The world around me feels blurry and full of noise, time to disconnect.
01 / Trauma and DissociationDissociation Therapy in Iowa City
Your environment feels flat, as if you were looking at it through a smudged window. The people you love seem to stand at the far end of your view, farthest from the window you are looking through. You catch yourself watching your own hands lift things in the same way you watch a stranger do it. You know intellectually that those must be your hands, but knowing both of those things doesn’t make the feeling go away.
02 / what it can feel likeDoes the world look real to you today?
Some clients tell me the color has drained out of a room they have sat in for fifteen years, as though the saturation dial was turned down overnight. Another will say sounds reach them a half beat late, or that the street they grew up on looks like an old photograph of itself. Time feels like it is bending the same way: an argument from Tuesday can feel like it happened last spring, and the memory of a childhood house can feel like you were just there yesterday.
On other days it is your own body that feels unfamiliar. Your hands, held out in front of you, do not look like your hands. Your voice arrives from a short distance away, your head feels packed with fluff, and your arms move when you ask them to, without feeling like yours. You can drive, answer emails and work an entire shift, and the whole day runs like a machine you are watching from the next seat.
For some clients it shows up as missing time instead. You reach the end of a drive with no memory of the last twenty minutes, or a Saturday afternoon leaves no record of memory at all. The memories are usually still in there, behind a locked door, which is what separates missing time from ordinary forgetfulness.
Through all of those experiences, the feeling of reality can return: you know the room you’re in is real and your hands are yours. Dissociation leaves that knowledge intact, and holding onto the knowledge while your senses argue against it is the part clients describe as maddening. I can help you make sense of it.
To recognize ourselves in a struggling state is acceptance that its real, and also, that it can change...03 / How i work with itSteadiness first, then trauma work.
The treatment for dissociation runs in a settled order. The International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation, in its 2011 guidelines for dissociative identity disorder, puts safety and steadiness first, memory work second, and rebuilding a full life third. I work in that order, and I will tell you which stage we are in along the way.
Grounding and DBT skills work carry the first stretch. Concrete tools for coming back to your body safely when the symptoms start: what to look at, what to hold, what to do with your body, and your breathing until the moment passes. Most of the early sessions are made up of this kind of work, building a steady base for the trauma work ahead.
Ego-State Therapy fits when different parts of you want opposite things, they may argue loudly, and one of them seems to take the wheel while another watches from the passenger seat. The work gets those parts talking to each other, so the handovers stop happening without your agreement.
EMDR therapy comes later, once you can stay in the room while a hard memory is in the room with you. Reaching for a memory before you can feel safe in doing that can pull you further out, so I hold it back until you have completed the prior steps, and I will explain why whenever you ask.
04 / The logisticsWhat it costs and how long it takes
I do not bill insurance, so you and I decide how your care goes. No insurance company sets a limit on the sessions you get.
You can still ask your insurer to pay you back. I will give you a superbill, which is an itemized receipt you send to them yourself.
You can also ask for a Good Faith Estimate before we start, and the No Surprises Act gives you the right to one. It lists what your care is likely to cost.
How long therapy takes is different for every client. One clear goal may take a handful of sessions, and patterns you have carried since childhood can take longer. I will give you my thoughts after the first few sessions, rather than a firm number on day one.
FreeFree Consultation
A relaxed, 15-minute talk about what you need and whether we fit. By phone, by video, or in person.
$185Therapy Sessions
Weekly 53-minute sessions shaped around your needs, in Iowa City or by telehealth in Iowa and North Carolina.
Free DownloadThe Grounding Guide
A one page set of grounding tools you can use the next time your body runs ahead of you.
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05 / Reach outA fifteen-minute call, and no obligation afterwards
Tell me what has been going on, and what you hope therapy with me can change. If I am not the right fit, I will tell you early and help you find a clinician who is.