What's My Approach to Therapy?
I help badass women with trauma backgrounds to be more present in their relationships and in their lives. I see individuals and couples.
Hey Survivor, looking for a space where you can finally be vulnerable and imperfect enough to heal yourself and/or your relationship?
Stop me if you’ve heard this one:
You (likely) identify as a woman. You grew up in a chaotic, traumatic household, and statistically, you experienced sexual violence before age 18. From a young age, you started picking up slack, taking care of the needs of others, and becoming your own parent. You learnt to keep yourself safe by smoothing things over, anticipating others' needs, and ignoring the little voice that said, “This is wrong” or “This isn’t safe.” There’s a good chance this came to a head in your teens and you left home early, which left you vulnerable to your first serious relationship (often with someone much older). That relationship was of varying degrees of unhealthy, and you may have become a young parent, perhaps having your first child in your teens. To keep you (and perhaps your little one) safe, you levelled up your "people-pleasing, taking care of others, putting my needs last" skills. Despite all of this, or perhaps because of it, you managed to become “stable” and “successful” in life. And now, those skills that kept you alive are keeping you from living. When you share your story with people and they tell you how brave and strong you are, you want to scream, “I don’t want to be brave or strong! Can’t you see? I can’t be anything but brave and strong, or it all comes crashing down!” That’s a lot of pressure you’ve been carrying over the years.
If you’re asking yourself, “How did this therapist manage to basically read my mind and post it on the internet—I don’t know if I should be impressed or creeped out,” it’s because I’ve been working with individuals with similar stories since 2014.
Hi, I’m Rebecca Castle-Waller, LCSW, and I help badass, high-functioning women with complex trauma backgrounds to heal and engage more presently and authentically in their relationships. With individuals, I use eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing, or cognitive processing therapy, to help folks heal from trauma. With couples, I use Gottman Therapy to help build trust and strengthen their relationships. If you’re ready to start healing or just curious about what the process might be, feel free to put a session on my calendar, and let’s talk.
My Practice & Services
I see clients via telehealth only.
My office hours (Colorado time):
Monday - 4a - noon
Tuesday - 4a - noon
Wednesday - 4a - 9a
Thursday - 4a - noon
Friday - Sunday - Closed
My View on the Purpose of Psychotherapy
Put shortly: come, grow, go.
I don't believe everyone should be in therapy for the rest of their lives. I believe that therapy is a tool and a support to help people reach their goals. I am very intentional about checking in with my clients about their level of support. I see some clients twice a week, I see some clients once a month; it all depends on what people need! I want to support my clients and help them reach their goals, but I also want to empower them to use their tools independently. I work hard to focus on building a balance between those two goals.
What I Love about Being a Psychotherapist
I love and am so honored to see how strong people are. When I talk to folks about healing their trauma, I tell them "If you survived the wounding, you sure as heck are going to survive the healing." Everyone who comes to me has their own unique set of strengths and resilience factors, it's so fun and amazing to be able to unpack those and leverage those to keep you growing and healing. When my clients tell me "I never thought I'd be able to set that burden down" or "I never thought I'd be able to heal that" or "I never thought I'd be able to trust myself again" I feel so blessed and honored to do this work. Similarly, with my couples, it's amazing to watch misunderstandings change into closeness. It's so powerful to watch two people connect in a way that is affirming, loving, and what each person has been longing for.
A lot of my clients say, "Oh, I could never do your job, you hear all these horrible things about child abuse and stuff, you really hear the worst of humanity." And I say, "Yeah, but I get to see the best of humanity. Yes, I hear how you've been hurt, and that's hard, but it's so very worth it to be able to help you heal. People are so strong. You are so strong."
My Therapy Focus
My area of specialty is trauma. I work with adult individuals and couples where one or both partners have experienced trauma. I have been working with folx with trauma since 2014, and I am a total nerd about the neurobiology of trauma responses. I have specialized experience in domestic violence, sexual assault, and human trafficking. I am trained in both of the types of therapy the WHO recommends for adults with trauma: EMDR and CPT. My approach to treating trauma has a lot of layers, but the most important guiding principle is that YOU lead the way. We're going to move at your pace, talk about what you want to talk about, and you get to set the agenda. Some of the layers I talked about above: 1. Seeking safety - let's manage your immediate symptoms and help you feel safe again. 2. Building skills - let's build coping tools to help you when your triggers are especially intense. 3. Treating trauma - let's dive into the wounds from your past and do the hard work of healing them. 4. Joy - so often, folx with trauma have been living in their trauma for so long it feels unsafe to be happy or joyful, so let's work together to build a life worth living.
On the Fence About Going to Therapy?
Listen, man. With respect, here's what I'd say to folks who are on the fence about therapy:
1. There's no therapy police. If you come to therapy and we don't vibe, that's okay. Nobody is going to force you to keep going, and if I'm not a good fit then I'm happy to refer you to someone who might be. I don't care where you get your support, I just care that you're supported.
2. There's no therapy police. You get to say what we talk about, where we go, and what our pace is. At any time you can say "I don't want to talk about this" or "I don't want to answer that" and that's completely valid! I tell folks all the time, I should have to earn your trust, it's okay not to answer everything off the bat.
3. If you want, we can treat your symptoms without treating your trauma. Meaning, we can help you find ways to sleep better, to ground yourself when you're experiencing flashbacks, to come back when you're dissociating, to help build trust with people again in a systematic and mindful way, all that, without having to get into the nitty gritty of your trauma. Not everyone wants to rehash what they've been through. I respect that. Sometimes, it's not the time for a deep dive. Mad respect. My major asterisk to that is, let's treat your trauma before your body forces us to. Untreated trauma can take a major toll on your health, your sleep, your relationships, etc. so sometimes our bodies force us to face our trauma because we haven't been ready yet. That's hard. So, it's a balancing act, but the overall headline is you are the boss.
4. I'm not a mental health priest or something. I'm a person. The way I do therapy is that I'm the expert on therapy and you're the expert on you and we need to collaborate to make this work. Your lived experience, your skills, your "no that won't work for me" are very important! Please bring all that to therapy. Please don't be intimidated by the letters after my name or the alphabet soup in my "treatment approaches" section, let's chat person to person, yeah?
