Common trauma responses include high levels of self-doubt, mistrust, fear, perceived threat, seeking to control to feel safe, disconnection, “not knowing how I feel,” with more serious experiences being nightmares, flashbacks, avoidance of thinking about or recalling trauma experiences, intense emotional/psychological or physiological symptoms when “triggered.”

I’ll help you build coping skills to reduce self-doubt and build self-trust. This will help you manage these expeiences in more healthy and effective ways so you can experience less intense responses, or even “notice” the trigges and not feel “out of it.”

If traumatic experiences feels like the title of your book of life, we’ll work together to make it only a chapter.

Religious trauma is the physical, emotional, or psychological response to religious beliefs, practices, or structures that overwhelms an individual’s ability to cope or return to baseline safety and stability.

High-demand religious organizations (churches and cults) are toxic in that the require ‘obedience’ to restrictive behaviors using shame and guilt. This can have lasting influences on psychological, social, and sexual development.

I will walk with you through the ‘deconstruction’ process of unpacking these beliefs and practices and how “outsourcing” worth and value” hurt you, so you gain understanding and insight into their impact. I’ll also support the rebuilding or ‘reconstruction’ process identifying your personal values, beliefs, goals, wants, thoughts, and opinions to reclaim yourself.

Our “inner child” is that part of us which houses all our unmet childhood needs, wounds, core beliefs, and subconscious thoughts. This happens because our critical thinking brains weren’t fully developed yet, but our emotional/survival brain was and stored these experiences. This is why you might say, “I know (xyz) isn’t true, but it just feels that way.” This helps us understand how our inner child experiences are primarily emotional, not logical and can create feelings of guilt, shame, and intense self-doubt.

Unresolved childhood wounds are rooted in self-doubt, emotional neglect and uncertainty and lead to both depression and anxiety as both are processes of disconnection. If anxious, we learned to disconnect from overwhelming feelings or emotions, and instead began to overthink, over-solve, over-anticiate every possible scenario to ‘be prepared’ or ‘be safe.’ If depressed, we maybe felt far too overwhelmed to do all that prep and instead dropped into disconnection from people, withdrawal from activitites, hopelessness, and a sense of worthlessness.

I help by providing support with “reparenting” the inner child and building self-trust thorugh emotional processing skills, visualizations, and somatic (body-based) techniques. Over time, you’ll learn how to feel whole, compassioante, and connected to that younger version of yourself.

I offer the following as free bonuses, designed with your healing in mind, if you become part of a coaching membership:

• Self-reflective journals
• Worthiness Affirmations
• Values Card Deck
• Boundary affirmations journals and card decks
• Body acceptance journals and card decks,
• Daily Dose of DBT book & guided journal
• Mindful Productivity Planner
• Therapy thoughts guided journal: women, men, adolescents and non-gendered versions.

Click here to see what’s available on Amazon instead.

As a seasoned, mature therapist with over 30 years experience, I’m honored to “pay it forward” and share with other clinicians the knowledge, guidance, support, and wisdom taught to me.

I can provide professional consultation regarding:

• Case Conceptualizations & Modality Implementation
• Scheduling and Documentation Management
• Therapeutic Relationship Factors
• Self-Reflective/Process-oriented work with clients and colleagues
• Risk Management

My consultation fee is $150/hour. Please contact me at shannan@sbmftservices.com if this interests you.