During our work together, I employ specific methods carefully tailored to your unique needs and healing journey. My specialization focuses on complex trauma and post‑traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which can arise from either severe, persistent experiences or single traumatic events, both of which can create symptoms that profoundly impact daily life. I serve clients in the greater Spokane/Chattaroy area and via secure telehealth throughout Washington.
Understanding PTSD and Complex Trauma
PTSD typically manifests through intrusive memories, nightmares, flashbacks, avoidance behaviors, negative thought patterns, anxiety, panic attacks, and hypervigilance. These symptoms represent your nervous system’s natural attempt to protect you, though they may no longer serve your current circumstances.
Complex trauma develops from recurring or long‑term traumatic experiences, most often beginning in childhood. These experiences might include various forms of abuse, neglect, violence, captivity, or other circumstances where safety and trust were compromised. Complex trauma can lead to emotional dysregulation, relationship challenges, dissociation, sleep disturbances, hypervigilance, nervous system arousal, and difficulties with self‑esteem and self‑worth.
You may recognize signs of complex trauma or PTSD if you’re experiencing difficulty controlling emotions, low self‑confidence, confusion about identity, feelings of disconnection, guilt, self‑blame, mistrust, hopelessness, relationship struggles, avoidance of certain reminders, reliving experiences, heightened alertness, emotional numbness, depression, or challenges with decision‑making.
Common Sources of Trauma
Domestic Violence and Childhood Trauma
Domestic violence and childhood trauma occur when harm or threats come from those closest to you—partners, family members, or caregivers. This can involve physical, sexual, emotional, or psychological harm, often leading to feelings of depression, anxiety, numbness, fear, and a deep sense of being unloved, unworthy, or unsafe.
Relationship Trauma
Relationship trauma happens when someone you care about or work with causes significant hurt or disappointment. This might involve betrayal, abandonment, manipulation, or persistent difficulties in personal or professional relationships. Such experiences can create feelings of worthlessness, insecurity, and loneliness while affecting your ability to trust and connect with others.
Mind Control and Extreme Coercion (Coercive Control & High‑Control Groups / Cult Recovery)
Some clients have lived within systems that tightly controlled beliefs, behaviors, relationships, time, finances, and access to information. These can include coercive intimate partnerships; high‑control religious or ideological communities; destructive “self‑help” organizations; multi‑level marketing structures functioning like closed systems; or political groups that isolate and punish dissent. For those healing from specific high-control environments, I offer specialized Coercive Control Recovery services.
Common tactics may include:
• Isolation and information control (restricting contacts, policing media/reading, secrecy, surveillance)
• Gaslighting and phobia indoctrination (undermining trust in your own perception, instilling fear around leaving or questioning)
• Demand for purity and confession (induced shame, public accountability rituals, rules that shift without notice)
• Loaded language and thought‑stopping (slogans, insider terms, practices that shut down critical thinking)
• Financial, sexual, or spiritual exploitation (coercive tithing or labor, boundary violations, using spirituality to justify harm)
Aftermath can include identity confusion, dissociation, anxiety or panic, scrupulosity, moral injury, difficulty making decisions, sexual or financial shame, relationship struggles, and fear of authority. It is normal to feel both relief and grief when leaving high‑control systems.
Clinical note: DSM‑5‑TR describes identity disturbance due to prolonged and intense coercive persuasion within the “other specified dissociative disorder” category (often coded ICD‑10‑CM F44.89). Assessment and coding are individualized and determined collaboratively.
How Recovery Work Unfolds Here
My approach integrates evidence‑based trauma care (including EMDR) with my Soul Unity Therapy framework to help you both heal and rebuild:
- Stabilize and resource: establish safety, pacing, and nervous‑system regulation within your window of tolerance.
- Process traumatic material: use EMDR and related methods to reduce reactivity tied to indoctrination, spiritual abuse, or coercive dynamics.
- Reclaim agency and meaning: rebuild inner authority, values‑aligned decision‑making, healthy boundaries, and critical‑thinking confidence.
- Re‑author identity and community: explore spirituality or secular meaning on your terms, restore trustworthy relationships, and practice everyday autonomy.
If you are concerned about digital privacy or surveillance by a current system or partner, we can discuss safer ways to connect and protect your confidentiality.
Other Forms of Violence
Other trauma can include military trauma, sexual assault, physical assault, workplace violence, accidents, medical trauma, and various experiences that overwhelm your capacity to cope and integrate what happened.
Your Personalized Healing Journey
Together, we will thoughtfully curate a treatment plan that honors your specific needs, circumstances, and goals for healing. This individualized approach draws from my Soul Unity Therapy model, EMDR, and other evidence‑based methods to support your journey toward wholeness, resilience, and authentic self‑connection.
For more detailed information about these approaches, please explore the sections on EMDR and Soul Unity Therapy, where you’ll find comprehensive descriptions of how these powerful modalities can support your healing process.
When Coercive Control Impacts Couples
If coercive control or high‑control experiences are affecting your current relationship, we can incorporate Gottman‑informed couples work to rebuild safety, communication, and trust—always centering consent, boundaries, and each partner’s autonomy.
Location & Access
In‑person therapy is available near Spokane/Chattaroy, and telehealth is available throughout Washington state.