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I offer a uniquely imaginative counseling process for clients who wish to dissolve emotional baggage left over from trauma. Seeing a person engage with their psyche and intuition in this way is profoundly beautiful and life changing. While the work requires imagination, the healing is not pretend. Discover more about the intuitive integration process and read a personal story of what it can look like below.  The Gist Trauma happens. To all of us. (Yes even you.) Defined as any experience where a person believes they are helpless and out of control, many perceived or actual life-threatening situations can be traumatizing. Processing one’s emotional reactions to trauma is essential. Avoiding this process results in painful solidified parts that perpetually experience life from a self-protective lens. In other words, we do whatever we can to avoid re-experiencing emotions that resemble the original trauma. Without resolution, these parts respond as if the threat is happening in the present moment, often taking the wheel and adversely affecting vital relationships and responsibilities. For example, someone who endures a serious car accident may carry that trauma and avoid certain driving situations to avoid stirring up the unresolved terror. If you notice consistent and unexplained feelings of anger, inflexibility, avoidance, panic, anxiety, compulsiveness, shame and hurt, you’re most likely dealing with backlogged emotions that resulted from trauma. With their permission and in the appropriate context, I guide clients' interactions with whatever part of themselves is stirred up. We connect with these parts by asking questions such as, Who’s there? Who felt afraid? or Who is upset right now? Clients may see a vision, an image, think a specific phrase or word, recall a memory, have physical sensations or emotional responses. Everyone’s experience is different, sometimes subtle and sometimes grand. I have found that the heart’s revelations and images can be trusted. The heart speaks in a way that the client will understand. The heart will express how the original hurt felt, how holding the emotion of the hurt felt and how expressing it now feels. Hopefully, old emotions will be released and dissolved. Tears and crying, shaking, yawning and physical reactions are common. These occurrences are generally brief, lasting only a few moments. The ultimate goal is integration, or removing the tender wounded place. Working together, the client repairs whatever wounds present themselves. The end result being that those parts of our psyche are no longer trapped in trauma.  The Story This is a personal depiction of what intuitive integration work can look like. Once I imagined a storage cupboard built into the side of a brown staircase. Trapped inside the cupboard was a girl. Upon seeing her there, I instantly wept. I wept for fear. I wept for sadness. I wept for recognition. Her body was swollen, grey, lifeless and deformed. I knew that she was me, though everything about her was unfamiliar. Looking more closely, I saw her enormous body was hunched into a fetal position, unable to move, limp and utterly trapped. Her face was cold and grotesque. “I came in here a long time ago,” she explained as I cried. She shared her feelings with me then. Heavy gallons of grief, betrayal, sadness and rage came gushing out of me in a matter of seconds. In a moment I felt the feelings she'd been holding for all these years. Her feelings had always been unbearable, unspeakable and even forbidden when she was small. This girl held the un-holdable things so that I could survive. And now here I was, asking for the story, asking for the truth. What a brave girl she’d been. Then I saw the image magically transform. The girl inside the cupboard simply shrunk, leaving behind her a small innocent child. The child was perfectly flawless. She was alive and beautiful. Her deformities were gone. I wept again at the surprise of it. After all, only seconds before she was a horrid monstrous creature and now, here she was, completely okay. A few more twists and turns of the vision and I was inviting the little girl into my arms. I wanted her strength, I needed her creativity, longed for her beauty. Finally, I saw her eyes looking right into mine, I reached out and felt her leap into my arms. As I imagined holding her close, I felt the sweet release of integration expansive and hearty, like the calm after a storm. She would have no more painful living in that cupboard under the stairs. She was home now. What happened next was also unexpected. I was looking at a sunny field, now empty, the stairs having vanished along with the hurt, when the ground began breaking open like an earthquake. Rising up toward the sky was the head of an enormous being. Up and up it grew, in the end taking up so much space that all I could see was one of its feet. The huge foot was strapped in a golden Grecian sandal and I stood by in astonishment. At first I wasn’t sure what to make of this half-vision/half woo-woo video game. But then I watched as ant like creatures with miniature weapons attacked the foot and saw that each item or creature was rendered useless against the size of the foot. The confusion lifted and I knew: I'd discovered the part of me that had never been wounded. A part of me I'd never known existed. My story of trauma and experiences of grief as a child sent me running for safety in that metaphorical cupboard. But years later, I had both painfully outgrown it and come to believe that these parts of myself were ugly and worthy of staying hidden. Discovering the beautiful and strong part of myself was such a surprise. Recovering all the creativity, joy and essence of that little girl was unlocked a glimpse of this expansive being. Beneath the crippling narrative of trauma is a truer, stronger essence of who I am. Still not sure? Read what other people are saying about intuitive integration work: “...I am an extremely self-aware person. I know my triggers, I'm constantly analyzing my behavior, making intentional decisions. I don't stand out as someone who "needs" therapy. But there are those days when old wounds creep up, pain re-surfaces, and Lorissa... she just cuts through all my theories and over-analysis and gets me out of my head. She speaks straight to my heart, gets right to the tender spot, and helps me heal. If her gift isn't incredible enough... she often does this in just minutes, over text. Yes, you read that correctly. The counselors, psychiatrists, coaches, self-help books and priests I've learned from in the past haven't done a fraction of what the Well Sessions have done for my soul. I'm filled with gratitude, and overjoyed for Lorissa and her lucky clients…” ~Janine Click here for more testimonials. If you're intrigued by what I’ve shared today or interested in discovering the light filled places within yourself that have never been wounded, then The Well Sessions is for you. I currently have 4 spots remaining in my individual counseling schedule, make one of them yours today!
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