Trauma Therapy
in Eugene, OR
Is unhealed trauma impacting your relationship with yourself?
Are you scraping by each day, maybe checking off your to-do list but living life in survival mode?
Do you feel disconnected from your relationships, your work, and yourself?
Is there a lingering sense that this isn’t really what you wanted for your life?
You’re here because you don’t feel like yourself. Checked out of life, you’re doing what’s expected—but you’re doing it inauthentically. Maybe this is impacting your ability to regulate your moods and emotions, or maybe you feel guilty that you can’t be or do more. Living this way can be overwhelming, isolating, and painful, and it often leads to a lot of shame and self-criticism.
If you’re the one in your life keeping it together for everyone else but internally struggling with the feeling that I just simply can’t live another day like this, you’ve come to the right place. I know that you are good at appearing “okay” on the surface while living with inner turmoil and dissatisfaction. It doesn’t have to be this way, though, and therapy can be your ticket out of a life lived in stress and survival mode.
My practice specializes in therapy for the “helpers”: the people-pleasers, the planners, and the perfectionists—caregivers to everyone else, often at their own expense. Together in counseling, we can target stress and trauma so that you can make room for more of what you really want out of life.
Let’s connect
Even if we understand trauma on a rational level, healing requires focused work and repair
Right now, a lot of us—especially those in high stress, “helping” professions—feel as though shock and trauma have become part of everyday life. We’re exposed to distressing situations daily through our work, in our communities, and on the news. So, even if we have a rational understanding of how stress impacts the brain and coping skills in place to help manage stress, no human is immune to the effects of cumulative trauma.
Moreover, helpers tend to get into this profession because we share similar experiences with the people we serve. Many of my clients (often therapists themselves) survived some form of complex or developmental trauma in childhood, usually involving their emotional and/or physical needs going unmet. Of course, clients also seek treatment for single-incident PTSD following an acutely traumatic experience like a death, assault, accident, or other life-threatening situation.
No matter the trauma or when it took place, many survivors have been living in fight, flight, freeze, and appease patterns ever since—rarely, if ever, feeling a true break or relief from these responses.
My treatment approach works because it targets trauma at both the mind and body levels. Using therapies that allow you to heal and process difficult experiences, we create new, life-changing connections to yourself, others, and the world around you.
My therapy approach is all about healing core traumas
Counseling through my practice means going beyond the talk and doing the deep, lasting work of healing. Specializing in complex and developmental trauma, I am a great fit for fellow therapists and other “helpers.”
Because I work closely with these populations, my clients usually come to therapy with some idea of their core trauma(s) and how this issue affects them in their daily life, so I aim to make the treatment process both collaborative and client-centered, honoring each person’s expertise on their own life.
What to expect
Once we’ve established presenting concerns and overarching goals for therapy, we will work toward “putting out fires”—or addressing the immediate issues causing physical, emotional, and psychological distress. We do this by targeting how stress and trauma are being stored in the nervous system using somatic (body-based) approaches. As surface-level symptoms are addressed, we can begin to do the deeper work of repairing core wounds.
I use trauma-informed, evidence-based approaches in therapy that, when used in combination, nurture empowerment, flexibility, and a more compassionate relationship with the Self. These approaches include:
Somatic therapies: Somatic Experiencing (SE) and NeuroAffective Touch – through body-based methods that incorporate touch, a new mind-body connection is established as the nervous system gets repatterned out of fight, flight, freeze, and appease modes.
Internal Family Systems (IFS) – as the various “parts” of yourself that are holding onto stress and trauma reintegrate themselves with an authentic core “Self” in treatment, a new sense of self-compassion and trauma recovery is possible.
No matter which modality I use, I always approach trauma therapy with thoughtful attunement and tailored, client-focused care.
Deep healing means going beyond the talk
When it comes to healing trauma at the source, there’s only so much that can be done through traditional counseling methods that primarily involve verbal processing. The right combination of trauma-informed, somatic therapy approaches actually works! And my clients report progress in just about every session using these methods.
I wouldn’t do this work if I didn’t think that real change was possible. As you reconnect with your most authentic Self and life force through therapy, you can make space for positive emotions once again, nurturing the experiences you really want out of life.
Common concerns about therapy for trauma…
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I’ve worked with quite a few clients who had negative experiences with other somatic therapies like EMDR in the past, finding them intense, overwhelming, or uncomfortable. Somatic Experiencing, NeuroAffective Touch, and the other somatic methods I use tend to be much gentler than EMDR. And IFS is more of a verbal approach focused on healing, alignment, and self-compassion.
We can try a variety of approaches to see what works, and I will check in with you regularly to make sure the pace of therapy feels productive and manageable.
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The point of therapy is to make you feel better, not worse. Because trauma can be painful and intimidating to verbalize, I use safe, gentle, often nonverbal therapy approaches that don’t require you to go into much, if any, detail about what happened. You will never be expected or pressured to disclose information you don’t want to share.
This process goes at your pace. As a therapist, I work thoughtfully and in a way that feels manageable, allowing you to build capacity and resiliency while still healing trauma at the core.
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I have no way of predicting how long you may need to be in therapy. However, I can say that many of my clients experience positive changes and major shifts in our work together—often reporting relief from some symptoms in a single session.
Clients that work with me tend to continue to see me for one year or longer due to the regular, weekly benefits they feel and see in their day-to-day lives. If you’re anything like them, you are likely to see some immediate changes as well as long-term recovery through counseling.
You don’t have to keep living life on autopilot
Rebecca White Counseling is a trauma-informed therapy practice that uses Somatic Experiencing (SE), NeuroAffective Touch, and Internal Family Systems (IFS) in treatment to help those struggling with the effects of trauma experience healing and relief.
Trauma Therapy in Eugene, OR Office
317 Goodpasture Island Rd Ste G,
Eugene, OR 97401