Stephanie D’Cruz

Emotions and significant life stressors can leave a person feeling stuck, lonely, or helpless. Finding a safe place to process through emotions and address questions of shame, normalcy, and acceptance can be challenging. Just like Bessel van der Kolk states in his book, “The Body Keeps the Score,” without being able to process emotions and trauma, we can get stuck and the emotions stored in our bodies. Processing emotions not only provides mental relief, but can also transform a person’s connectedness to their bodies and relieve some physical manifestations of stressors. Through finding a safe place to process, develop a trusting relationship, and work together toward healing, I hope to help people find hope which allows space for life to be messy and things to still be okay.

MISSION:
My goal is to provide trauma-informed care for clients, while providing a holistic perspective that allows clients to explore their culture, generational trauma, family dynamics, spirituality, personality, and/or life goals.

I have worked with children, teens, and adults managing anxiety, processing trauma including incest and sexual abuse, working through depression, and providing parenting support for parents whose children struggle with mental health.

THEORETICAL ORIENTATION:
Counseling is a collaboration between client and counselor toward better functioning and lesser mental health struggles. Providing an environment where a client can process and explore the roots of their symptoms is my ultimate goal. Through all the different theoretical orientations, I believe that therapy must be trauma-informed to adequately address a client’s needs. As a Certified Clinical Trauma Professional and embracing trauma-informed practices I hope that healing can happen at the deepest levels for clients. I utilize a variety of techniques from Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Internal Family Systems, and EMDR (Eye-Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing). These theoretical orientations allow for both traditional talk therapy and non-traditional, non-verbal methods of processing trauma.