A Trauma-Informed Approach

AVOS specializes in providing counseling for adolescents and adults. Although we specialize in individual counseling, our team can also provide couples and family support when it is appropriate. Whether you or your young person are struggling with depression, anxiety, trauma recovery, relationship issues, sleep, or even chronic pain, our team can help. 

Our entire team is trained and/or certified in Attachment and Somatic Focused EMDR Therapy and incorporate Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, Internal Family Systems, and Mindfulness into our approach.

We help clients that struggle with depression, anxiety, and trauma recovery, which can also manifest as trouble with sleep, chronic pain, feeling overwhelmed, and feeling burned out. We help clients not just manage these symptoms, but get to the root of them.  

At AVOS, we believe that the only way out is through. Our painful experiences have no doubt shaped us AND they are not who we are! 

At AVOS, we believe that the only way out is through. We cannot go around the pain, we must move through it. We value attunement and validation of clients’ emotional experience while also encouraging them to find their own sense of empowerment. This is a both/and process of recognizing, attuning, and having reverence for the pain that we have carried AND digesting and releasing the pain so that we can be free. Our painful experiences have no doubt shaped us AND they are not who we are!

Healing from attachment wounds (which most of us have) means going to the deep crevices of your heart and soul, and excavating the things that are keeping you stuck: undigested traumas, unconscious shadows, untouched grief and generational pain. Attachment work is NOT blaming your parents or society for everything, AND it is about making some room for recognizing the impact that some of our caregiver’s decisions, and navigating oppressive societal systems have had on our nervous systems. These things have shaped our attachment style, our ability to stay true to ourselves AND connect with others.  

Clinicians at AVOS value both/and approaches that help clients discover the corners of power they do have AND validating and holding space for the pain, trauma and grief of navigating this beautiful, but brutal world. Healing requires radical self-responsibility, and taking ownership of becoming your own primary attachment AND we also value that we are in deep need of collective healing. 

Healing means that you become the grown-up you needed when you were younger. Attachment work requires us to hold the paradox of “Only we can do it AND we can’t do it alone.”  

AVOS prioritizes being a trauma-informed practice and is dedicated to staying up-to-date on the most cutting edge practices to support clients in recovery from past trauma. We also believe that you do not have to have past abuse or have been to war to have experienced trauma.  The “little t” traumas of just being human can add up and wreak havoc on our nervous systems. Read more about attachment recovery work here. We prioritize client’s choice and autonomy in their treatment and believe that clients are the experts in their own lives. We value a co-collaborative approach that is based on the values of healthy boundaries, compassion, autonomy, and self-love (although we may start with self-acceptance…or just trying to not be so mean to yourself). Therapists at AVOS seek to understand how clients adapted to the trauma in ways that may no longer be serving them.  

We also value the importance of recognizing the systems that we live in. We are all products of our culture and see the dominant cultural values of perfectionism, optics, urgency, productivity above all, dominance and either/or thinking as harmful and ones that we are collectively deconstructing. We encourage clients to identify the values that light them up, which are often somewhere in the lane of reciprocity in relationships, authenticity, ease, compassion, beauty, and connection with themselves, their bodies, their loved ones, their communities and the earth. 

Clients often develop a deeper understanding of themselves, their strengths, and their values through introspective exploration facilitated by their therapist. This process can lead to increased self-confidence and a renewed sense of agency in managing life's challenges. Moreover, the therapeutic relationship itself serves as a source of support and validation, offering clients a non-judgmental space to express their emotions and fears openly. 

Ultimately, individual counseling empowers individuals to reclaim control over their mental health, fostering a path towards greater resilience, stability,
and emotional fulfillment.