Hi There, I’m Noel (they/he)
I’m a white, ace, trans Millenial. I attended Indiana University South Bend where I got an undergraduate degree in Women’s and Gender Studies and a Master’s in Social Work (MSW). My first career was professional body piercing (I still pierce sometimes), and through college I did grassroots organizing and political advocacy around reproductive justice, mainly abortion access. I decided I wanted to become a therapist during the worst time of my adult life. I was seeing a MSW intern for my own therapy, and while exploring possible career paths with my degree, my therapist said “You know, you could do what I do.” Before I knew it, I was starting a MSW program. At that time, I had no idea my path would take me to somatics. I learned about somatic therapy while I was studying empowerment models for people who had been sex trafficked, and I saw it as a direction to try for my own healing. And once I experienced embodiment (experienced it, not just read about it), I actually started getting better. Now I’m passionate about supporting others to get better.
My Modalities
Somatic Experiencing™ (SE)
Trauma is not the event that occurred, it’s how your body responds to it afterward. SE is a gentle and gradual approach to healing that centers the story of your body, and addresses the root cause. This means you do not have to have conscious memory of the event, or even share the details of what happened. When we practice SE, we support your body to find and complete what didn’t get to happen which releases stored survival energy. Learn more here.
Trauma Center Trauma Sensitive Yoga (TCTSY)
TCTSY is a practice created specifically for people who have experienced complex and/or developmental trauma – it is different than “trauma-informed yoga”. One of the hallmarks of complex trauma is having choice taken away. So we focus on creating a space where you can feel safe enough to not only feel what’s going on in your body, but also to make choices about what you want to do with that while in connection with another. Being able to take effective action based on what we want or don’t want –> power/agency. When you are able to develop power and agency, you have the opportunity to take back what was taken from you through the trauma. Learn more here.
Dynamic Attachment Repatterning Experience (DARe)
If you grew up with caregivers who could not consistently provide for your needs, there’s a good chance you developed adaptive strategies to survive. These adaptive strategies are often referred to as insecure attachment. Insecure attachment can get in the way of having the healthy relationships that you really want. DARe is a somatic relational modality that is built on the idea that we do not heal in isolation, and that we are all wired for secure attachment. It allows us to attend to the wounds that caused insecure attachment and heal them at the source. Learn more about DARe and your attachment style here.
What’s anti-oppressive practice?
“No intervention that takes power away from a survivor can possibly foster [their] recovery, no matter how much it appears to be in [their] immediate best interest.”
-Judith Herman
Anti-oppressive therapy practice is critical of social inequities, and the ways in which those inequities create illness. In therapy, this starts with recognizing how patterns of power and oppression play out in the space and relationship, and challenging those dynamics. It’s about me sharing power, supporting you to develop agency toward your own and others’ liberation. I will support you to make links between your personal struggles and structural causes, address internalized oppression that may be disempowering you or causing you to perpetuate the same oppression toward others, and recognize ways you can participate in collective action to create social change.
Current Openings
Tuesdays:
2:45 weekly, 4pm biweekly
Wednesdays:
3:15pm weekly
Phone
Address
6011 Joy Road
Detroit, MI 48204
