Lorie Younger

Silence began long ago for many of my clients, who found the best way to stay safe as young children was to quite their own feelings and thoughts and instead begin to observe the feelings and thoughts of the one in the room who was required for their survival needs to be met - their mother. The lifelong journey of uncovering meaning and reprogramming thoughts and intuition often begins with exploring traumatic related experiences and learning to come back to safety in the body. To understand that every relational interaction need not be approached with the assumption that you are the problem - that's not required to stay safe anymore and in fact is often causing unintended dysregulation. Processing traumatic memories and learning new ways of responding to feeling sensations in the body is a critical part of therapy. We have to work to convince your body feelings are in fact safe and necessary. Eventually every perfectionist burns out and many of my clients have gone down this path. Being taught from a young age that hyper vigilance is necessary for safety goes hand in hand with perfectionist tendencies. Many of my clients start therapy from a more relational place - seeking to understand why they are so emotionally tired in interactions personally and at work. What is it that makes them replay each conversation, looking for their own fault? Why are they having trouble connecting to sensations in their body.... Healing comes in waves and development brings on some tsunamis- especially motherhood. Giving to a child the things you were never given can be deeply triggering in the body. Many clients come to me as mother's seeking to understand their own feelings towards their child. Or trying to break the patterns that happened in their own home. Seeking to raise a child with the love they never received. Another of the biggest challenges for daughters of emotionally immature mothers can be when they begin to care for an aging parent and as the healed or healing daughter provides needs to her own mother that her mother was never able to meet for her. Despite where you are today- trying to figure out your identity, mothering, caring for your own mother, or working through trauma and relational challenges..., if this resonates with you- if you grew up knowing that you needed to manage someone else's emotional world to stay safe- let's explore what taking that power back means for you. My training includes psychodynamic and relational therapy, attachment-focused work, Brainspotting, and Internal Family Systems–informed parts work. As a former School Psychiatric Social Worker and adoptive parent, I bring extensive professional and personal experience supporting mothers navigating how their own attachment histories emerge in the realities of parenting and relationships. I integrate creative, somatic, and art-based approaches when helpful, especially when trauma feels difficult to access through conversation alone. Together, we create an approach that supports greater ease, connection, and self-trust.