Embodied Depth Psychotherapy

As humans, it is our nature to express and receive love, and engage with life in a way that feels embodied and real. Inevitably, there are times when we don’t feel that way. We may feel disconnected from others and even ourself. Depth psychotherapy is a practice that helps us connect to our inherent vitality.

Depth psychotherapy involves listening to our own stories, listening to the body and tending to our dreams. This kind of listening has deep healing properties, because it is inherently regulating, empathic, and welcoming of who we are. This leads to greater self understanding and acceptance which helps us experience others with greater tolerance and ease.

Depth psychotherapy appreciates that the soul is self healing. Carl Jung spoke of this when he said, the psyche contains the seed to its own cure.

Listening can take many forms. It can be telling and listening to the story of our own life, our childhood, and the stories of our parents and ancestors. We can also listen through our body, using somatic focusing which is a way of tuning into the body’s felt sense and wisdom. We can listen to our dreams, which can calm our nervous system and open us to a broader perspective. Engaging with dreams, the felt sense in the body, and the imagination helps us heal from childhood suffering, and transgenerational and cultural trauma so that we feel more securely attached to life. We develop a deeper awareness and gain access to the vitality that springs forth from the depths of our own interiority.

Studying traumatology for many years has helped me appreciate how essential it is to connect with our embodied experience. In many ways, the struggle of our busy, tasking, and information rich world can anesthetize us from our bodies and our felt experience. As does trauma. We may feel a sense of emptiness, loneliness, or persistent worry. 

This approach to inner work involves developing an awareness of a felt sense, as described by Eugene Gendlin in his method called, “focusing.” Engaging with dreams and the imagination through the felt sense in the body heals trauma.  We know that trauma and chronic stress can disrupt the neurological pathways of our sensory experience which must be online for us to feel fully alive. Embodied depth psychotherapy helps the sensory system come online. It is an approach that is naturally trauma-informed, because it gently helps the body learn that it is safe to be here. Most importantly, it can offer a direct embodied experience of the aliveness of our own heart and its inherent relationship to life itself.

This approach can help with:

  • grief and loss
  • anxiety
  • depression
  • frequent emotional reactivity
  • loneliness
  • difficulty feeling joy
  • spiritual crisis

Offerings

Depth Psychotherapy
Robbyn has a private practice in Portland, OR where she works from a Jungian-oriented, somatic and imaginal perspective, with a sensitivity toward the relevance of interpersonal neurobiology and trauma. She is level II certified in Dreamtending and and is a practitioner of Embodied Experiential dreamwork. She is also Phase II certified in the NeuroSequential Model of Therapeutics which is a neurodevelopmental lens to better understand the effects of trauma in children and adults.

Embodied Experiential Dreamwork Certification & Dream Groups
Robbyn and her colleague Leslie Ellis, PhD co-host a dream certification program for clinicians and dreamers who want to learn an embodied approach to dreamwork. Robbyn also hosts dream groups in Portland, Oregon. For more information about these courses, go to: www.dreamwowza.com

Therapeutically Guided Safe Sound Treatment
Robbyn provides a therapeutic, trauma sensitive approach to administering the Safe and Sound Protocol (SSP) within the safety of a therapeutic relationship. Based upon the research of memory reconsolidation, social baseline theory,  and the neurosequential model of therapeutics, Robbyn has created a structured approach that supports optimal efficacy of the protocol.

Clinical Consultation for Psychotherapists
Robbyn is a phase II trainer in the ChildTrauma Academy NMT (nuero-sequential model of therapeutics) and provides consultation to professionals and professional groups on how to connect with and respond to children, especially traumatized children, from a neurologically attuned perspective.