Current Offerings
We offer the following opportunities for individual session work. We are in the process of developing groups, online coursework, and retreats. All services are designed with trauma survivors in mind and highlight practices that support resiliency, nervous system healing, and interpersonal safety. The services we provide to our community is constantly evolving as we navigate the pandemic. Please feel free to contact us with requests and ideas for our immediate and extended online community.
Is this the Right Fit for you?
Below is a list of the areas that we specialize in serving. If you have questions about our offerings, or are wondering which service would best meet your needs, please schedule a free consultation. We are happy to answer your questions!
Anxiety & Chronic Stress
An estimated 19.1% of U.S. adults had an anxiety disorder in the past year. This may include feelings of worry, anxiety, or fear that are strong enough to interfere with one's daily activities. Healing efforts geared toward anxiety and stress can often include relaxation practice, guided imagery, rituals of self care, CBT education, nervous system education, and repatterning toward regulation in the context of the therapeutic relationship. Frequently, a trauma resolution approach will be integrated in sessions as nervous system dysregulation can often be tracked back to or exacerbated by traumatic events that occurred in the past, possibly during key developmental ages.
Chronic Pain
Chronic pain is pain that lasts for over three months. It can be there all the time, or it may come and go, and can occur anywhere in the body. Chronic pain can interfere with daily activities, such as working, having a social life and taking care of yourself or others. People with chronic pain frequently have secondary symptoms like feeling tired, having trouble sleeping, or mood changes. The emotional impacts of chronic pain can feel like low self-esteem, anger, depression, anxiety, or frustration. Working with chronic pain in healing sessions often begins with validation and understanding for how hard it is to be someone living in pain, as it is common for other people to minimize or deny a person's experience. This is often followed by psychoeducation, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and working with secondary bracing and compensation patterns somatically. Mindfulness and relaxation are regularly practiced during chronic pain sessions as well as learning conscious tools to reduce the cycle of pain amplification.
Creatives/Artists
People who identify as creatives or artists are often deeply feeling people who may have found their art as a way to express this depth and complexity. When right brain dominant people are met in a traditional left brained healing environment, it can seem like oil and water and can leave the creative person feeling misunderstood, frustrated, or even worse than before seeking help. Having worked with and being artists themselves, our Founders are skilled in being able to find a language that works for the person seeking help. Sessions with artists and creatives can be largely nonverbal and nondirective, and may look like doing expressive arts and ecoart exercises that are designed to access and support creative people. Sessions can also be a place to practice the left brain skills that may not come as naturally to artists but that can be very helpful for pursuing our dreams and aspirations.
Depression
During 2013–2016, 8.1% of American adults aged 20 and over had depression in a given 2-week period. Current research suggests that prevalence of depression symptoms in the US was more than 3-fold higher during COVID-19 compared with before. Depression is characterized by a persistently depressed mood or loss of interest in activities, causing significant impairment in daily life. Treatment typically integrates behavioral activation, CBT, and mindfulness practices. A trauma resolution approach is often utilized as depressive states and thoughts are often sparked by major events in life that have had a lasting impact. Accessing and processing the originating events can greatly reduce stuck feeling states and thought patterning.
Developmental Trauma & Attachment Injuries
Developmental trauma is trauma that takes place during childhood and can include chronic abuse, neglect or other harsh adversity in the childhood years. Attachment injuries happen if your parents were involved in this adversity, for example if they were distracted, anxious, had their own trauma and were unable to adequately meet your basic attachment needs. You may also have attachment trauma if you’ve been bullied or hurt in a social setting or while under the care of adults who were meant to protect you (counselors, spiritual leaders, or caretakers). Due to developmental trauma taking place in such formative years of development, it can have a far reaching impact on the developing person and into adulthood. Developmental trauma in adults can look like challenges with relationships, friendships, as well as an unstable sense of self. It can be characterized by the inability to regulate emotion as the developing person often did not receive co-regulation and modeling in self soothing. As the damage in developmental trauma occurred relationally, it is pivotal to find a qualified therapist who is trained in attachment healing models and who can create a safe atmosphere to heal these relational wounds. In sessions, you can expect the therapeutic relationship to be highlighted. Models drawn from in session may include Dialectic Behavioral Therapy, Ego State or Parts Work, as well as trauma resolution approaches such as EMDR or Somatic Experiencing.
Grief & Loss
Grief can be a sacred opening, a natural part of the human existence, and it is possible to develop a healthy relationship with how death shows up in our life. However, traumatic loss and grief is qualitatively different than natural grief and can become stuck in many ways, causing people to be plagued by unrelenting and prolonged grief symptoms such as fatigue, loss of interest in life, suicidality, and inability to function in daily life due to invasive thoughts and attention on the loss. Healing sessions for grief and loss may include gentle expression using art or writing, learning how to stay in connection to our lost loved ones, a safe place to share the stories we hold dear about our departed, and may include reprocessing the loss if the death was traumatic in nature (for example, unexpected, abrupt, with prolonged suffering, or violent). If it is resonant for the client, sessions may include learning how to engage in ceremony to connect with, remember, feel supported by, and honor the people who have passed in our life.
Highly Sensitive Children & Adults
The highly sensitive (HS) trait is a recently proposed human trait, found in up to 20% of the population. People with sensory-processing sensitivity, or SPS, process information deeper than usual. Those with high levels of SPS display increased emotional sensitivity, stronger reactivity to both external and internal stimuli—pain, hunger, light, and noise—and a complex inner life. For HSPs, it can be particularly helpful to learn embodiment practices, boundaries, rituals of self-care, and to have a safe space to process life's events as they are more prone to developing Post Traumatic Stress symptoms. As highly sensitive people, both of our facilitators have navigated symptoms that result from a society not designed around the sensitive brain. Sharing what has worked and supporting other HSPs in finding what works for them is one of our greatest passions.
Identity and Transitions
During major life changes and transitions, it is common to be confronted with identity confusion and layers of grief that lead people to question their sense of self or place in the world. Having a safe place to process these shifts can help us to integrate and make sense of who we were, who we are, and who we are becoming. For people that find nature metaphors helpful, it can be particularly potent to see our own lives through the lens of cycles found in the natural world: birth/death, seasonal changes, the cycles of the moon and sun, and countless other similar cyclical changes help us to see our own development and changes with more grace and patience. Session work can include nature based healing practices, story and narrative sharing and reworking, as well as expressive art practices that give us insight into the shifts that are taking place.
Neurodivergence
Neurodivergence refers to variation in the human brain regarding sociability, learning, attention, mood and other mental functions in a non-pathological sense. The creation of A Human Sanctuary, in large part, is the result of our Founder's neurodivergence and the need for a space that supports the differences of people with processing differences. Neurodivergent people can easily feel overwhelmed and confused in the context of society. Our offerings are each based in the assumption that every human has different perspectives, strengths, areas of potential, and needs for growth. We also believe every human has a beautiful contribution to make to this world regardless of ability status assigned by a capital based society. Sessions can be a wonderful and safe place to practice social interaction, boundaries, self-awareness, and other interpersonal skills desired by clients.
Spiritual/Existential Crisis
There are times in life that call to question everything we thought to be true about the big picture of living and existence. When we lose our anchor, it can feel like the ground beneath our feet is slipping away. This can be a very scary feeling for someone who has never gone through this type of life changing chapter. During these times, it can be essential for us to reach out and receive support from someone who understands this, and who knows the lay of the land, so to speak. Dissolution can be a time of great awakening, a powerful time to reassess and reorient to the life we are called toward rather than playing out old scripts that we feel we have outgrown. Sessions may highlight accessing our inner child, that original spark of life giving joy from childhood, and what values we hope to infuse into the next chapter of life. Sessions can create a scaffolding for the identity that is spontaneously emerging while providing the relief with weekly structured reflection and encouragement in trusting the process.
Trauma Survivors & Post Traumatic Stress
Many people hear the word trauma and think "oh no, I don't think I have been traumatized". However, they may not realize that, as far as our body is concerned, anytime our nervous system has been overwhelmed by circumstances can be a traumatic event. Trauma is usually described as either single occurrence, for example a car accident, surviving a natural disaster, or being attacked, or as multiple occurrence (often referred to as chronic PTSD or Complex Post Traumatic Stress, CPTSD). Examples of chronic trauma would be being in a domestic violence relationship, being exposed to harsh and abusive parenting, or can result from surviving multiple traumatic events throughout the lifetime. Because children's nervous systems are so newly developing, it doesn't take much to overwhelm their capacity and even something like repeatedly not being responded to in a timely fashion, hearing constant fighting in the atmoshphere can traumatize children and set the map for their developing system. Our bodies respond to this overwhelm in a set of predictable and understandable ways to survive, but unfortunately these adaptive changes can become problematic once the danger has passed. In daily life, this may look like avoidance, persistent anxiety or unrelenting depression, anger outbursts or feeling out of control. In children, it is often described as behavioral problems by parents and teachers. People with CPTSD are often discouraged by traditional talk therapy or "top-down" approaches as it does not access the parts of the brain that need support and this approach can often leave the client feeling worse, emotionally flooded, and that nothing can help them.  Using a combination of "bottom up" practices including but not limited to Somatic Experiencing, EMDR, as well as highlighting the safe therapeutic relationship, we can facilitate healing for the nervous system and help clients find their way to a resilient and regulated nervous system.