Embodying Empowerment is a support group for survivors with threat-sensitive nervous systems or hypervigilant bodyminds, seeking to increase self-awareness, heal their nervous systems, and replace disempowering values and beliefs with more empowering ones. Together we will adopt a nonjudgmentally self-compassionate and trauma-assumed perspective as we share our stories, process our grief, and heal within a safe and supportive virtual community. Join us to reattune to your inherent bodily wisdom, rediscover your inner strength, and rebuild your sense of self-compassion and confidence in community with other survivors. 

This Support Group will focus on:

• Developing Radical Openness: we will develop openness to change and a commitment to reframing unwanted or distressing bodily sensations, emotions, or thoughts as opportunities for growth and learning.

• Processing grief: we will gain a deeper understanding of the mind-body connection as it relates to grief, trauma, and loss, including suffocated and disenfranchised grief.

• Mapping triggers: we will observe the internal and external stimuli that induce a State of Protection within our bodyminds and learn how to return to a State of Connection using healing movements that induce an embodied sense of safety within our nervous systems.

• Assessing Stress Response System Patterns: we will assess all aspects of our trauma responses, including our somatic body-based sensations, the emotional meaning we assign to our bodily sensations, the cognitive conclusions we draw from our emotions, and the behavioral patterns we use in an attempt to regain safety. 

• Reorganizing our brains: we will harness the power of neuroplasticity, or our brain’s ability to reorganize and grow, to develop new somatic, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral reactions to stressors.

• Experimenting with new routines: we will gradually reattune to our authentic selves and inherent inner wisdom by observing our somatic body-based sense of openness or resistance as we experiment with new self-care routines and forms of assertive self-advocacy. 

• Engaging in psychoeducation: topics will include relational and attachment trauma, trauma bonds, and the work of Dr. Stephen Porges, Dr. Bruce Perry, Dr. Judith Herman, Dr. Arielle Schwartz, and Dr. Thomas Lynch, among others. 

This group is best suited for survivors who have already made progress along their healing journey by working with an individual trauma therapist to process their grief and learn self-soothing strategies to manage triggers.
 

Join us to heal and grow in a safe and supportive community with other survivors. 

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