Psychotherapy | Chris Staikos Psychotherapy

We all carry unprocessed emotion. This material can be quite old, having taken root in our bodies and psyches at a young age. My work is centred around bringing this material into the light of conscious awareness, fully experiencing the emotions and thereby releasing them. To paraphrase Stanislav Grof, “The full experience of an emotion is the funeral pyre of that emotion”. My work draws on parts work (Internal Family Systems), somatic approaches, mindfulness, psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, psychoeducation, and transpersonal psychology. I like to establish therapeutic goals with my clients, while giving space each session for whatever is alive in the moment.

Trauma Processing

Trauma occurs when an individual experiences something overwhelming and is unable to process it in the moment. It is an adaptive response to overwhelm and results in unprocessed experience being stored in the body. When this occurs as a result of a specific event such as experiencing or witnessing violence, it is often referred to as “big T trauma”. Trauma also occurs gradually over time - especially in children - when needs are unmet. This is referred to as “little t trauma”.

I am trained in the triphasic trauma treatment model. This involves first establishing resources and stability in one’s life. From this resourced place, we turn to the processing of traumatic events. This is a gradual process that is held in a safe container, allowing for old emotions to be experienced in a tolerable way - without being completely flooded and/or overwhelmed. This is complemented by integration work - translating emotional processing into tangible changes in one’s life.

Anger

Anger is a highly misunderstood emotion - especially in Western culture. With so many examples of unhealthy expressions of anger we learn to see it as a destructive force. The result is that we repress anger, turning it inwards and ultimately harming ourselves. I work with clients to renegotiate their relationship with anger, turning towards it with curiosity and treating it as an important signal to ourselves and those around us. Anger helps us to protect that which we care about and can be a generative, rather than destructive, emotion.