Schawn Austin

I specialize in helping adults heal childhood trauma. I am comfortable working with dissociation in it’s many forms.  I like to explain working with trauma through the analogy of going to the beach.  The safest part of going to the beach is the parking lot.  Technically your at the beach but just barely.  This is where a trauma survivor can speak about their trauma without connecting to it.  Here we can come to understand the trauma better but we can’t heal it.  The other extreme is the riptide.  This is flashbacks, overwhelm, and feeling unsafe, out of control and like you’re going to die.  You cannot heal trauma in the riptide!  The problem, for many people with childhood trauma, is that they often only have a parking lot and a riptide.  So we must build a beach.  Which means first we must deal with the riptide!  I help my clients build the skills to get out of the riptide whenever they get caught in it.  Once you can safely navigate getting out of the riptide then we can build a beach.  The beach is the ability to look at a traumatic experience without getting pulled out into the riptide.  The ability to stay present and feel difficult feelings without becoming overwhelmed or numbing.  Once we have a beach I use a combination of EMDR and parts work to help my clients heal their trauma. I believe that all parts should be respected and that the goal, particularly with regards to parts, must be determined by the client and their parts.