Shawn Gordon MS LMFT ~ Aligned Life Counseling

~~~~~~~ It is never too late to live your absolute best life! I returned to school after raising four wonderful children, traversing my own healing journey and further discovering the amazing and innate healing wisdom of the body through the 3-year Somatic Experiencing Training, learning relational healing through DARe Attachment Training and Emotion Focused Couples Training, nervous system calming through TEBB Regulation Touch Training, SSP Safe & Sound Protocol training and child & adolescent healing, through RPT Registered Play Therapy Certification. We carry our earliest childhood wounds and adaptations into all future relationships, but the good news is, they can be healed in safe relationships, and it is my greatest honor to hold that safe space for the exploration and life-changing healing to occur! ~~~~~~~ More about Shawn: As a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, Somatic Psychotherapist and Registered Play Therapist, Shawn works with people who desire deeper connections to others, life and most importantly to themselves. She works with children, adolescents, and adults, individually, with relationships, marriages and family units. She considers it a privilege and honor to walk alongside her clients towards wholeness, freedom, resiliency and more fulfilling lives. Shawn received her Master of Science degree in Counseling Psychology with a specialty in Marriage & Family Therapy and Play Therapy certification from Palm Beach Atlantic University. She also studied at the master’s level at The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, with an emphasis in trauma therapy. She received her bachelor’s degree in Communication Science Disorders, studying speech pathology and psychology at Florida State University. Shawn’s first career was in management for 15+ years, before leaving the corporate world for what she considers an even greater challenge and passion; the gift of full-time motherhood. She raised four uniquely gifted and delightful children through many of the typical struggles and joyous celebrations of parenthood including seeing each launch into adulthood and their individual callings of marriage, parenthood, singer song-writer, gaming platform host, and continue expanding into their individual gifts and life opportunities! Life transitions are difficult and through many of her own, Shawn has discovered first-hand what a return to workplace, education and ultimately to one’s true self entails and can offer through her own counseling, and following the deep-felt calling to return to school and become a therapist herself. Her life’s journey has included many of the traumas, struggles, losses and deep grief that many of her clients or their loved ones have experienced throughout various stages of life, and she understands how difficult it can be to maneuver and face the resulting transitions alone. Shawn walks beside each individual client as a sojourner, towards a more self-aware, self-honoring, passionate and free life. It is her privilege to offer safe space and a healing relationship to her clients. Shawn describes being invited into one’s life to walk through hard places with, as a sacredly held honor. ~~~ “Sometimes what you’re most afraid of doing is the very thing that will set you free.” ~ Robert Tew ~~ Are you ready for change? Choose courage, hope, be open, curious, willing to work, stretch, risk and find wholeness and connection on a deeper, more meaningful and fulfilling level. ~ “May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.” ~ Nelson Mandela ~~ So what exactly is "Somatic Experiencing (SE)"? "Somatic" comes from the Latin "soma", from the Greek "soma body", the body of an organism, and later including what is "sensed". "Somatic" is now generally accepted as what is sensed within the body. In creating the Somatic Experiencing Training, Dr.Peter Levine built upon his years of study and research, which found that trauma is held within the body as trapped defensive energy that was unable to be utilized or released, once safe again. He learned that there is an innate wisdom of the body, observed in animals, but sadly, most often overridden in humans, that allows defensively surged up energy, in an overwhelming experience, to discharge very gently and naturally, once the animal or human returns to a sense of safety. This amazing natural process prevents PTSD. To the contrary when traumatic energy remains in the body, it greatly lessens our ability to cope with normal daily life spikes, jolts, scares or stress and often causes triggering of the past energetic experience still inside and active within us. Think of what we learned about energy in science class years ago; Energy cannot be created nor destroyed. In relationship to trauma and the energy surged up through the amazing processes of the body in defense, it doesn't just go away when the overwhelming event is over. Energy from a traumatic event is meant to be utilized in defense of our life and then whatever is left unused, to be released naturally, to flow through us after that tough event is over, but when it doesn't get to be utilized or released, it is still in us. And just because we don't talk about troubling events or try not to think about them, it doesn't mean that highly charged defensive energy connected to those events is gone, is not still residing in our body and impacting us daily. Utilizing the gentle processes and techniques of Somatic Experiencing, the defensive, stuck energy can be naturally and gently discharged, allowed to flow right out of us, as it was intended and wired in our design to do. Observe dogs out for a walk sometime. Notice how they shake their whole body, from the tip of their nose to the end of their tail, after encountering a stranger or unknown dog. This is exactly what they are doing! All the energy surged up in case they needed to fight or run away, that did not get utilized, because it ended up not being needed, just got brilliantly discharged by them doing a whole body, energetic shake!! Once you see it, you will get it and will always know what's happening when you see it again! It's the most natural, innately wise and healing process in our amazing mammalian design! Now as humans we don't have to release this energy in exactly the same way we observe dogs or other animals do so, although I often see children and teens do similar versions of this naturally and gentle shake-off, after a roller coaster ride, or when they get purposely spooked by a friend or sibling, or after an unexpected loud noise or near miss of a car driving by, etc., allowing their bodies to automatically move, to follow its natural inclination to let energy flow and expel by making a loud noise, yelling, crying, moving their bodies by jumping up and down, shivering, shaking, to literally shake it off, naturally releasing all of that very quickly or steadily surged up, yet unused defensive energy. And this is because they are not quite as socially conditioned, as inhibited as adults yet, not overriding this natural post-event process. Sadly we as humans are more often taught and conditioned to "Get over it", to stuff all the feelings from an experience we had or are having. It is often heavily implied to us, to not feel what we are feeling. Huh...?! Right?!? So very confusing for young children, adolescents and right on into adulthood. To have what we are feeling, our very experience denied, dismissed, judged, condemned, or completely ignored by others communicates to us that we shouldn't feel it, talk about it, or give into it ourselves, eventually conditioning us to deny and disconnect from our own feelings, and the result is that that energetic experience remains us, and is added to as we go through life. In actuality the most natural way for us to heal, to release what is left energetically in us, after surviving any threatening situation, is to safely connect with that fight/flight/fear and threat driven energy, through human connection, through talking about what we just went through, how we are literally feeling, being with all those sensations, offers time for the body to literally shake it all off, energetically moving it out with the ease and grace built in of our amazing design, now that the perceived or imminent danger has passed and we are physically safe again. Instead of walking through our tough experiences in this natural way, releasing the traumatic energy, we humans are through our lives with with stuck energy inside of us, continually adding to it, along our life journey and being greatly incapacitating our ability to be the free, loving, spontaneous, playful, trusting and genuine beings we are meant to be. This cycle of adding traumatic stress, anxiety and PTSD to our bodies, negatively impacting our emotional states and life experience daily, is due in part to the simple fact that we have not been educated nor mentored in these natural and healing processes of the body. And also in part due to having been taught culturally, whether directly or indirectly, that somehow denying or ignoring our toughest experiences, and the vulnerable, painful feelings related to them, makes us tougher or keeps us from feeling victimized or afraid in the future, by not giving any power to the situation or person that traumatized, harmed, scared, betrayed or neglected us, but in actuality it is the absolute opposite result. By not validating the truth of our experiences, not connecting to how it hit us, how it felt, how it continues to feel in us, dismisses and devalues to ourselves, our true experience and keeps all of that surged up protective energy and all the energy of the feelings connected to them, eg.: fear, abandonment, shame, terror, panic, inside of us, ever-present, ever-active, ever-ready and on the lookout for the constant perceived battle or attack, in constant states of vulnerability, fear and panic. This is why we get triggered so easily, what causes us to lash out, scream, freak out, fight or shut down over not so big of issues. And why we are not our whole, aligned, grounded, free and loving selves. All of that old, yet very active and highly-charged, trapped energy is running the show behind the scenes. It is not helpful in anyway to ignore our past hurts and traumas, as they will negatively impact our present lives, every relationship, encounters and our physical health. Learning this was so profound for me and I have personally experienced amazing healing, freedom and shifts in every area of my life, and have the continuous honor and privilege of seeing client after client have their lives and relationships transformed through walking through the simple SE processes. We begin with building trust, compassion and safety within, in order to connect to those trapped, felt energies so they can flow right out, and they do. And they do because the body knows exactly how to do it without fail, when we can trust it and not interrupt or shut down the process. And it is okay when we do, it's just not beneficial for our optimal health, relationships and life experience, and that's where creating that safety 1st is key. We also don't have to go over the stories or details of events at all to do SE work, but if known experiences have never been given voice before, it can greatly add to the healing and releasing of trapped energy to do so, but it is not necessary. And sometimes we don't even know where this feeling, sensation or triggering comes from, and that is okay too, we can easily work with what is noticed, sensed and felt. It is never too late to connect in safety to old, stuck, even triggering energy from past experiences, whether known or unknown. Connecting with awareness to what is sensed in the body, in a state of safety, allows that trapped energy to ever-so-gently flow right out of the body, shifting forever how we feel, engage life and others, no longer stuck in activated defense states of fight, flight, freeze, appease or collapse. Freedom indeed! It is amazing, life-changing, and lasting healing work when in the most honoring way, we rebuild the trust and safety within us, feel safe and supported outside of us, initially by a strong therapeutic relationship, to simply be with what is noticed within, freeing it and us for the highest quality of life we are so meant to have! And these simple steps and practices go with you, as tools on your tool belt, easily accessed and utilized because you have used them multiple times before in sessions and know the lasting benefits. So in the future when you do use these tools again, you will not only prevent additional energy from becoming trapped inside of you, you will also be modeling and hopefully sharing with your loved ones and friends this natural process of restoring resilience in the body, peace inside of us, and that is what supports living the very best life that anyone could want and is absolutely available to us! ~~~ Completed specialty training includes: SE Somatic Experiencing 3 year Certificate - Dr. Peter Levine TEBB Regulation Touch Certification - Dr. Stephen Terrell Attachment: DARe certification – Dr. Diane Poole-Heller SSP Safe & Sound Protocol Certification - Dr. Stephen Porges EFT Emotion-Focused Couples Therapy Certification; Core Skills & Couples Trauma Therapy – Dr. Sue Johnson Gottman Couples Therapy Level 1 –Both Dr. Gottmans Collaborative Process Trained - Barry University