Individual Trauma Therapy for Adult Children of Immigrants & People of the Global Majority in Hyattsville, MD and online in MD & VA
If one more person calls you impressive, you're going to lose it.
What the observers can't see is that you handle everything because you have to. It's an automatic reflex. Passed down to you. A learned behavior, modeled to you by those who came before. It's what you do to survive, and what your caregivers did to survive, and what your elders and ancestors did to survive in empires that were not built for them.
Over-functioning, perfectionism, intellectualism, hustler mentality... these are your family heirlooms, long standing norms and traditions in your lineage that you have never felt empowered to disrupt.
Because disruption would require that you learn to stop, on purpose. Learn to attend to your needs. Or your boundaries. It would invite you to reclaim rest, pleasure and space to breathe.
Ain't nobody got time for that.
So you can't sleep? No big deal. The bone-deep exhaustion is the price you pay to remain in the familiarity and comfort of staying busy and alive.
You used to nod and smile at being called "impressive". The gesture would ease your dis-ease long enough for you to get home, pour a big glass of wine and turn on your liberation playlist.
But here is the thing dear one, those days are gone. We are living in a time of ecological collapse, collective trauma, and oppressive systems that on the surface, seem to be strengthening. It is hard not to question everything, including yourself.
I am here to let you in on a little secret.
There is nothing wrong with you.
In you feel stuck in survival mode, especially if you are a multicultural person impacted by the trauma of assimilation, forced migration, a first or second generation immigrant, queer, trans, Black, Indigenous, multi-racial or multicultural... it is not your fault.
If fact, part of our work will be to learn to give thanks for these protective parts that have kept you and your people alive this long.
And while there is nothing wrong with you, there is is something deeply wrong with the systems and structures that are currently collapsing around you.
exhausted?
capitalism fatigue
lonely?
white individualism
imposter?
white supremacy
depressed?
traumatic shock
enraged?
ancestral trauma
anxious?
gatekeeping
insecure?
gaslighting
fearful?
internalized colonization
Sessions are 50-90 minutes, held weekly in person at my Hyattsville office, outdoors in Wheaton, or online anywhere in Maryland and Virginia.
We start with your story, in context
In our first sessions, we get to know the whole picture: who raised you, who raised them, and what they survived. We also look at the cultures and systems that shaped you. Context matters in trauma work, especially racialized trauma work, so you will quickly be reminded in our sessions that your pain is not your fault.
We slow down and listen to your body.
Using Brainspotting, somatic practices, mindfulness, and experiential modalities, we help your nervous system release tension and protection, slowly, over-time. When you decide. You set the pace. And as we build relationship, you let me guide, challenge and support your instincts.
We call in your parts.
With Internal Family Systems (IFS) parts work, we meet the protective parts that have kept you and your people alive, like the over-functioner, the perfectionist, and the one who can’t rest, and we honor them instead of criticizing them. We also contextualize the existence of these parts, unique to your lineage, your experience.
Over time, you release and you decide
As familiar patterns loosen, you decide what legacy you want to carry, what burdens you’re ready to release, and how you want to honor those who came before you. Sometimes things feel harder before they feel better. Throughout, I’ll be right there with you, reminding you how to love yourself, how to remember yourself, and how to believe in the "unimaginable", as Mary Oliver once said.
Living in survival mode is a legacy of colonial trauma. Let’s shine a light on it.
Let’s normalize and destigmatize what is allowed to be addressed in therapy. Healing work is political, which means nothing is off limits. Healing work is ecological, because we are not separate from nature. And healing work is about empowerment and liberation, which means you are the gatekeeper of your story and the expert of what you need, not me.
Transformation doesn’t come from changing what happened to you. It comes from shifting how it lives inside of you. We work with the texture of the trauma slowly, chewing on it so you can metabolize and move through generations of pain. Eventually, you arrive at a sense of choice where you once felt powerless.
reuniting with self
Picture this:
You are a few months into our work. You're experiencing moments of free flowing energy in yourself because previously bound up energy is releasing.
You are experiencing the flow state, maybe for the first time. And, you are starting to trust it. Welcome home my friend.
Hello dear one, Bem-vindo.
I’m Laura
I am a white passing daughter of immigrants from South America, born on Turtle Island. My feet, my soul, and my body have always felt split between two vastly different worlds. But they are both a part of me, and they inform my relationship to you, to nature, and the world. So I will bring them to our work together.
Assimilation can be an uncomfortable inward process to challenge. I know this because I have lived it. Similarly, I understand how internalized oppression, trauma and unconscious resiliency move through my own body.
If you know nothing else about me yet, know this:
I will never ask you to do work I have not done myself first.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions