Rachele Judd Thompson, LCSW, TCTSY-F, SEP
Integrative Somatic Psychotherapy
Discover your personal path to healing,
just below the surface
Sometimes we feel disconnected, floating through life looking okay on the outside while suffering silently inside.
This masked lifestyle may cause distress on the mind, body, and spirit resulting in varying symptoms such as depression, isolation, anxiety, disordered eating, relationship issues, body image disturbance, health problems, etc.
You may know that relying on phones, food, substances, etc. come with negative consequences, yet you feel powerless to step out of the destructive cycles you find yourself in. Even if you've gained insight into how you got here and why you have these patterns, you may still struggle to make the changes you want to experience in yourself and in the world.
Restore and repair your relationship with your body, yourself and your nervous system
Integrative Somatic Psychotherapy in New Orleans can help you move through difficult transitions, repair relational concerns, achieve life goals, or heal those stubborn patterns that aren’t changing with insight and talk therapy alone.
Offering a compassionate and collaborative environment, I can help you address your goals on both the conscious and unconscious level.
You may discover that the unconscious material in the “body brain memory system” is what is really keeping you from stepping into the more meaningful life that you desire.
Through identifying and addressing these unconscious needs in therapy and utilizing your personalized practices outside of therapy, we can co-create the ideal conditions for your healing, recovery, and embodiment of the changes you seek.
If you’d like to know more about integrative somatic therapy in New Orleans, read on, and then reach out to schedule a complementary phone consult.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Rachele Judd Thompson, LCSW, TCTSY-F, SEP
Somatic Therapy
Break Free from Old Patterns and Step Into Lasting Change
As a human being moving through the world, many things can be experienced as overwhelming. Trauma can be identified as anything that is “overwhelming too much, not enough or a combination of the two.”
If these experiences are unresolved, we can be “stuck” in patterns of fight, flight, and freeze in the nervous system. These stuck patterns may be experienced as anxiety, poor sleep, body image disturbance, relational issues, depression, pain patterns, hyper-vigilance, and many other emotional and behavioral patterns.
Somatic psychotherapy offers gentle access to deep and at times unconscious non-verbal experiences while introducing new patterns and possibilities for the nervous system.
With skilled attention and somatic practices, we can build and restore a sense of safety, security, aliveness and resiliency with the day-to-day challenges of this life.
In somatic therapy, we are learning the patterns of your nervous system and identifying what works best to support you while addressing your specific goals. Sometimes we focus our work on stuck patterns while other times we may focus on specific events or traumatic experiences.
Traumatic events and patterns could include:
- Natural Disasters
- Car Accidents
- Complex Grief
- Sexual Trauma
- Complex PTSD
- PTSD symptoms
- Attachment – Relational Wound Patterns
- Anxiety
- Body Image Disturbance
- Complex Health Issues
- Racial or Identity Trauma
Check out the video below to learn more about your nervous system as a pathway towards healing and change.
Services Offered
Individual Therapy
Individual therapy offers a supportive and confidential space to explore your thoughts, feelings, and experiences.
Through a collaborative approach, you will develop a deeper understanding of yourself, accumulate personalized resources, and establish the foundation for a more meaningful and fulfilling life.
You don’t have to have the right words, know where you want to go, or be in crisis to step into the process. You can come in as you are and we can sort it out together.
Group Therapy
Group therapy is a great space to learn and practice alongside others. Not only will you learn as a group with like-minded individuals, you can also learn from the processing and sharing of another. Group members have shared how powerful it is to know that they are not alone and to get insight from other's experiences.
Each group will have a set of guidelines for the focus of that group which supports a safer learning environment for all participants.
Previous group series: Intro to Somatics, TCTSY, Body Acceptance
Please reach out if you are interested in being added to the email list announcing upcoming groups.
Workshops and Educational Events
Alongside my private practice, I have a passion and interest in teaching. I enjoy creating learning opportunities where folks access content intellectually, through real life examples and through experiential practices in the moment. Over the past 15 years, I have had the pleasure of offering continuing education opportunities and workshops, locally and nationally, to mental health professionals and community members.
If you are interested in a workshop or community exploration, I can tailor a session to your group and your unique needs.
Click below to learn about previous workshop and CE opportunities.
Somatic Experiencing®
Somatic Experiencing (SE™) aims to resolve symptoms of stress, shock, and trauma that accumulate in our bodies and nervous systems.
Trauma, from an SE lens, is focused on how it shows up in the nervous system and how that dysregulation impacts life. When we are stuck in patterns of fight, flight, or freeze, SE helps us release, recover, and become more resilient. It is a body-oriented therapeutic model.
The SE approach releases traumatic shock, which is key to transforming patterns that get stuck and impact people’s daily lives. It can be used to support the resolution of PTSD and developmental attachment trauma. It offers a framework to assess where a person is “stuck” in the fight, flight, or freeze responses and provides clinical tools to resolve these fixated physiological states.
I'm approved to offer personal sessions to students in the SE professional training at the Beginning and Intermediate levels.
Modalities
Trauma Sensitive Yoga (TCTSY)
TCTSY is an empirically validated, adjunctive clinical treatment that has foundations in Trauma Theory, Attachment Theory and Neuroscience. All of these principles inform the Hatha Yoga practice which has emphasis on body-based yoga forms and breathing practices.
In a TCTSY class, the participant is invited to explore noticing the present moment experience, noticing sensation in their body, explore choosing how they would like to move or what they would like to do with their body in the moment. All of this occurs in a trauma informed environment with language intended to increase awareness of the internal experiences and sensations.
TCTSY is offered for individual and group sessions.
Reach out if you would like to be added to group email list announcing upcoming groups.
Trauma Therapy
Using Judith Herman's Trauma Recovery framework, we work through the stages of the recovery process: (re)establish safety, process traumatic experiences and impact, reconnect with self / world / others.
We utilize a variety of interventions and resources adjusting them to what works best for you and your nervous system. This could include psychoeducation, bibliotherapy, somatic practices, mindfulness practices, art, SE, IFS (Internal Family Systems), AIT (Advanced Integrative Therapy), TCTSY, DARe (Dynamic Attachment Repatterning Experience), narrative therapy, inner child work, and take-home practices that support and deepen the work that is being done in session.
Depending upon your goals and needs, this could be offered as adjunctive, short term or long-term work.
In adjunctive work, you would keep your current provider, and we would work as a team to support your goals.
Frequently Asked Questions
