Trauma
People ask this a lot. The honest answer matters, especially if you're deciding what kind of support you actually need.
When people find their way to integration coaching, they often arrive holding a version of the same question: Is this therapy? Do I need therapy instead? What's the difference, and how do I know what I actually need?
These are good questions. I want to answer them honestly, not to defend coaching or dismiss therapy, but because understanding the difference helps you make a better decision for yourself. And that matters more than any sales pitch.
Trauma-informed doesn't mean we spend our sessions excavating your past. It doesn't mean I assume you're fragile, or that every session is emotionally heavy, or that we have to go to difficult places to do good work.
What it means is that the work is conducted with an understanding of how trauma lives in the body and shapes present experience. It means we don't push past capacity. We track what's happening somatically, not just cognitively. We work at a pace the nervous system can tolerate, not the pace the mind wishes it could tolerate.
It also means I understand that what can look like resistance is often protection. That avoidance is intelligent. That the body's hesitations are worth respecting, not overriding. Trauma-informed work creates enough safety that the old protections can soften on their own terms, because they're no longer needed, not because they've been pushed through.
Therapy, particularly with a licensed trauma therapist, is the appropriate container for diagnosing and treating clinical conditions: PTSD, complex trauma, depression, anxiety disorders, and other mental health presentations that require a trained clinician's care.
A therapist is licensed to diagnose and treat. The work is often oriented toward the past, understanding how early experiences shaped present patterns, processing traumatic memories, untangling the root structures of recurring difficulties. Done well, it's profound and necessary work.
If you're experiencing significant dissociation, have a trauma history that feels destabilizing, are in crisis, or need diagnostic assessment, therapy is the right place. Full stop. I will always say so if that's what I observe, and I can often help you find the right person.
Coaching is forward-facing. We begin with where you are and orient toward where you're going. The question isn't primarily "why did this become a pattern?" but "what does this pattern need now, and how do you want to live instead?"
Integration coaching, specifically, works at the intersection of significant experience and lived life. You've had something happen, a ceremony, a retreat, a loss, a health crisis, a threshold moment of some kind, and something opened that you want to work with, not just survive. You're functional. You're not in crisis. You want more than stabilization. You want to grow.
The work is collaborative. We build frameworks together. We use somatic practices alongside reflection. We identify what the nervous system needs and create conditions to support it. We translate insight into action, slowly and sustainably. We check in with what's actually changing in your daily life, not just what you believe, but how you behave, how you relate, how you feel in your body on an ordinary Thursday.
"Therapy treats what's wounded. Coaching builds what's possible. Both are part of a full life. The question is which you need right now."
Coaching and therapy aren't competing. Many of the people I work with also see therapists, and the two modalities support each other. Therapy might be doing deep root-level work; coaching supports the application of that work to daily life and to the specific integration questions that arise after profound experiences. The containers are different. The focus is different. Both have a place.
Ask yourself: Am I in crisis, or am I in process? Am I primarily trying to stabilize, or am I trying to grow? Do I need diagnosis and clinical treatment, or do I need accompaniment and practical support as I integrate something significant?
Do I have access to a therapist I trust, and if so, is what I need right now within the scope of what they offer? Or am I looking for something more specific to the psychedelic integration territory, something more somatic and present-oriented, something that understands the particular landscape I've been walking through?
There's no wrong answer. There's only the honest one, the one that actually gets you the support you need.
If we work together, we meet regularly, weekly or biweekly, depending on what's arising. Sessions are 60 minutes, conducted by video. We begin with where you are that day, what's alive, what the nervous system seems to be holding. We use reflection, somatic inquiry, and practical frameworks. I might offer a practice or a reframe. We identify what's actually changing, what needs more attention, what the next step is.
It's grounded work. It doesn't bypass what's hard. It also doesn't live there. The orientation is always toward more capacity, more presence, more of you available to your own life.
If you're trying to decide whether this is the right support for where you are, the best way to find out is a conversation. Discovery calls are free and there's no pressure.