You can feel better and have peace after anxiety, trauma, and emotional pain.
And, you don’t have to choose between evidence-based trauma therapy and the Christian faith you live by and hold dear. The benefits of both working together can be experienced at Abundant Freedom Counseling.
Michelle Croyle, LPC is a licensed professional counselor primarily serving Christian women and caring professionals across Pennsylvania by telehealth and in person in her Pittsburgh-based Carnegie, PA office. As an EMDRIA Certified EMDR therapist, she specializes in treating anxiety, the effects of childhood pain, church hurt, betrayal, grief, PTSD, complex PTSD (C-PTSD), developmental trauma, narcissistic abuse, and both relational and emotional wounds while integrating a Christian faith-based framework and interventions with clients who desire it.
I hear you.
Your faith is very important to you, but it’s been hard to find a trauma-informed therapist who shares your Christian beliefs and understands how they impact the way you view the world.
You’re the responsible one who keeps it all together for everyone else, maybe as a spouse, parent, pastor, professional, or caring family member.
And now, you need someone to be there for you.
You’ve prayed, tried to have more faith, read self-help books, and searched the internet for answers. You may have already even tried traditional talk therapy.
Yet, you’re still stuck dealing with triggers, overthinking, intrusive thoughts, painful memories, or uncomfortable body sensations.
And, you’re not sure what’s left to do…push through with sheer determination—and maybe even some good old-fashioned avoidance or denial just to keep functioning?
It’s frustrating and overwhelming.
You’re hurt, and you may even be angry somewhere deep inside, but if you let yourself admit it you open up a whole other set of questions to wrestle with…
Am I not forgiving enough?
Is it wrong to still feel this way?
Why isn’t God getting me through this already?
It’s exhausting, and you wonder, “What am I doing wrong?”
Answer: Nothing.
YOU AREN’T FAILING.
IT’S
UNRESOLVED “TRAUMA.”
HOW TO FINALLY HEAL
Unresolved nervous system trauma isn’t just caused by “big T” trauma experiences; it can happen as a cumulative set of experiences from childhood through to your present-day adult self. If something is bothering you in the present, it isn’t really in the past. That’s because trauma changes the way your brain and body process experiences and memory differently than ordinary life experiences, and when trauma is unresolved, your system doesn’t know you are safe now. It needs to get the “time stamp” by being processed not just in your logical thinking mind but through your whole being …body sensations, thoughts, feelings, memories, developmental and attachment wounds and needs, and meaning-making systems.
That’s why trauma doesn’t heal just by knowing the right Bible verses, or by just talking things out and understanding what happened or why, the impact of trauma resolves when your whole being is safe enough to tell and feel the whole truth of your experience in a way that allows all of the parts of you to communicate with each other and process through the stuck points. (In what I call my “geek speak,” your prefrontal cortex (logic and language), amygdala (fight or flight system), and hippocampus (timestamp and body signals) need to learn how to play nicely together again because the trauma made them take action to help you survive, but that’s not the way to actually allow you to heal and thrive after the immediate threats are over).
This is why I specialize in providing Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy, which is a scientifically studied, evidence-based treatment modality for trauma healing, combined with elements from somatic experiencing, Internal Family Systems (IFS parts work), developmental needs meeting strategy, faith and Biblical principles, and psycho-educational tools to provide you with a unique therapeutic experience, customized specifically to you and your needs. There is no cookie-cutter treatment here but an eclectic process that effectively helps you to finally experience the ability to exhale and release what you’ve been carrying for so long.
In fact, I have seen such great results in my clients’ healing journeys with EMDR that I no longer accept weekly talk therapy clients and have gone all in on providing EMDR Intensives to clients who desire the experience of deep healing for those seemingly untouchable wounds.
Now, I offer EMDR Intensives as a way to go deeper in your healing journey so you can experience faster relief than what may take months or even a year or more of weekly therapy. What can be accomplished in just a few hours a day over the course of three to five days of concentrated, yet gently attuned. therapy is truly miraculous. After all, God himself designed the body and knows what it takes for it to heal, and the best neuroscience findings have simply clued the rest of us in.
Imagine being able to release years of disturbance simply by being able to pay attention to the story your nervous system and coping strategies are trying to tell with someone who has the training, personal and professional experience, and faith-based understanding to help guide you through the processing your nervous system has been longing to experience.
I love to bring it all together to help you get a custom experience to explore your wounds, both old and new, needs, tools, beliefs, sensations, memories, and emotions that have been longing for a safe and knowledgeable place of care rather than judgment.
When your struggle has been around longer than you’d like, and you’re more than ready to experience freedom and peace, let’s connect.
If life doesn’t look or feel how you want it to…
You’ve got a lot of good things going for you, but then, there’s that one area that you can’t seem to get past. When you hit up against it, you notice that things seem harder, less in your control, and more overwhelming than you’d like them to be.
You don’t want to live in this messy middle any longer than necessary, and you’re ready to seek out the answers and get to the root of it once and for all so you can get on with living your life well, with more peace and confidence.
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Trauma can be a one-time catastrophic event that shatters your sense of safety, predictability, and understanding of how the world works.
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Families and relationships can be complicated, and emotional wounds in childhood, early adulthood, and as a result of abuse and mistreatment can be overwhelming because we don’t have the resources, support, and experience that we need.
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Maybe your feelings tell you one thing, your thoughts tell you another, and your whole self is longing to be free of the struggle.
Healing is Possible.
If you are tired of struggling so hard just to be “okay,” I want you to know that healing IS possible, and thriving is, too. I know they’re possible because I see them take place every day in my clients, and I have personally experienced healing in my own life through faith, prayer, hope, action, and therapy!
I know it can be hard to believe healing is really possible when you don’t feel it and have felt so beaten down for so long, but if you are ready to heal, I’ve got the faith, the expertise, the training, the experience, and the compassion to walk with you on your healing journey.
Hi, I’m Michelle.
You don’t have to be stuck suffering from the effects of...
How I help
I specialize in deep therapy for trauma recovery and lasting change.
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Through utilizing EMDR as the base treatment method and bringing in both somatic and parts work (as well as faith-based work for those who desire), deep healing takes place.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is also a tool that I utilize, but it is not effective alone to treat trauma due to the way that the logical part of the brain for thought is less available when one goes through an overwhelming traumatic experience.
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The body really does keep the score as Bessel Van der Kolk’s book of the same name says.
Experiences are sometimes too deep for words due to the traumatic nature of the wounding. Yet, working with the awareness of tension and relaxation in the body can give “voice” to the unspoken experience and be honored in therapy work so that the body can release the tension and traumatic memory energy..
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Our nervous system and memory networks hold the perspectives of all that we have lived through. This includes different experiences, ages and stages of our developmental periods, and any attachment wounds we carry.
To survive, we learn to strategize through “parts” of ourselves responding to keep us surviving. These parts are all trying to benefit us in some way, but various parts can be at odds with each other.
For instance, one “part” wants to eat a pan of brownies because we’ve had a hard day and wants to relax like in childhood, but another “part” wants to “take the high road” and scold us for not sticking to our eating plan because it knows we want to be healthy.
Working with our “parts” can help us to uncover ways that our strategies for survival are butting heads with each other, and therapy can help all parts to be seen and heard with solutions agreed upon. (In this example, we’ll have two small brownies and give the rest away to the neighbor, for instance).
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EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. It is a therapeutic technique that utilizes an 8 phase protocol to help you stay within a tolerable range while processing trauma or stuck points through the use of bilateral eye movements or bilateral tapping to process a chosen presently disturbing experience so that it loses its disturbance. It does this through allowing the body, mind, emotions, and spirit to communicate with each other through repeated sets of bilateral movements.while focused on the changing nature of the targeted experience. This is an evidence-based modality backed by science.for the treatment of trauma.
How it works
Life is hard enough right now.
Let me make this part easier for you…
Click this link to choose a day and time for a free 15-minute phone consultation with me.
Ask any questions you may have to see if you feel we would be a good fit to work together.
If we’re a good match, we will talk about next steps, and if we aren’t, I’ll help point you in a direction that can best meet your needs.