treatment specialities, & moving from hurt to healing
Chelsea offers specialized treatment & support for mommas & couples navigating the perinatal period & early parenthood.
Learn more about Chelsea’s treatment specialties, and how she can help you move from hurt, to healing.
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perinatal & postpartum
I support mommas during this tender and profound time of life, which spans from trying to conceive (ttc) to the first year after birth. If you are feeling overwhelmed, uncertain, or like you just need a little extra support during this time, you are very much not alone.
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pmads
Perinatal Mood & Anxiety Disorders (PMADS) include anxiety, depression, ocd, and other related mood disorders that mommas can experience during the perinatal period. With support, you can begin to feel more like yourself again.
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infertility
Navigating the infertility process can come with a wide (and sometimes confusing) range of feelings and an overwhelming number of decisions, oftentimes with many unexpected steps along the way. I can help you tend to yourself emotionally as you navigate this complicated time.
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grief & loss
Grief and loss can take many forms. Loss can be tangible, such as the loss of a pregnancy or the death of a loved one. Loss can also be more ambiguous or ongoing, such as the learning you need to undergo fertility treatment, not knowing if you be will able to have a biological child, or realizing that a dream you have held dearly for a long time might not actually come to be. Whatever your specific loss may be, I can help you hold space to honor and grieve.
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birth trauma
Birth trauma occurs when birth ends up feeling unsafe or scary, and can happen even when momma and baby both end up being “okay”. If you have experienced birth trauma, I can support you in reprocessing the heightened emotions you may still be carrying.
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trauma & ptsd
Becoming a parent can sometimes include the experiencing of new traumatic events, but it also can stir up old wounds and traumas. I can help you gently connect with and reprocess some of these tender spots so you feel more free to live in the present.
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ocd
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) includes a “sticky” cycle of looping through intrusive fears and compulsive (internal and/or external) actions meant to try to quiet these worries. OCD can feel very confusing, exhausting, and even scary, especially if you do not know what is happening. I can help you learn to notice when you are looping and then find ways to bridge back to the present moment.
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nicu experiences
Welcoming your baby into the world and then having them enter the NICU can be incredibly overwhelming and emotional. I can tenderly help you find your footing on this unexpected wilderness path, support you making space for your emotional experience, and help you build your confidence as you learn how to continue to show up for your baby during this complex time.
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matrescence
Matrescence refers to the transformative process of becoming a mother, and unfolds over time. I can support you in making sense of your new identity as a momma, and the many complex feelings that may come along with this seismic shift.
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remothering
When we become mommas, we often find that our childhood attachment experiences suddenly feel much more present, and that we too long to be mothered. At the same time, our own child’s needs are never-ending, which may leave us feeling unable to tend to our own needs. This can lead to us vacillating between trying to suppress our own needs to focus on the needs of others, yelling/breaking down when we feel depleted, then feeling guilty and starting the whole cycle over again. I can support you in learning to mother yourself, and some of your own unmet needs, with kindness, so that you can then feel more able to mother from a place of calm and connection.
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parenting skills
Being a parent is not for the faint of heart, and can at times feel incredibly overwhelming and complex. Weaving in an attachment-focused perspective, emotional regulation skills, and sensory considerations, I can support you in better understanding your own needs, your child’s needs, and how you can start to develop parenting skills and processes that fit for your family.
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couples therapy
Navigating the perinatal period and early parenthood entails significant shifting, including in the couple relationship. I can help you prioritize your connection by supporting you in strengthening your ability to work together as a team as you build coparenting skills and adjust to the unique developmental stages of early parenthood.
moving from hurt, to healing
Hurt can negatively impact us, making it difficult to feel connected and present in our lives.
But healing is possible! I can help you find a renewed sense of trust, calm, and connection, with both yourself and others.
hurt…
Trauma can make it difficult to trust and to feel present in our bodies, in our relationships, and in our lives.
Trauma is the emotional and physical distress that someone continues to feel after experiencing or witnessing a stressful, dangerous, or upsetting event. Trauma is defined by our body’s responses, not the specific distressing event/s; someone is traumatized if their brain and body express that they are. Whether or not someone experiences the lingering effects of trauma after an upsetting event depends on a myriad of factors, including both contextual and genetic predispositions, levels of support and agency, and more. Trauma can occur after a single identifiable event (such as the loss of a pregnancy, the death of a loved one, an accident, a medical event, a difficult birth, having a baby in the NICU, etc.), or can occur slowly over time (such as when experiencing chronic neglect or abuse as a child, or living in an ongoing state of feeling unsafe).
Trauma impacts our brains and our bodies, and makes our bodies very sensitive to the fight/flight/freeze response in a way that can make it difficult for us to accurately judge whether or not our present moment is actually safe. Our brains and bodies are naturally resilient, and develop ways of coping that help us survive difficulty. However, these ways of surviving often come at a cost. The impacts of our trauma may leave us feeling easily threatened in situations that remind us of past negative experiences, or may make it difficult to deal with our own emotions or the emotions of others (like our children). We might get flashbacks, or might suddenly feel very emotional. We might suddenly go numb, or find it difficult to access any emotion at all. We might have nightmares or difficultly sleeping, we might find it difficult to go to certain places or be around certain people. We might feel hypervigilant and on guard, or irritable and easily angered. We might feel anxious and have difficulty concentrating or completing everyday tasks. We might not feel like ourselves.
Perinatal Mood and Anxiety Disorders (PMADS) can make it difficult to feel connected, capable, and joyful as parents.
Perinatal Mood and Anxiety Disorders is a term given to a variety of mental health conditions that can arise in or be exacerbated by the pregnancy and postpartum experience. Becoming a parent is a huge transition, and can be both exquisitely beautiful and incredibly hard. It is normal for us as new parents to feel a wide range of emotions, to wrestle with a shift in our identity, to feel tired, to occasionally feel like we don’t know what we are doing, and to sometimes cry, worry, or feel overwhelmed. However, if the frequency, intensity, and duration of our symptoms are distressing enough to interfere with our overall well-being and ability to function and feel present in our life, we may be experiencing PMADS.
If we are experiencing Perinatal Depression, we might experience feelings of deep sadness, guilt, shame, and hopelessness, and may lack a sense of connection with our baby. We may eat/sleep too much or too little, and may have thoughts of hurting ourselves or our baby. We might feel easily irritated, angry, or even rageful. If we are experiencing Perinatal Anxiety, we may feel a sense of constant worry or dread, have racing thoughts, feel restless or on edge, and have physical symptoms such as dizziness, hot flashes, nausea, or a racing pulse. If we are experiencing Perinatal OCD, we might have obsessive and upsetting intrusive thoughts, and may feel the need to engage in compulsive, repetitive actions in order to decrease our sense of fear/obsessions. We may be hyper-vigilant of our baby, or afraid of being alone with our baby.
Symptoms of PMADS can make it feel difficult for us to trust ourselves, our experience, and even our ability to be a parent, and can also make us feel terribly alone and hopeless.
…and healing
I see therapy as a place to rebuild trust - and through doing so, to heal.
Trust - in ourselves, in others, in the world around us – is often lost when we experience trauma or difficulty. This loss of trust can make it difficult for us to feel safe in our body, in our relationships (including in parenthood), and in our environments. Our bodies and our brains are so good at being adaptive and resilient, and often develop ways of coping that help us survive but also that can come at a high cost. Surviving is not the same as thriving.
Because I firmly believe in our innate ability as humans to heal and adapt, I will help you compassionately explore the different ways you have been surviving in the world while also extending the invitation to perhaps do things differently – in a way that feels more wholehearted and present.
Two primary therapeutic modalities I use to foster healing are Internal Family Systems (IFS) and Brainspotting.
Internal Family Systems is an experiential therapy that helps us learn how to trust ourselves and become more Self-led.
Internal Family Systems (IFS) is a lovely therapeutic modality created by Richard Schwartz that essentially helps people feel more able to trust themselves in the world. This model trusts that we all have a core Self that is curious, kind, compassionate, and wise. We are all remarkably resilient and adaptive, and we all have different “parts” that serve various functions intended to keep us safe. For example, we might have “parts” that are task oriented, parts that are good at keeping the peace, parts that keep our feelings at bay. And these parts are intended to help us, and often do, but they also come at a cost (especially when we are distressed).
IFS provides a framework for me as the therapist to utilize to compassionately support you in learning to feel more like your Self. This includes gently exploring why these “parts” of you act the way they do, what they are afraid might happen if their role/s were to change, and what deeper hurts may be in need of some healing. Over time, it becomes increasingly possible to learn to compassionately interact with these various parts from a place of Self. This is called learning to be “Self-led”, and includes learning how to appreciate the wisdom of these various parts/ways of coping while finding ways to move in the world that are more life-giving and in alignment with what you define as a wholehearted life.
(There are many helpful resources about Internal Family Systems, including the book No Bad Parts by Richard Schwartz.)
Brainspotting is a trauma-focused therapy that supports our brains in their natural abilities to heal.
Brainspotting is a brain and body based approach developed by David Grand that supports people in trauma reintegration. This essentially means that brainspotting is an approach that allows us to help heal and reintegrate the neural networks in the brain where trauma is stored at a subcortical level. This allows our brains to create new, more adaptive connections in the present moment instead of slipping into old “frozen” trauma networks. This shift can be incredibly freeing, as instead of just “trying harder” to implement “top down” cognitive techniques in moments of distress (something that can feel incredibly difficult if not impossible once fight/flight/freeze responses are activated), it allows “bottom up” healing to occur from the emotional areas of our brain where trauma is stored. This means that over time you will begin to feel more free to respond in new ways organically instead of trying to force yourself to do so. This allows you to work with your body (and brain) instead of against it, and creates a unique place to rebuild trust in yourself.
As the therapist, I create a safe space for “dual attunement” – attuning to you on a relational level and on a neurobiological level and holding your experience. I support you in finding the eye position where you feel most connected to whatever emotion, thought pattern, or experience/trauma that you want to work on, and I hold the space while we trust your brain and body to process in the ways they need to. Because our bodies and brains are naturally “plastic” and adaptive, they naturally move towards healing when provided with the right support. Brainspotting is gentle, supportive, and client led, and I have found it to be an incredibly powerful tool in helping clients feel more like themselves again.
we shake with joy, we shake with grief.
what a time they have, these two
housed as they are in the same body.
-Mary Oliver