Body Trauma Therapy
Welcome to the BODY ELECTRIC THERAPY PRACTICE. It’s a brave action to advocate for your needs and to work towards building a healthier life for yourself. I believe our bodies inherently know what they need for healing to occur. And that with the right support, incredible growth is possible. It takes courage to ask for help. But you have made it this far, and you are not alone.
Do Any Of These Resonate:
● Injury/Medical trauma that’s impacting you psychologically.
● Chronic pain that prior medical interventions cannot alleviate.
● Unexplained physical symptoms connected to a life event trauma.
● IBS/ Gastrointestinal issues that persist despite medical interventions.
● Overwhelming grief that is prolonged and enduring.
● Feeling fear and a loss of trust in one’s own body.
● Wondering what a different path to healing might look like.
HOW I CAN HELP
Life comes at us hard sometimes. And we do our best with what we have to work with. But there is more to you than just an expression of weary survival. And I am here to hold space for all the other parts of you as well. I see you as the whole person that you are (mind, soul + body).
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My therapeutic focus is supporting individuals experiencing chronic pain conditions, injury trauma, and complex grief disorders. The work that I do with clients is strongly informed by the neuroscience of pain psychology. And the interrelated connections between trauma, nervous system dysregulation, and the neuroplastic functions of the brain.
By incorporating elements of psycho-somatic (mind+body) and emotion-focused trauma narrative work, you can learn to regulate your nervous system and reestablish a sense of trust in your body.
(disclaimer/ no medical advice being provided)
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Explore The Therapy Approaches We’ll Use In Our Work Together.
Body As teacher
The symbolism of a Mountain is powerful. It can represent the strength of climbing and ascending to new heights of awareness within ourselves. But mountains can also represent the necessary work of descending into the healing depths of our lives as well. Oftentimes, this is the crucial terrain upon which the alchemy of trauma, loss, grief, and transformation resides. Overall, I believe in the regenerative power of the human spirit, and that we can rewrite our own stories.
Hi, I’m Olivia (she/ her)
I’m a licensed clinical therapist based in the Appalachian mountains of Western North Carolina. Before becoming a therapist, I worked for over a decade as a DONA-trained childbirth doula and prenatal parental support specialist. I specialize in supporting clients as they navigate their personal experiences of body trauma, chronic pain, PTSD, childbirth trauma, and complex grief disorders. I hold a master’s degree in clinical mental health counseling (LCMHCA). I’m also a certified clinical trauma professional (CCTP). And I have a therapeutic background working with adult survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault trauma. The theoretical orientation of my clinical work is rooted in an emotion-focused, psycho-somatically based, and trauma-informed foundation. I look forward to connecting with you.
CHRONIC pain
Complex grief
IBS + Chronic Gastrointestinal Issues
Injury trauma
CHRONIC PAIN + BRAIN NEUROPLASTICITY
Clinical research has revealed a strong correlation between traumatic stress, nervous system dysregulation, weakened immune systems, and the prevalence of chronic health conditions. By negatively impacting the body's immune system function, prolonged emotional stress can lead to the development of Psychophysiological Disorders (PPD). When the brain registers certain sensory factors as dangerous (fight or flight), it may then respond by developing a patterned “red flag” of recognition around the perceived threat. Which over time may evolve into a repeated behavioral loop within the brain. In summary, chronic pain is often related to the brain getting stuck in it’s own pain pattern loop. However, the silver lining is that if the neuroplastic (malleable) brain is capable of learning new pain patterns, then it can unlearn them as well.
Therein lies the mechanism of healing.
Doctor of Chiropractic, DC (Julia Gover) Describes The Neurobiology Of Chronic Pain
TEDxNorthwich / (2019)
Pain Brain Documentary
Produced + Directed: Mitch Dickman, Laurie Polisky, Tim Kaminski (2023)
“Endings and beginnings and the mystery of it all. Maybe the mountains hold space for the smallest piece of us. This soft wilderness. Like it still believes in us to rework our own parts that got broken along the way. That all we really needed was to have enough room to expand. Maybe that is the love poem that the ground writes for us.”
-O.S
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September 2021
“The Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT) study found that psychological treatment centered on changing patients’ beliefs about the causes and threat value of pain, may provide substantial and durable pain relief for people with chronic back pain.” (Ashar, Gordon, Schubiner, et al., 2021)
Excerpt From The Boulder Back Pain Study / JAMA Psychiatry Journal / Read Full Article
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It takes courage to get started.
But healing is possible And I am so glad you’re here.
BOOK A (FREE) CONSULTATION TO GET CONNECTED
