WELCOME TO HOPE, HEALTH & HAPPINESS.
Hope’s particular interest is in working with trauma and staying within our ‘window of tolerance’, as we work with the mind, brain, and human relationships as a ‘work-in-progress’ to achieving health, happiness and resilience.
Lets talk about Neurobiology
When people have increased knowledge on how the brain functions through learning and skill building, the mind can influence and change the activity of the brain. When we understand the brain we can ‘rewire’ the brain towards integration, health and happiness. Neurobiological research demonstrates that “neurons that fire together, wire together” and we can work with this understanding to achieve change by learning and repeating new skills which give us the flexibility to change our behaviour.
Hope works with understanding the signals from our entire body, attachment and other people to enable more meaningful relationships with ourselves and others. Being mindfully aware of our internal world enables our deeper connection and empathy to others, and helps build our health, happiness, and resilience.
What is Interpersonal Neurobiology or IPNB?
IPNB is an interdisciplinary field which informs theory, and which was foundered and pioneered by Dr Dan Siegel to explain the Triune Brain (refer diagram above) and its relation to the mental, emotional and physical neurobiology of the brain. Using IPNB Hope will instruct you on what happens when we lose control of our emotional harmony and balance, and then also teach you how to return to having choices and flexibility in your responses again.
During your consultation with Hope, you will work together on your beliefs, attitudes, intentions, hopes, dreams, perceptions, reasoning, and intuition to reach your desired goals. Ancestral Healing and rituals are the age old traditions we have inherited to move forward.
When you are meeting with Hope for traumatic events, Hope will also work with Mindfulness, Eye Movement Desensitisation Reprocessing [EMDR], Somatic Experiencing [SE] and the Poly Vagal Theory [PVT] & Alchemy of Shame [AST] model.
How does EMDR help trauma?
EMDR is a psychotherapy based on the adaptive information processing model founded by Dr Francine Shapiro in the late 1980’s. The eye movements or other forms of bilateral stimulation alternate stimulus from one hemisphere to the other which facilitates the various aspects of the ‘stuck’ memory. This has been scientifically proven to enable the mechanisms of change to process dysfunctionally stored events to resolution. During the EMDR process, the undesired memory triggers & emotions, or the unresolved trauma and behaviours that are connected to the old experience, are transformed. EMDR has been endorsed by the American Psychological Association, the Australian Psychological Society; The International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies; The National Health & Medical Research Council; Phoenix Australia – Centre for Post Traumatic Mental Health; and the World Health Organisation (WHO) who have approved EMDR therapy for use with adults, adolescents and children for the treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Healing Trauma and SE
In the 1960’s Dr Peter Levine, the founder of SE, commenced his studies in the evolution of the effects of stress on our nervous system and the body. With his PhD in medical biophysics Dr Peter Levine studied how animals discharge shock - as he realised that animals who are constantly under the threat of death do not show symptoms of trauma as humans do. His research led him to discover that when we have had trauma in our lives and have become overwhelmed in situations, there is a massive build up of energy that needs to be released from the nervous system. If the energy is not released it is stored and causes dysregulation and other traumatic symptoms. Using SE, Hope will work with you to access the body memory of the event and to slowly release the stored energy. Hope will only work at the level that you can handle while staying in the present moment, and help you to reclaim ‘lost’ memories or change thoughts and beliefs about the event, to enable feeling happiness and well-being again.
SE, The Poly Vagal Theory, & Shame
Additionally, SE integrates the razor edge research of the Poly Vagal Theory (PVT) as proposed by Dr Stephen Porges regarding the function of our fight/ flight/ freeze and faint (FFFF) responses. This theory incorporates the study of the evolution of the survival instinct as an organising principle to decipher the FFFF neurophysiological circuits, and how they work when we react to trauma and life events. Hope will also work with Caryn Scotto d’Luzia ‘s AST model of shame resolution. PVT proposes that shame is one of the basic biological responses that social beings need to organise groups into their hierarchies, and to let the children know that something is really bad and shouldn’t be done again. If the childhood shame is not repaired then this may become self perpetuating when those psycho physiological needs are felt again. As shame and trauma have a similar psycho physiological patterning which the body responds to, Hope utilises a non-judgemental, compassionate therapeutic response to help repair and transform the shame.