Mental Health Counseling

Trauma Recovery

The aftermath of experiencing, witnessing, or learning about a traumatic event can be exceptionally difficult to navigate. Certain events can be overwhelmingly taxing on our mental health and often the stressors do not go away for months or years to come. People are unique, so it makes sense that the way each of us handles trauma is unique. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is very treatable. Unpacking any traumatic events from our lives with a compassionate, empathetic counseling professional is a responsible choice, as many after-effects are not understood intuitively.

Additionally, both Neurofeedback and Lifespan Integration therapies have been shown to significantly reduce symptoms associated with PTSD and other trauma repercussions.

Pneuma Counseling & Neurofeedback  also offers a therapeutic intervention called Lifespan Integration therapy. Lifespan Integration is a gentle, body-based therapeutic method, which heals without re-traumatizing. In 2003, Peggy Pace published the first edition of her book, Lifespan Integration: Connecting Ego States through Time. In her book Pace describes the new therapeutic method, which she developed through her work with her clients. Pace originally designed Lifespan Integration therapy for adult survivors of childhood abuse or neglect. She soon found that LI therapy facilitates rapid healing in people of all ages, and is effective with a wide range of therapeutic issues. Since 2004, Pace has been training therapists throughout the US and Western Europe. At the present time (2015), more than 2000 therapists worldwide have been trained in Lifespan Integration.

Lifespan Integration relies on the innate ability of the body-mind to heal itself. LI is body-based, and combines active imagination, the juxtaposition of ego states in time, and a visual time line of memories to facilitate neural integration and rapid healing. During the integrating phase of the protocol, the client "views" a memory image for each year of his or her life.

The success of this ‘re-wiring’ depends on the internal coherence of the administering therapist in the same way that the attachment outcome of an infant depends on the mother’s ability to attune to her child and to self-regulate. After LI therapy, people find themselves spontaneously reacting to current stressors in more age appropriate ways. Clients who begin LI therapy with memory gaps are eventually able to connect the pieces of their lives into a coherent whole. Clients who have completed Lifespan Integration therapy report that they feel better about life, are more self-accepting, and are better able to enjoy their intimate relationships. Learn more by visiting LifespanIntegration.com.

The Lifespan Integration technique causes memories to surface spontaneously, and because of how memories are held neurologically, each memory which surfaces is related to the emotional theme or issue being targeted. The resulting panoramic view of the client’s life gives the client new insights about lifelong patterns resultant from the past trauma. Lifespan Integration is also very effective in the healing of various attachment disorders. This is accomplished through imaginably ‘re-writing’ and ‘re-living’ the early conditions, and integrating the new (positive) feeling states which are generated in the client-therapist dyad.

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a psychotherapy approach designed for working with distressing or traumatic memories. The theory behind EMDR is that many psychological difficulties are the result of distressing life experiences which have not been stored in memory properly and are said to be unprocessed or blocked. These traumatic memories may need some help to become processed, and EMDR is one way to do this.

Learn More About EMDR

Brain regulation is the ability of your brain to operate appropriately given the circumstances in front of you—it’s how we control our work, school or social lives. It’s a very important function that most people take for granted. However, sometimes the brain can become dis-regulated, as with many ADHD, ADD, Autism Spectrum, and other brain-based learning disregulation symptoms*, and can cause us to suffer tremendous difficulties in life.

*Note that we use the term "symptoms," not ADHD. This is important to explain because at Pneuma Counseling & neurofeedback, we offer help with symptoms. We do not need a diagnosis to be able to help.

For these and other symptoms, we provide Neurofeedback. It’s an evidence-based, safe and effective approach to reducing the symptoms of ADHD in children, youngsters and adults. We work with the related ADHD, ADD, Autism, and other brain-based symptoms, which we consider as signs of deregulation in the brain:

• Inattentiveness – parts of the brain associated with concentration might be under aroused
• Hyperactivity – parts associated with physical activity might be over aroused
• Impulsiveness – the parts associated with self-control might be under aroused

Neurofeedback works so well because it is able to focus on each of these areas to restore brain regulation. Neurofeedback gives us the possibility to focus on each of these areas to restore the brain regulation again. For example, training the left front side of the brain helps improve planning and organization, which supports the ability to hold a plan in mind and finish tasks. And by training the right side we can support physical and/or emotional calming.

Neurofeedback has shown to be a powerful, evidence-based and highly effective tool to improve brain regulation and reduce the symptoms of ADHD in children, youngsters and adults. It provides a safe alternative to medication, meaning you can avoid the wide-ranging and potentially serious side effects attributed to psycho-stimulating medication like Methylphenidate (otherwise known as Ritalin).