Laura Phoenix

I am a survivor myself. There is a great deal of power in us underneath all the defensive strategies we've often developed as ways of tolerating the intolerable – and we deserve access to it. It's a great honor to help people reconnect to themselves and, by extension, to their loved ones, lives and the world around them. I hold incredible appreciation for my own guides in recovery – including the clients I serve who teach me every day, too.

I'd say that human-centered care that reinforces agency rather than undermining it is at the heart of trauma-informed care. I collaborate with, rather than direct, my clients in their care and I trust their capacity to heal.

Across the modalities I use, supporting survivor agency and autonomy is really important to me.  In itself, that is part of addressing the impact of interpersonal violence and trauma. Most survivors of these types of trauma have certain parts of experience that are frightening, overwhelming and intrusive (like panic attacks, flashbacks and persistent fear in neutral situations) and other parts of experience that are confusing, numb, or missing (like dissociation, lapses in memory, etc). Another important part of what I do involves providing enough support and enough emotional safety for folks to be able to access those parts of experience in a titrated enough way that their fear diminishes and is replaced by a sense of more empowerment.

I make my best effort to make my practice as inclusive as possible, noticing that marginalization is part of many people's experience of trauma. I use my pronouns publicly and encourage folks in groups to share theirs. I offer any directions as a choice folks are welcome to decline. If I have a new person, I'm paying attention to how I can help them feel welcome including modifications of forms in yoga classes, invitations for everyone to take as much time as they need, including chair yoga if I'm teaching workshops where I don't know anything about the physical ability of participants, etc.

I've done quite a bit of work with veterans, survivors of intimate partner violence, folks recovering from eating disorders, parents whose PDA kiddos trigger their own attachment trauma and people recovering from substance abuse. I am part of the LGBTQIA+ community and I am experienced in serving my siblings.

I believe that all social justice issues intersect with healing sexual violence and trauma. As such, intersectionality is part of my personal and professional praxis. I continue to educate myself on Black and Indigenous history and the history of whiteness and colonization. I do my best to practice cultural humility, to learn from people of diverse perspectives, and to dismantle white supremacy, patriarchy, heteronormativity and cis-normativity wherever I find them – including within myself.

I'm accountable to everyone I serve. I make a point to collaborate and seek new learning and supervision. That includes regular peer support from other business owners with an anti-oppression practice where we talk openly about how we run our businesses to be as human-centered as possible. I regularly get support from Sage Hayes, an excellent and experienced SEP with decades of practice and an intersectional lens. I also frequently see colleagues from both SE and TCTSY training; we support each other staying in integrity with our values. I do ongoing regular training around dismantling white supremacy. Currently that's Desiree Lynn Adaway's Whiteness at Work program, I've also done numerous others and I'm never finished.

My practice is self-pay. I currently keep ten percent of my caseload at reduced rates, with priority given to folks holding marginalized identities.