Harm reduction, dissociation-informed, genocide-informed, and gender-affirming psychotherapy for people with intergenerational trauma in virtual sessions across Alberta, Manitoba, and Ontario
he, him, his
Email: clydemasontherapy@gmail.com
Phone: 437-747-6341
Why Somatic Parts Work?
Dissociation-Informed and Genocide-Informed Psychotherapy
Feeling like you are not really here, connected, or alive, wanting to die, being unable to go outside, having a hard time in relationships, dealing with addictions, disordered eating, self-harm, or shame are all symptoms of intergenerational trauma and developmental trauma.
To help people recover from intergenerational trauma (and developmental trauma), I practice three trauma-specific styles of therapy: Trauma-Informed Stabilization Treatment (TIST), Somatic Experiencing® (SE™), and Somatic Inner Relationship Focusing (S/IRF). Together, these styles of therapy are known as somatic parts work.
TIST, SE™, and S/IRF are styles of therapy that are land-based, body-first, parts work, dissociation-informed, and genocide-informed. These styles of therapy are undoing a settler colonial way of treating mental health as separate from your body.
Across Turtle Island, symptoms of intergenerational trauma and dissociation are commonly misdiagnosed as mental illnesses or disorders in Indigenous people, Black people, and trans people. ᒪᐢᑭᐦᑭᕀ maskihkiy teaches from a Iyiniwak perspective: "you are whole and well beneath your struggles" and "the medicines you need to heal already live within you." In my dissociation-informed and genocide-informed therapy practice, all symptoms of mental health and addiction are recognized as incomplete defensive responses and strategies of self-protection and survival.
Native Youth Sexual Health Network teaches: "the land speaks through our bodies." Treating trauma with somatic parts work gently invites you to notice what your body might be saying to you.
Body-first psychotherapy is safer for people with intergenerational trauma and more dissociation-informed because it prioritizes regulating the nervous system. SE™ facilitates the completion of self-protective motor responses and the release of survival energy that is stuck in your body.
Elder Margaret Lavalleé, Anishinaabe from Sagkeeng First Nation, has shared a teaching that there are "Seven Natural Healing Ways":
"1. talking
2. laughing
3. crying
4. yawning
5. shaking
6. yelling
7. sweating"
These ways of healing are what facilitating the completion of self-protective motor responses commonly looks like in SE™.
I treat trauma as survival energy in your body. I will help you notice your body's sensations so you can restore and maintain balance in your nervous system. Surviving trauma is made possible by parts. Trauma-related parts belong to states in your nervous system that TIST describes as animal survival defense systems. These animal survival defense systems are your Fight, Flight, Freeze, Submit, and Cry-For-Help parts.
Like other mammals, when human people are threatened, we try to fight, we flee, we freeze and try to be invisible, we submit in humiliation, or we cry for help. Everything your trauma-related parts do is for protection.
TIST uses neuroscience for trauma healing. TIST heals developmental trauma by treating structural dissociation. S/IRF helps you grow relationships with your parts by learning to communicate with your parts.
I will help you learn to listen and reply to what your parts are saying so you can become the caregiver or companion you always needed. You can feel safer in your body, more stability, less pain, more compassionate self-respect, more capable, and more alive.