Domestic Violence, Interpersonal Violence, Sexual Assault, Childhood Abuse

One of my specialties is addressing and processing interpersonal violence experienced in the context of romantic relationships, and /or domestic violence which may have been at the hands of a partner, or of family members such as parents, stepparents, siblings, and extended family members.

Abuse robs individuals of their sense of self including their trust in themselves, others, and the world in general. Therapy involves learning how these traumatic experiences have affected you psychologically, physically, and emotionally, learning coping skills to reduce your distress, discovering the mechanisms that allowed you to survive, and helping you to rebuilt trust in yourself and others.

Organizational Abuse and Religious Trauma

Sadly, organizational abuse is ramped, and the effects are devastating, especially when they also involve spirituality or religion. As with interpersonal abuse, the effects erode at your sense of self such that it is hard to trust your perceptions. When religious trauma occurs, it further undermines and destroys your sacred sense of self such that you question your standing with God and faith.

Therapy involves identifying and labeling experiences of religious abuse and learning about their effects. It includes challenging the core beliefs that have developed related to self, faith and God, and reevaluating spiritual messages used to coerce and manipulate against what Scripture says.

Compassion Fatigue

My other specialty is preventing and treating compassion fatigue in helping processionals. Compassion fatigue can happen when those who help traumatized individuals become themselves traumatized. It can lead to symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and eventually to burn out.

• Therapy: As a certified Compassion Fatigue Therapist, I have been trained to identify and treat the various aspects of Compassion Fatigue such as Vicarious Traumatization, Secondary Traumatic Stress, and Burn-out. Although these terms are sometimes used interchangeably, they represent different aspects of compassion fatigue. Therapy involves assessing where you land in each of these areas, as well as evaluating your strengths. We then would collaborate on what to address.

• Workshops: As a Certified Compassion Fatigue Educator, I conduct workshops on Compassion Fatigue for teams of mental health clinicians and social workers in which participants learned to identify symptoms in themselves and begin implementing strategies to prevent or seek help for Compassion Fatigue.