Director’s note: The following article is written by our Registered Clinical Counsellor, Marcia Moitoso, in conjunction with Bell Let’s Talk Day. If you haven’t met us yet, you’ll find out quickly that we’re about being real. We’re all here because we are on our own journey, and want to help others on theirs. Marcia’s article is a very real, personal account of her own journey with mental health and trauma and how it led her to where she is today. I want to express my gratitude to Marcia for being willing to share her journey with others, and I hope you find it helpful. Please be aware, the article describes some traumatic events that may bring up some emotions while reading. – Andrew My Journey To Becoming A Counsellor
I came to a career in counselling as part of a long, arduous struggle with my own mental health. I want to share my journey with you as a way to show you that whatever you’re going through, you’re not alone, things can get better, and we’re in this together.
My Story
My story toward healing really begins at 20 years old, when I hit the lowest low and far more psychological pain than I could have ever predicted. Laying on the bathroom floor of the courthouse after a two-year court battle against the person who sexually assaulted me, I remember thinking this is it, I can’t imagine continuing to live at this point, how can I possibly keep going? Unfortunately, like many of us, I had been through a lot of sexual assault in my early years. I had always felt immense shame about everything that happened to me, believing it was my fault and so I never told anyone how I felt, kept it inside and instead coped with eating disorders, self-harm, and substance use. This last incident in my late teens was the straw that finally broke the camel’s back. I couldn’t keep going like this, something had to change or I didn’t think I’d survive.
I wrestled a lot with the urge to give up and give in to self-destructive impulses. One part of me wanted to survive and get better, a second part wanted to give up, and a third part of me wanted desperately to change the world for other women like me. Frankly, that part kind of wanted revenge (or at least justice) too. I think that third part of me is the one that started to carry me toward healing. At this time in my life, I was learning about feminism, and while it made me confront some very difficult truths about myself and what had happened to me and what I was also complicit in, it made me get in touch with all the rage I felt, and my rage (though sometimes overwhelming) motivated me toward change.
It wasn’t – and still isn’t – a straight line. I remember sitting in my very first counsellor’s office week after week and refusing to speak. She was kind enough, she would recommend interesting female empowerment movies and give me little snacks. I liked her, I just wasn’t ready to talk, and I’d had years of learning to push all of my emotions way down and disconnecting from my body and myself. I wasn’t ready for her to change that. She gave me the notes I needed for extensions on my university assignments that I couldn’t write because the flashbacks were so overwhelming, and I was grateful for that. I don’t think I’d have graduated without her. At that time I also started kickboxing at a small gym that quickly started to feel like a family. I didn’t have to talk, which was important to me back then, but I could punch and kick and secretly cry my heart out. It was everything; I started to feel what powerful could feel like.
But as life goes, more devastations occurred that set me off balance and back into my self-destructive behaviours. I left kickboxing and withdrew into my own world ruled by fear and dissociation. My social anxiety got to the worst point it had ever been, and I lost the majority of my friends. This was another point where I could have lost myself completely, but I had managed to retain one friend who wouldn’t let me go despite the many times I disappeared and definitely let her down. During this time I had started to realize that my self-destructive behaviours needed to stop, but I was still unable to ask for help or admit that I had a problem. I got lucky though, one night at about 2am this friend of mine texted me asking if I’d want to go and travel South America for a year by bicycle. I wanted to get as far away from the place where I grew up as possible, so I didn’t even hesitate, I immediately said yes and with very little planning we got out bikes and just went.
The Ride That Changed My Life
Since that time I’ve tried to put my finger on just what it was about that year on my bike that was so healing. I think it was a combination of things. I finally really felt like I had a friend who loved me unconditionally (she also had no choice because we depended on each other for survival, traveling by bike with almost no money). I also started to feel powerful and connected to my body for what it could do for me for the first time, instead of focusing on what it looked like or what other people wanted from it. For the first time my body was mine and it was carrying me thousands and thousands of kilometres just by sheer force and will. I also learned to get in touch with my intuition and figure out which situations felt safe and which ones I needed to get out of right away. I experienced some luck, and happened to meet incredible people in every place I went who reminded me that people actually are fundamentally good and that those few who did some bad things to me are not an indicator of all of humanity. And bonus: I didn’t have access to my unhealthy coping means of choice, so my addictions started to fizzle away.
I met so many people from so many backgrounds, and heard their stories of devastation and transcendence, and slowly I started to share mine too. Hearing about the ways people make meaning from tragedy and find ways to survive and make life beautiful again after being in the absolute gutter of life was healing beyond belief. I learned that suffering is part of living and that it actually connects us to others. We suffer tragedies and then we find each other and we heal together. After hearing from these beautiful people in various towns, I’d always have a day or a few of riding my bike to the next place, getting in touch with my body and mind and processing everything I’d heard. It was in one of these in-between cycling times that I realized I wanted to become a counsellor. It was actually a need. I was in awe of how incredible humans are, and their innate urge to move toward growth and healing, and I wanted to be a part of that for myself and for others.
The Journey Is Ongoing
When I moved back to Canada, I spent several years in personal counselling before going back to school to become a counsellor. I was finally ready to talk and ready to continue the healing that had started on my trip. I knew I couldn’t do it alone, and I knew the triggers would come back now that the excitement of cycling from country to country was over. I’m endlessly grateful for the counsellors who helped me. I started in CBT to rework my self-shaming thoughts and my social anxiety, then I moved into somatic trauma counselling to learn how to heal psychologically through the power of my body, and then I continued the trauma processing work through EMDR. I still have sleepless nights with flashbacks but they’re few and far between now, and when they happen, I know how to ground myself, breathe through it, and look for my body’s wisdom to heal and do what it needs to. I still sometimes get urges to go back into those self-destructive behaviours, but I now know what to do with those urges rather than giving in to them. I’ve developed great friendships, thanks to my counsellors who helped me get out of my own way and soothe my social anxiety. And every day I get the massive privilege of walking with my clients on their journeys toward healing. I’m still a work in progress and know I will always be, and so I continue to work on myself, see my counsellor, and challenge myself to talk to friends and my partner when I need to. I’m endlessly grateful to the people who have helped me along the way, and continue to help me. We’re all in this together and we all have the capacity to grow and heal even if it sometimes really doesn’t feel like it.
I hope my story encourages you, and reiterates that we are all on a journey toward hope and healing. If we can help you on your journey, please 
by Marcia Moitoso | Nov 23, 2021 | Connection, Counselling, Love, Mental Health, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD, Relationship, Relationships, Safety, Therapy, Trauma, Trauma sensitive
This article talks about some skills and strategies to heal the traumatized part of your brain and move toward the intimacy you deserve. If you missed the last article about the ways that sexual abuse/assault impacts intimacy and sexuality, I’d recommend going back and reading that article before beginning this one.
Remedies
Every nervous system is a little different. What works for one person may not work for another. There are many options for healing trauma and developing a healthy intimate and sex life, so I encourage you to choose options that resonate best with you.
Shift Ideas about Sex
A good place to start might be with the ideas you and your partner(s) hold about sex. Often survivors of sexual assault hold negative beliefs about sex. These beliefs result from parts of our brains confusing sexual assault (violence) with sex (consent, pleasure, equality). The two are not the same, and we need to rewire our brains to reflect this. I recommend having a look at Wendy Maltz’s comparisons chart here https://healthysex.com/healthy-sexuality/part-one-understanding/comparisons-chart/. This will help explain the difference between ideas about sex that come from experiences of abuse, versus healthy ideas about sex.
You can continue to develop a healthy sexual mindset by avoiding media that portrays sexual assault or sex as abuse or talking about sexual attitudes with friends or with a therapist. You can also educate yourself about sexuality and healing through books and workshops. One book I strongly recommend is Come as You Are by Emily Nagoski.
Communication with Partners
This may be the most important recommendation in this article. You cannot have consensual sex without communicating about it. That’s true for anyone, whether they’re an assault survivor or not. Sex remains a taboo subject in our culture, even though sex is very normal and most people have some form of sex at some point in their lives. When things are taboo and not widely talked about and understood, people develop feelings of shame about the taboo subject. Shame lurks in the darkness. This feeling of shame or embarrassment or even just awkwardness keeps many people from talking about sex with their partners despite engaging in sex.
Consent is dynamic: It can be given and withdrawn at any time
All people, and especially survivors of assault/abuse need to be able to give and withdraw consent AT ANY TIME during a sexual or intimate act. Many survivors will experience flashbacks or triggers at various times through physical or sexual activities. Because they don’t feel safe to tell their partner to stop (often out of fear for making them feel bad), they will instead dissociate and push through the sexual experience. When you do this, you are telling your brain and body that what you feel doesn’t matter and that the other person’s pleasure or comfort is more important.
While it may feel frustrating to have to stop mid-sex or mid-kiss or mid-hug because something has triggered you, listening to your body will actually help the healing process go much faster. Each time you override what your brain and body needs, the trauma gets reinforced and the triggers continue to come back. Slower is faster when healing from trauma. This is something partners need to understand. If a survivor is saying no, it’s because they trust you enough to say no, not because they’re not attracted to you. Every “no” is sexy because it’s getting you closer to an enthusiastic, consensual “yes”
Understand and Communicate your preferences
In addition to understanding and respecting the need to withdraw consent at any time, it’s important to talk about sexual preferences. What feels good, what feels neutral and what doesn’t feel good. Communicate when something felt uncomfortable and explore together to find what does feel comfortable. When sex is approached with curiosity and exploration rather than rigidness and shame, it becomes increasingly safe and pleasurable for both parties.
The need to take a break
Sometimes survivors of sexual abuse and assault may need to take a prolonged break from sexual activity. This can happen when the individual is in a relationship or not. The break allows space to focus on healing and figuring out what feels good and what doesn’t without worrying about the anxiety of managing their partner’s advances. When you are ready to engage in sexual activity again, do so when you want it, not when you believe you “should.” You have a right to be an active participant in your own sex life. Communicate your likes and dislikes and give yourself permission to say no at any time.
How to Manage Triggers and Flashbacks
As mentioned above, some survivors will experience triggers or flashbacks during physical touch or sexual activity. Flashbacks and triggers are often thought of as images of the traumatic experience. But they can also be experienced as unpleasant sensations, or a lack of sensation, an experience of disconnection, or an experience of overwhelm. When this happens it’s important to stop whatever is triggering the flashback, i.e. stopping the sexual activity or the physical touch. When you have a flashback, a part of your brain thinks it is in the past when the trauma happened, You need to remind that part of your brain that you are in the present moment and that the danger has passed. Another word for this is “grounding.”
Grounding Strategies/Orienting back to the present moment
- 5,4,3,2,1
- Name 5 things you can see, 4 you can touch, 3 you can hear, 2 you can smell, 1 you can taste
- Deep breaths
- Breathe in for 4, hold for 7, out for 8 (or any variation of that where you breathe out longer than you breathe in
- Box breaths: in for 4, hold for 4, out for 4, hold for 4 (repeat 4 times)
- Stand up and move your body – get the adrenaline out
- Run on the spot, go for a walk, jumping jacks
- Watch youtube video that makes you laugh (laughter is grounding)
- Play a categories game
- Say the alphabet backwards
- Show these strategies to your partner and do them together
Once you’ve successfully grounded (and give yourself as much time as your nervous system needs for this, remember slower is faster), take some time to rest and find comforts. Your nervous system has just gone through a lot. It can also be good to think about what triggered you and to discuss with you partner how to change that in the future. You may want the help of a counsellor to determine this.
Counselling
Trauma counselling can really help you to overcome the impacts the trauma has on your life. You may also want to incorporate some couples counselling to help improve communication so that the two of you can work as a team on this.
There are 3 types of trauma counselling that can be beneficial. You may benefit from a mix of all three.
Top-Down counselling:
This type of counselling helps you to change the thought patterns and behavioural habits that have formed as a result of the trauma. You will learn to notice the emotions and to change the behaviours and thoughts that tend to come as a result of the emotions. Some examples of this include CBT and DBT.
Bottom-Up Counselling:
Emotions and survival responses are physiological. You may notice a tightness in your chest when you feel anxious, a lump in your throat when you feel sad, a pit in your stomach when you feel embarrassed, or any variety of physical manifestations of emotions. When we feel an emotion our bodies are automatically mobilized to do something with it. For example, if you see a grizzly bear, your body might instinctively run or freeze or even try to fight it. You don’t even have to think about it, your brain does it automatically! Your body also knows how to heal from the trauma, but often circumstances prevent us from being able to allow our bodies to do what they need to do. Bottom-up counselling approaches such as EMDR, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, or Somatic Experiencing can help you to process the trauma by mindfully allowing your body and brain to do what it needs to do to heal. This will also greatly improve your relationship to your body
Mindfulness Counselling or Practices
Through mindfulness practices you can train your nervous system (brain and body) to become fully present. You learn to notice when triggers are happening while keeping a foot in the present-moment so that you don’t become overwhelmed. With mindfulness you can learn to allow emotions to come and go naturally without being swept away. If you’d like to start mindfulness on your own I’d recommend starting with short 2 minute practices and slowly working your way up. Examples of mindfulness-based counselling include Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy and Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction.
I hope these tidbits can help you get started, or to continue on your healing journey. You deserve a healthy intimate life that includes boundaries, consent, pleasure and joy. Slower is faster; trauma takes time to work through, but it is very treatable, and you don’t have to do it alone.
Sources
Maltz, Wendy (2021). Healthy Sex: Promoting Healthy, Loving Sex and Intimacy. https://healthysex.com/
Nagoski, Emily (2015). Come as you Are: The Surprising New Science that will Transform your Sex Life. Simon & Schuster Inc: New York.
University of Alberta Sexual Assault Center (2019). Sexual intimacy after sexual assault or sexual abuse. https://www.ualberta.ca/media-library/ualberta/current-students/sexual-assault-centre/pdf-resources-and-handouts/intimacy-after-sexual-assault-2019.pdf
by Marcia Moitoso | Nov 16, 2021 | Connection, Counselling, Love, Mental Health, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD, Relationship, Relationships, Safety, Therapy, Trauma, Trauma sensitive
Note: This article speaks in broad terms about sexual assault and abuse. If you feel overwhelmed at any point reading this article, I encourage you to stop reading (or skip to the section on “grounding”) and allow your body to do what it needs to do to come back to the present. Whether it’s going for a brisk walk, doing some deep breathing, or calling a trusted friend. As this article will discuss, there’s no need to push yourself past the point of overwhelm. Healing can only take place with patience.
Many survivors of sexual assault face difficulties with intimacy and/or sexuality at some point in their lives. While this is a very common experience, it’s certainly not the case for all survivors. Traumatic events affect people in a variety of different ways dependent on each person’s life experiences and their unique nervous systems. This article will focus on the people who do struggle with sex and intimacy after traumatic events. It will show that even though it can feel really hopeless at times, there are some amazing ways forward to achieving a healthy and satisfying sex life. We have some powerful innate abilities to heal trauma, but it often takes patience, support and work to get there.
Understanding the Impacts
Sexuality and the Central Nervous System – Stress and Love
Sexuality is impacted by the emotional systems managed by a very primal part of your brain often called “the reptilian brain.” This part of your brain is responsible for stress feelings as well as love feelings, all of which have helped us to survive as a species. Stress and love are also the main emotions that impact intimacy and sexual desire.
Stress responses are the neurobiological processes that help you deal with threats. Your brain prioritizes one of the following three main components based on survival needs: fight (anger/frustration), flight (fear/anxiety), or collapse (numbness, depression, dissociation).
Love is also a survival strategy; it’s the neurobiological process that pulls us closer to our tribes and bonds humans together. Love is responsible for passion, romance, and joy. It’s also responsible for the agony of grief and heartbreak.
Common Reactions
When a person lives through a traumatic event, the stress response in their central nervous system (brain and body) often gets locked into survival mode. It has detected that there is danger and so it learns that it must always be scanning for any sign of danger. As a result, there are two very common reactions to sexual trauma that affect a survivor’s sex life.
- Sexual Avoidance/Difficulty Experiencing Pleasure
The main function of the central nervous system is to prioritize survival needs in order of importance. For example, if you can’t breathe, you’re unlikely to notice that you’re hungry until you get oxygen again. Similarly, although love is indeed a survival mechanism (bringing us together with our tribes), the brain tends to prioritize attention to stress over love because stress points to a more immediate threat: the possibility of another dangerous and violent act.
After a sexual assault, sensations, contexts and ideas that used to be interpreted as sexually relevant (like physical touch) may instead now be interpreted by your brain as threats. So sexual situations actually make your brain sound the “danger” alarm bell. Our central nervous systems confuse sex (an act of consent, equality and pleasure) with sexual assault (an act of violence and power over another). Remember, your nervous system’s primary function is to keep you alive and safe, so anything that feels in any way similar to a violent situation from the past will sound your brain’s alarm bell.
Basically, you may be experiencing love or desire, but your brain is still stuck on survival mode. This makes it almost impossible to experience pleasure, desire and closeness.
- Engaging in Compulsive Sexual Behaviours
Remember how love is also a survival strategy? It draws us closer to others and makes us feel whole. So instead of stress hitting the sexual brakes, some people get locked into patterns of feeling out of control sexually and having multiple partners. In this case, sometimes the innate survival strategy prioritizes closeness for that feeling of being whole; however, when this is a survival mechanism, it’s often happening from that “collapse” stress response, or a more dissociated place. People stuck in this pattern may experience a brief feeling of relief but may still struggle with the deeper components of intimacy.
- Additional common symptoms
- sexual avoidance/anxiety
- sex feeling like an obligation
- dissociation during sexual activity/not present
- negative feelings associated with touch
- difficulty achieving arousal/sensation
- feeling emotionally distant
- flashbacks/intrusive thoughts or images during sexual activity
- engaging in compulsive sexual behaviours
- difficulty maintaining an intimate relationship
- vaginal pain in women; erectile dysfunction in men
- feelings of shame
- negative beliefs about sex
This is a short list of reactions, there are many more impacts on a person’s sense of self and experiences in relationships. If you’d like to get a better sense of how your traumatic experiences may have impacted your sex life, you can have a look at Wendy Maltz’s Sexual Effects Inventory here https://www.havoca.org/survivors/sexuality/sexual-effects-inventory/
Remedies: Developing a Healthy Sex Life
This short article was just to give you an idea of some of the many ways that sexual assault can impact intimacy. These impacts sometimes show up directly after the assault and sometimes show up years later.
Stay tuned for the next article which will talk about some of the many ways to heal the parts of your brain that are impacted by the trauma and to help you to find safety and pleasure in intimacy.
Sources
Maltz, Wendy (2021). Healthy Sex: Promoting Healthy, Loving Sex and Intimacy. https://healthysex.com/
Nagoski, Emily (2015). Come as you Are: The Surprising New Science that will Transform your Sex Life. Simon & Schuster Inc: New York.
University of Alberta Sexual Assault Center (2019). Sexual intimacy after sexual assault or sexual abuse. https://www.ualberta.ca/media-library/ualberta/current-students/sexual-assault-centre/pdf-resources-and-handouts/intimacy-after-sexual-assault-2019.pdf
by Stefanie Tong | Jul 12, 2021 | ADHD, Anxiety, Autism, Creative Arts Programs, Depression, Health, Mental Health, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD, Stress, Therapy, Trauma
Many people feel apprehensive or intimidated when they hear the word “dance.” Movement is a beautiful and intricate part of who we are. We are in constant motion, from blood flowing through our veins to neurons firing during thought processes and through the simplicity of breath. Our very existence depends on the continuous movement happening within the body.
Therapeutic dance, or movement, is a mind-body approach for working with emotions towards holistic wellness. We often dismiss the subtle signs of stress from our bodies until it becomes a chronic issue, preventing us from functioning in our daily lives. Therapeutic dance and movement explores the presence of emotions within the body and shows us how to care for the emotional symptoms that we may find.
What do you mean by emotions living in the body?
Have you ever noticed sayings like, “I have butterflies in my stomach,” “That gave me the heebie-jeebies,” or “My blood is boiling”? These sayings are examples of how we experience nervousness, fear, and anger in the body. Some people describe these feelings in their body as “gut feelings.” We often override gut feelings using the mind and ignore what is happening in the body. Learning to trust in the body’s wisdom is an important skill to possess in today’s fast-paced world.
In therapeutic dance and movement, the connection between the mind and the body is facilitated as a conversation used to achieve a deeper understanding of the self. Emotions in the body are made aware by paying attention to the subtle shifts in the body and linked back to spoken language.
What does an appointment look like?
Clients are often surprised that a session does not have to involve dance whatsoever. Sessions are NOT like a dance class, experience in movement is not even required. Therapeutic dance/movement is an approach that gives your body the space to express what words cannot. Do you ever move your hands when you talk? That’s a form of therapeutic movement! A session can consist of talking to someone, along with the optional invitation of moving, breath-work, or spontaneous dance. It’s entirely up to you! Another way to interpret therapeutic dance/movement is as a counselling session. Your whole body is invited into the conversation, and expression is created from the inside to the outside.
There have been times clients have said, “I’m not sure why I just did that.” The body knows what the mind may not understand quite yet. Therapeutic dance/movement helps to bring understanding and self-compassion to patterns of being. Session goals are co-created between client and practitioner. With this, a therapeutic movement session becomes a journey of creative expression and experiential processing.
What can therapeutic dance/movement help with?
Therapeutic dance/movement can help with anything, such as stress, pain, difficulty sleeping, relationship issues, chronic illness, temper tantrums, developmental disabilities, and neurodiverse diagnoses.
Some other issues therapeutic dance/movement can support:
- Feeling stuck
- Feeling agitated or angry
- Anxiety
- Depression / low mood
- Trauma
- Autism Spectrum Disorder
- Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
- Tantrums and intense emotional upsets
- Strengthening relationships
How Can I Start Moving?
Whether you want to start moving by speaking, storytelling, writing, drawing, or dancing, get your emotions moving today by calling our office to book a therapeutic dance/movement session. Have a quick question about therapeutic dance/movement? Click here to email our therapeutic dance/movement practitioner, Stefanie.
by Kathryn Priest-Peries | Mar 5, 2020 | Mental Health, PTSD, Stress, Therapy
If you’ve ever wondered what on earth EMDR is, you’re not alone! While EMDR is well supported by research and has been found to be highly effective for many clients, it can sometimes be a strange concept for people to get used to.
So, What Is EMDR?
EMDR has been around now for about 25 years and is a highly evidence-based method of treating trauma and anxiety. EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing and gets its name in part from the fact that it primarily relies on eye movement to work.
A client undergoing EMDR is encouraged to move their eyes from side to side in a slow, steady manner while contemplating questions or discussion pieces that relate to their treatment. As odd as it sounds, the reason EMDR works is precisely because of how the brain processes memory. When we are asleep, our brains enter REM sleep (Rapid Eye Movement), and during this stage of sleep the brain is processing and filing the day’s experiences into our memory, so the next day can occur with a relatively clean slate.
Sometimes we get stuck on intrusive thoughts or traumatic material because the experience or issue has not managed to get appropriately filed in our memory. EMDR replicates the REM stage of sleep while the client is awake and alert, and supports the processing of painful memories or recurring intrusive thoughts. Interestingly, because EMDR mimics REM sleep it tends to work quite quickly. If the issues are not too complex, clients can often feel a sense of relief from their suffering in just a few sessions.
It’s important to know that at no time during EMDR is the client out of control or in a trance of any kind, and of course, the client can always choose to end an EMDR session at any point if they don’t prefer working in this way or find that they are too uncomfortable. This said, clients almost always leave an EMDR session feeling better than when the session began.
The second part of EMDR stands for Desensitization and Reprocessing. The goal of EMDR is to desensitize the client to something that was previously painful and to support them in reprocessing the painful issue.
So, what does this look like in an appointment? A client undergoing an EMDR session can expect to meet with a therapist in a comfortable room where they will both sit. The client will be asked some questions by their therapist, and then guided to use back-and-forth eye movement. During this time all the client has to do is sit quietly and allow themselves to think. Following about 1 minute of this, the therapist will check in with some questions and guidance. The eye movement sets will be repeated a number of times as the therapist leads the client through a set format of questions and feedback. Toward the end of the session, the therapist will switch gears and invite the client to “reprocess” the issue being addressed.
Clients then typically end an EMDR session feeling quite calm. The only side effect is that some folks find EMDR somewhat tiring, as the brain has been stimulated to work quite hard for the time of the session.
The good news is that while EMDR is especially effective for conditions like PTSD, it has also been reported as effective for panic attacks, complicated grief, dissociative disorders, disturbing memories, phobias, pain disorders, performance anxiety, stress reduction, addictions, sexual and/or physical abuse, body dysmorphic disorders and personality disorders.
As not all therapists have the necessary training, it’s important to note that EMDR should be done only with a therapist who is properly certified in working this way. If you’re curious about whether this treatment could work for you, reach out to us! We’re here to help.
Kathryn Priest-Peries is a Registered Clinical Counsellor and Registered Social Worker who has Advanced Level Training in EMDR and has been a practicing therapist for over 30 years.
Read more about Kathryn here.
Click here to request an EMDR appointment with Kathryn.
