourself — your perceptions, your needs, your worth
What becomes possible
Before…
You understand your wounds but can't stop living inside them. The inner critic runs constantly. You manage your reactions rather than feeling them. You brace for things to go wrong. Something about you feels broken in a way you can't quite name.
After…
The critic gets quieter — not because you've silenced it, but because you understand what it's been protecting. You stop bracing. You start to trust your own perceptions. The shame loosens its grip. You feel more like yourself — not the self you perform, but the one that was always there underneath.
how i work
Understanding what happened isn't the same as healing from it. This work goes where insight alone hasn't been able to reach.
This work is somatic, parts-based, and trauma-informed — which means we're not just talking about what happened, we're working with how it lives in your body, your nervous system, and the parts of you still organized around old survival strategies. We go slowly enough to actually meet what's there — not to re-traumatize, but to finally give it the attention it's been waiting for.
The shame, the self-doubt, the sense of being fundamentally different — these don't shift through understanding alone. They shift through being met, in relationship, at the pace of your nervous system. I draw from IFS, NARM, somatic therapy, attachment theory, and EMDR — always following your pace and your system's readiness.
Ready to begin?
Here’s how we can work together:
Individual
Therapy
Ongoing depth-oriented somatic therapy for trauma, identity, shame & self-worth.
EMDR
Intensives
Extended sessions for deeper processing — without the start-stop rhythm of weekly therapy.
Psychedelic
Integration
Grounded support before and after expanded states. Process what emerged and integrate the experience into your daily life.
FAQs
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Because understanding trauma and healing trauma are two different things. You can trace every pattern back to its origin, name every defence mechanism, and still wake up feeling the same way you always have.
That's not a failure — it's what happens when healing stays at the level of the mind and never reaches the body, the nervous system, and the parts still living in the past. This work goes where understanding alone hasn't been able to reach.
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That feeling — of being somehow broken, different, or too much — is one of the most common experiences of early relational trauma. It's not the truth about who you are. It's a conclusion a younger part of you drew in order to make sense of an environment that couldn't fully meet you. It felt safer to believe something was wrong with you than to accept that the people you needed weren't able to show up. This work gently untangles that — not through argument or reframing, but through actual felt experience.
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If previous therapy helped you understand yourself but didn't change how it feels to be you — that's a signal you need a different kind of work. Most talk therapy operates at the level of insight and narrative. This work goes deeper — into the nervous system, the body, and the parts of you still organized around old survival strategies. Many clients come here after years of therapy and describe this as the first time something actually moved.
You don’t have to keep carrying this alone.
If something in this page made you feel seen — that's worth paying attention to.