Amazing! You’ve already done so much work on your healing. 

You’ve likely built a foundation of mindset work and maybe even prayer.

But if you still don’t feel safe or emotionally regulated right now because of chronic stressors, unresolved painful or traumatic past experiences, or current situations that feel threatening, the nervous system and subcortical brain will override the cognitive work.

It’s very different than psychotherapy because they most often only use a top-down approach (because the cognitive brain is their wheelhouse, and ours is your physiology and nervous system and the subsequent impact on the brain). We go into detail on this in our main programs page referring to the 3 phases of healing.

We focus on bringing your nervous system into regulation, because your nervous system is where the trauma is stuck and stored. It is what is creating the reflexive behaviors that make you feel stuck in cycles where you logically know what’s wrong but can’t seem to change anything. It is also what is driving the thoughts and beliefs that make up your mental health.

Most everyone we work with has been in traditional talk therapy, counseling or coaching before… and didn’t see the results they were hoping for.

The reason for this is likely because those modalities are not trauma informed or effective for healing trauma. They are primarily focused on working with the cognitive part of your brain (your beliefs) and/or changing your behavior, without discovering and healing the root cause.

We are trauma informed, which means we don't believe anything is wrong with you (and therefore won't pathologize, diagnose you or give you a label).  We believe something happened to you that may be causing dysregulation to your nervous system. Once we help you heal the unresolved trauma or pain your symptoms will subside.

If traditional talk therapy just felt like venting, this will feel very different because it is more experiential and body-oriented.  For instance, when you bring up a life event, while we are deeply interested in hearing what happened to you, one of our priorities is to discover what you might be experiencing in your body (lump in throat, tightness in chest, put in stomach) when you think of the distressing event. 

Check out the other FAQ "What is Somatic Experiencing?" for more on this.

Other differences are:

We do not treat, diagnose or assess mental health.

We do not give advice or prescribe medication. 

We do not work with clients who are at risk of self harm or harming others.

Pyschotherapists work under a medical model of care. Coaches work under a support model.

It can be hard to create “me” time or invest in yourself as a woman these days, am I right?

Your boss, your children, your partner, your family, and your in-laws all need something, so it’s easy to forget to do things for yourself. It’s hard.

We may be biased, but yes, this time is so worth it (peep what our resilient clients say!).

What we teach is backed by evidence-based research to make your healing journey one of the most fulfilling things you’ll do for yourself. (Have you seen testimonials from our clients?)

Not to mention the transforming ripple effects that investing in yourself through this program will have on your relationships with your partner and your children.

But you have to do the healing work or the pain and dysfunction will repeat like it has for all the generations before you.

There is so much that you can spend your time doing. If the results weren’t deeply rewarding with far-reaching results, we wouldn’t be passionate about inviting you to consider this journey.

Plus, you don’t need to attend each call live or consume every resource to make this the best investment you’ve made all year. 

You just need to show up with a strong intent to build a stronger emotional foundation that introduces more safety and compassion than all the other things you’ve tried before.

What we use in our approach is a “bottom up” modality called Somatic Experiencing®.  It’s a unique, body-oriented approach to trauma-informed care that unlocks lasting healing. Designed to pinpoint where trauma happened in the stress response cycle, you will discover how to complete that cycle and truly bring healing to trauma. Somatic Experiencing® is the life work of Dr. Peter Levine.

Learn more about Somatic Experiencing ® here.

The stress response cycle is when your body perceives some sort of threat in your environment and initiates the sympathetic nervous system to increase blood pressure and increase heart rate, so that you can fight or flee the situation. It creates a lot of survival energy, so that you can have what you need to get to safety. Once you get to safety, the body will then discharge that stuck and stored energy and bring you back to a state of homeostasis where your blood pressure, heart rate and stress hormones will drop and you feel safe again. 

But if something was interrupted in that cycle, maybe it wasn’t safe for you to flee or fight your way out of that threat, and the threat remains. Your body never actually thinks you’re back to safety, that’s what trauma is. That sympathetic, survival energy is stuck in your body with nowhere to go, and it creates dysregulation in your nervous system. Behaviors that drive you crazy keep repeating, because the body thinks it’s not safe and that it’s back in that situation. 

Somatic Experiencing ® is different from other somatic based modalities that only help you to discharge that stuck survival energy. You can make progress by discharging that energy, but the body will still be stuck where the stress response cycle didn’t get to complete in the past. That’s probably where you are stuck and what drives those unwanted behaviors. Somatic Experiencing® takes the healing a step further: it enables you to determine where that trauma happened in the stress response cycle, and equips you to complete that cycle. 

We have been in the trauma-informed space since 2015 and have seen thousands of lives impacted. In 2019, we began to focus on individual coaching and have worked with hundreds of women to see lasting life-change.

The foundation of our work is Somatic Experiencing®.

Cortney is listed in the directory of Somatic Experiencing Practitioners (SEP) at traumahealing.org and she not only has her Somatic Experiencing Practitioner Certificate that requires an extensive 3 years of training, but is also a Somatic Experiencing Assistant to Trainings at the Institute.

Each of our practitioners is currently enrolled in Dr. Peter Levine’s 3-year Somatic Experiencing Professional Training program.

Our team also has hundreds of hours of experience in internal family systems, somatic attachment, somatic experiencing, and polyvagal theory.

Learn more about our team members here.

We do not take insurance because we have a trauma-informed approach and therefore do not think anything is wrong with our clients to warrant a diagnosis or label, which is required by insurance for billing. 

Because we are trauma-informed, we believe your symptoms are a result of unresolved trauma which creates a dysregulated nervous system.  We believe (and there's lots of scientific evidence to prove) that once you heal the unresolved trauma bound in the nervous system and body (your physiology), your symptoms (like anxiety, depression, ADHD, etc) will subside.  

Since we are trauma-informed, we believe something happened to you, not that something is wrong with you so you do not need a label or diagnosis to heal.

With that being said, a few of our clients have successfully been reimbursed for our services through their HSA (others have been denied this).  It is your responsibility to obtain approval from your HSA provider for reimbursement prior to using our services.  You are still responsible for payments if your HSA request is denied. We are not liable for the denial of your HSA.