Calgary Trauma Specialist: EMDR and Trauma Therapy for Women under Pressure in Calgary, AB
If you're a woman who looks like she has it all together, but underneath you are struggling with anxiety, trauma, or overwhelming thoughts, you're not alone. As a Calgary trauma specialist, I'm Vivienne Livingstone, and as a Calgary based trauma specialist I understand the unique challenges faced by women juggling multiple responsibilities while battling internal storms of self-doubt, perfectionism, and emotional pain.
Understanding Trauma's Hidden Impact on Successful Women
At Resilience Counselling and Consulting, we understand that trauma often looks different than you might expect. For many women, trauma isn’t always a single event—it can be a series of experiences that quietly shape your daily life. You may also be struggling with patterns like perfectionism, people-pleasing, or ongoing stress that seem hard to escape, especially if you are in a demanding role.
Your trauma might include childhood trauma that taught you to be hypervigilant, workplace stress that has pushed you beyond your limits, or recent traumatic events that have shattered your sense of safety. Perhaps you've experienced a difficult health diagnosis, relationship breakdown, motor vehicle accident, or other distressing event that has finally motivated you to seek deeper healing through trauma therapy in Calgary, AB.
Complex trauma often develops when someone has experienced multiple traumatic events or prolonged exposure to distressing circumstances. This type of trauma affects your emotional well-being in profound ways, creating trauma impacts that show up in your daily life, relationships, and mental health.
The impact of unresolved trauma often shows up in ways that feel disconnected from the original traumatic experiences. You might notice symptoms like racing thoughts that won't quiet, physical symptoms that doctors struggle to explain, or a persistent sense that you're not good enough despite your accomplishments. Many of my clients describe feeling like they're constantly scanning for danger, even in safe environments - this is how trauma affects your nervous system's ability to distinguish between actual threats and perceived ones.
How Trauma Affects Your Mind and Body
Understanding how trauma affects your mind and body is crucial for effective trauma treatment. Traumatic stress disorder and post traumatic stress disorder create lasting changes in both your brain and nervous system. Your amygdala, which acts as your internal alarm system, becomes hyperactive after traumatic experiences, constantly scanning for potential threats. This hypervigilance can leave you feeling exhausted even when you're supposed to be relaxing.
Your hippocampus, responsible for processing traumatic memories, often struggles to properly organize these experiences. This is why certain triggers can make past traumatic events feel like they're happening right now, complete with the same emotional and physical symptoms. Learning to manage triggers becomes essential for healing from post traumatic stress disorder and trauma.
Meanwhile, your prefrontal cortex - the part of your brain responsible for emotional regulation and decision-making - can go offline during trauma responses. This explains why you might find yourself reacting in ways that don't match your usual calm, competent demeanor, experiencing distressing symptoms that feel overwhelming.
The hopeful truth is that your brain has neuroplasticity - the ability to form new neural pathways throughout your life. This means that with trauma informed care and the right therapeutic approach, you can literally rewire your brain's response to trauma triggers and develop healthy coping mechanisms.
Recognizing When You Need Professional Support
Many women delay seeking therapy because they've learned to push through difficulties and maintain their responsibilities no matter what. However, there are clear signs that trauma is impacting your mental health in ways that require professional support from trauma therapists or trauma counsellors.
You might notice persistent sleep difficulties, whether it's trouble falling asleep due to racing thoughts or staying asleep due to hypervigilance. Severe anxiety that surprises you - snapping at loved ones or colleagues in ways that don't feel like you - often signals that your nervous system is overwhelmed and you may be experiencing trauma symptoms or PTSD.
Relationship challenges are common when people have experienced trauma. You might find yourself withdrawing from people you care about, struggling with trust, or feeling disconnected even in intimate relationships. Many of my clients describe feeling like they're going through the motions of connection without truly feeling present in a supportive space.
Physical symptoms are often overlooked but incredibly common manifestations of traumatic stress disorder. Chronic pain, headaches, digestive issues, unexplained aches, or frequent illness can all be ways your body holds unprocessed traumatic memories. These symptoms often improve significantly as you heal through trauma therapy.
Perhaps most importantly, if you've developed coping strategies that aren't serving your emotional well being - whether that's overworking, perfectionism to an exhausting degree, or other unhealthy patterns - trauma therapy can help you address the root causes rather than just managing distressing symptoms.
My Specialized Approach to Trauma Counselling in Calgary, AB
As a therapist specializing in trauma therapy in Calgary, I use evidence-based approaches that are particularly effective for busy, successful women who need efficient, lasting results. My trauma informed approach combines Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART), and other trauma focused therapy modalities to create a personalized treatment plan that honors both your time constraints and your need for deep healing.
EMDR Therapy: Reprocessing Traumatic Memories
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing is recognized by the World Health Organization as a first-line treatment for treating trauma and post traumatic stress disorder. This trauma focused therapy helps your brain reprocess stuck traumatic memories through bilateral stimulation - typically following a light bar with your eyes while bringing up difficult memories. This process mimics what your brain does naturally during REM sleep to process traumatic experiences.
What makes EMDR particularly appealing for busy professionals is its efficiency in trauma treatment. Many clients experience significant relief within 6-12 sessions for single-incident trauma. The process allows you to keep the facts of what happened while dramatically reducing the emotional charge associated with those traumatic memories, helping to reduce distressing symptoms effectively.
Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART): Rapid Trauma Resolution
Accelerated Resolution Therapy combines the most effective elements of multiple therapeutic approaches into a streamlined trauma treatment that can begin to change things in just 3-5 sessions. This approach is ideal for women who want rapid results and can commit to intensive work in treating trauma.
Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART) uses eye movements similar to EMDR but incorporates additional techniques like cognitive elements and voluntary image replacement. You maintain complete control over what you share while experiencing profound shifts in how traumatic memories affect your daily life and emotional well being.
EMDR Intensives: Accelerated Healing Journey
For women who prefer to address trauma more quickly, I offer EMDR intensive sessions as part of my trauma counselling services in Calgary, AB. These longer, more concentrated sessions can compress traditional therapy timelines significantly, allowing you to make substantial progress in weeks rather than months on your healing journey.
Intensives are particularly beneficial if you're dealing with specific traumatic events, have limited time for weekly therapy, or want to make rapid progress before returning to demanding work schedules. This intensive approach to trauma therapy in Calgary provides a supportive environment for deep healing work.
Additional Therapeutic Approaches I Use for Trauma Treatment
Internal Family Systems Informed Therapy
This trauma focused approach recognizes that we all have different "parts" of ourselves - the perfectionist, the people-pleaser, the critic, the caretaker. Traumatic experiences often create conflicts between these parts or cause some parts to become overly protective. I use Internal Family Systems concepts to help you understand these different aspects of yourself with compassion and develop healthier internal relationships, fostering resilience in your healing journey.
Trauma-Informed Stabilization Treatment
Before we begin processing traumatic memories, our work starts with building internal safety and stability. The Trauma-Informed Stabilization Treatment (TIST) model is supportive if may be suffering with C-PTSD, helping you develop a strong foundation by working gently with the protective and wounded parts of you that may feel overwhelmed, shut down, or stuck in old survival patterns. Together, we’ll focus on cultivating emotional regulation, grounding strategies, and expanding your capacity to stay present—what we call building your “window of tolerance.” This phase is essential for helping you feel safe, resourced, and supported as we prepare for deeper healing
Observed and Experiential Integration Therapy
Observed and Experiential Integration (OEI) therapy goes beyond talk therapy to help you process trauma at the level of the body and nervous system. Using targeted eye positions, somatic awareness, and bilateral stimulation, OEI supports your brain in reprocessing distressing memories, reducing emotional overwhelm, and improving nervous system regulation. Instead of simply understanding your trauma, this approach helps you experience shifts in how you feel, think, and respond—allowing for deeper emotional healing and more lasting change in your day-to-day life.
Complementary Approaches for Comprehensive Trauma Care
While I specialize in EMDR and Accelerated Resolution Therapy, I also understand the value of other evidence-based approaches that trauma counsellors and ptsd therapists may use. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy can be helpful for addressing thought patterns that developed in response to traumatic experiences. Dialectical Behavior Therapy offers valuable coping skills for emotional regulation, particularly for those dealing with complex trauma.
Narrative Therapy provides another supportive space for trauma healing, helping you reframe your story and find meaning in your experiences. Solution Focused Therapy can complement trauma work by helping you identify strengths and resources you already possess on your healing journey.
Talk therapy can be helpful in providing a safe and supportive environment where you can process at your own pace. However, for many people who have experienced trauma, specialized approaches like EMDR and ART often provide more direct and efficient pathways to healing.
What to Expect in Our Trauma Therapy Work Together
Your Free 15-Minute Consultation
I offer a brief phone consultation where we can discuss your concerns and determine if my approach to trauma counselling might be a good fit for your needs. This conversation allows you to get a sense of my style and ask any questions about trauma therapy or my specific methods for treating trauma.
The Intake Process in Calgary and across AB
If you decide to move forward with trauma therapy in Calgary or virtually, across Alberta, you'll complete simple onboarding paperwork from the comfort of your own home. This includes basic information about your mental health history and current concerns related to any traumatic experiences.
Your first appointment is a 50-minute intake session - a guided conversation where I get to know you and understand what you'd like to work on changing. There's no pressure to share more than you're comfortable with about past trauma, and we'll move entirely at your pace in this supportive space.
Ongoing Trauma Treatment Structure
I typically schedule trauma therapy sessions on a weekly or biweekly basis, depending on your needs and goals. Consistent attendance is particularly important when doing the deep work of addressing core trauma issues, as your nervous system needs regular support during the healing journey.
To support lasting change and foster resilience, I may offer between-session practices, homework, and reflections to help you apply insights and coping skills in your everyday life. These aren't burdensome assignments but rather gentle ways to extend your healing beyond our trauma therapy sessions and develop healthy coping mechanisms.
Personalized Treatment Planning for Your Healing Journey
Your trauma treatment plan will be entirely customized to your specific traumatic experiences, goals, and preferences. Some clients prefer to focus intensively on one particular traumatic event, while others need to address multiple experiences or ongoing patterns related to complex trauma. Some women want rapid resolution through intensives, while others prefer a more gradual approach to process trauma.
We'll regularly check in about what's feeling helpful in our trauma therapy work and adjust our trauma informed approach as needed. Trauma healing rarely follows a straight line, and flexibility is essential for optimal outcomes in treating trauma.
Creating a Safe and Supportive Environment
Trust is essential for effective trauma therapy, particularly for women who may have experienced betrayal or violation of trust in past traumatic experiences. I prioritize creating a therapeutic relationship where you feel genuinely safe, seen, and respected - a truly supportive environment for healing.
My trauma informed care approach is collaborative rather than directive. You remain in complete control of what you share about traumatic experiences, how quickly we move, and what techniques we use. If something doesn't feel right in our supportive space, we'll adjust our approach immediately.
I understand the unique pressures faced by women in helping professions and high-stress careers. You won't be judged for struggling despite your success, for having needs despite being a caregiver, or for taking time to focus on your own mental health and emotional well being.
Addressing Common Concerns About Trauma Therapy
"I Don't Have Time for Long-Term Therapy"
I understand that your time is precious and your schedule is demanding. That's why I specialize in efficient, evidence-based approaches like EMDR and Accelerated Resolution Therapy that can create lasting change relatively quickly. EMDR intensives and ART's rapid results are specifically designed for busy professionals who need effective trauma treatment within realistic timeframes.
"I'm Not Sure If My Experiences 'Count' as Trauma"
Psychological trauma isn't defined by the severity of what happened to you but by how your nervous system responded to overwhelming experiences. If you're struggling with anxiety, hypervigilance, relationship difficulties, or other symptoms, trauma therapy can help regardless of whether your traumatic experiences fit traditional definitions, helping you develop better coping strategies and emotional regulation.
"I've Tried Therapy Before and It Didn't Help"
Traditional talk therapy, while valuable, often isn't sufficient for healing trauma. EMDR and Resolution Therapy work directly with how traumatic memories are stored in your brain and nervous system, often creating breakthroughs where other approaches have fallen short in treating trauma and ptsd symptoms.
Online and In-Person Trauma Therapy Options in Calgary, AB
I offer both online and in-person trauma therapy sessions to accommodate your preferences and schedule. Online therapy can be particularly convenient for busy professionals, eliminating travel time and allowing you to receive trauma counselling from the comfort of your own supportive space.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing and Accelerated Resolution Therapy are both highly effective through secure online platforms, and many clients actually prefer the privacy and convenience of online sessions for trauma work. This flexibility ensures that trauma therapy in Calgary, AB is accessible regardless of your location or schedule constraints.
Taking the First Step Toward Healing
Seeking therapy takes courage, particularly when you're used to being the one who supports others. You deserve the same compassion and care that you give so freely to others in your life, and professional support can help you develop the coping skills and emotional regulation you need.
Your healing journey doesn't have to be a long, difficult process. With the right trauma informed approach and professional support, you can experience significant relief from ptsd symptoms and traumatic stress disorder while developing a healthier relationship with yourself and others.
If you're tired of carrying the weight of unresolved trauma and past traumatic experiences, if you're ready to break free from patterns of perfectionism and people-pleasing, and if you want to discover who you are when you're not constantly managing anxiety and self-doubt, I'm here to provide the trauma counselling and supportive environment you need.
The life you've been dreaming of - one where you feel genuinely confident, calm, and connected - is possible through effective trauma therapy. Your healing journey can begin with a simple phone call to explore whether my approach to treating trauma might be right for your mental health and emotional well being.
Contact me today to schedule your free 15-minute consultation. Together, we can determine the best path forward for your unique healing needs and help you reclaim the peace and joy that traumatic experiences may have stolen from your life. As your Calgary trauma specialist, I'm committed to providing the trauma informed care and professional support you deserve on your healing journey.
