SOULFUL THERAPY
CPTSD & Complex Trauma Therapy
Trauma isn't always one moment, and it isn't always about someone doing something wrong. Often, it's a thousand small moments, needs that went unmet emotionally or physically, because a parent was overwhelmed, distracted by their own survival, or simply didn't know another way. That's still enough to change how you move through the world and disconnect you from yourself.
Here at Soulful Therapy, our work isn't about placing blame. It's about understanding what happened, so we can gently work with how it's showing up in your life today. Together, we hold space for what's been repressed, understand the patterns your body has been carrying, and build your capacity to meet your own needs, so you can live in your highest potential, as your most authentic self.Online Somatic Psychotherapy Across Ontario
Feel safer and more grounded in your body
Understand the patterns shaped by complex trauma
Build deeper self-trust and more secure relationships
Understanding
Complex PTSD
Complex post-traumatic stress disorder, or CPTSD, can develop after prolonged or repeated trauma, including childhood neglect, abuse, instability, abusive or chronically unsafe relationships or other experiences where safety felt uncertain.
Over time, your nervous system may learn to stay alert, disconnect from difficult emotions, please others or avoid vulnerability as a way of protecting you.
These patterns may have helped you cope in the past, but today they can leave you feeling anxious, overwhelmed, disconnected or stuck.
CPTSD therapy helps you understand these patterns with compassion while building greater safety, regulation and self-trust.
“Trauma affects the entire human organism—thinking, feeling, relationships, and the housekeeping of one’s body.”
-Bessel van der Kolk, MD
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What Is Complex PTSD?
CPTSD stands for complex post-traumatic stress disorder. Like PTSD, it can involve trauma-related symptoms such as intrusive memories, avoidance of reminders and feeling persistently alert to danger. Complex PTSD can also affect deeper areas of your emotional and relational life, including:
Emotional Regulation
You may experience intense emotions that feel difficult to control, periods of emotional shutdown or numbness, or sudden reactions that seem larger than the situation in front of you.
Your Sense of Self
Complex trauma can leave you carrying deeply rooted feelings of shame, inadequacy, guilt or the belief that something is fundamentally wrong with you.
Relationships & Connection
You may long for closeness while simultaneously finding it difficult to trust, depend on others, establish boundaries or feel safe being vulnerable. These patterns aren’t simply thoughts you should be able to talk yourself out of. They can be connected to adaptations your mind and body developed during prolonged periods of stress or insecurity. Therapy creates space to understand those adaptations rather than judge them.
If you are experiencing:
- Feeling constantly alert, tense or prepared for something to go wrong
- Becoming overwhelmed by emotions or shutting down completely
- Difficulty trusting people, even when you want close relationships
- People pleasing or feeling responsible for other people's emotions
- Fear of rejection, abandonment or conflict
- Difficulty identifying or expressing your own needs
- Feeling disconnected, numb or detached
- Persistent shame or harsh self-criticism
- Feeling as though you are never "good enough"
- Difficulty setting or maintaining boundaries
- Repeating painful patterns in relationships
- Feeling unsafe when things are calm
- Strong emotional responses to seemingly small triggers
- Difficulty knowing who you are outside of what other people need from you
- Perfectionism or a strong need for control
- Avoiding situations, memories or emotions connected to past experiences
- Feeling exhausted from constantly monitoring yourself and the people around you
You do not need to identify with every symptom, and experiencing some of these concerns does not necessarily mean you have CPTSD.
You also do not need a formal CPTSD diagnosis to seek therapy for complex trauma.
If these patterns are affecting your relationships, emotional wellbeing or ability to feel comfortable in your own life, therapy can give you a place to begin understanding them.
Soulful Therapy can help you find healing and relief.
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How Can CPTSD Therapy Help?
Healing complex trauma is not about forcing yourself to revisit everything that happened.
At Soulful Therapy, we take a gentle, integrative approach that considers your thoughts and emotions while also paying attention to what is happening within your body and nervous system.Therapy may help you work toward:
Nervous System Regulation
Develop greater awareness of fight, flight, freeze and shutdown responses and learn ways to return to a more grounded state.
Emotional Regulation
Learn to recognize, tolerate and respond to emotions without becoming overwhelmed by them or needing to disconnect from them.
Relational Healing
Explore attachment wounds and relationship patterns so connection can feel safer and more authentic.
Stronger Boundaries
Learn to recognize your needs and communicate limits with greater confidence and less guilt.
Reconnecting With Yourself
Discover who you are beyond survival, people pleasing, perfectionism or the expectations of others.
A Mind-Body Approach to Complex Trauma
Complex trauma can affect both your thoughts and your body, leaving you feeling unsafe even when you know you are not in danger. Our approach to CPTSD therapy considers both, and may include somatic therapy to help you understand your nervous system responses, build greater safety and regulation, and explore difficult emotions and patterns at a pace that feels manageable.
Meet Our Team
Meet our therapists who support clients with CPTSD and complex trauma
Breanne Benson
Registered psychotherapist (Qualifying)
PhD Doctoral Student, Transpersonal Psychology
- Trauma
- Anxiety
- Depression
- Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction
- Sensorimotor Psychotherapy
Laura Farberman
MSW, RSW
Clinic Founder, Registered Social Worker, Psychotherapist
- Adults
- Virtual Sessions Available
- Daytime
- Somatic Therapy
- Trauma Therapy
- Yoga Therapy
- And More!
Isabel Moriche
MSW
Registered Social Worker
- Complex Trauma
- Anxiety
- Depression
- Cognitive Change
- Grief
- Migration Stress
- Housing Insecurity
- Aging
- Crisis
- English / Spanish Speaking
Mariya Garnet
Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying)
- Adults
- Virtual Sessions Available
- Trauma
- Daytime, Evenings & Weekends
- Developmental/pre-verbal trauma
- Emotional Neglect
- Emotional disconnect
- And More!
Chantelle McEwen
Registered Psychotherapist
- Adults
- Virtual Sessions Available
- Daytime, Evenings
- Trauma
- Inner Child
- Anxiety
- Childhood Abuse and Neglect
- Chronic Illness
- Women's Health
- Parenting
- Complex and Developmental Trauma
Lisa Cipparone
Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying), Somatic Therapist, Brainspotting Therapist
- Adults 18+
- Virtual Sessions Available
- Days, Evenings and Weekends
- Soul Work
- Spiritual Journey
- Chronic Illness
- Inner Child Work
- And More!
Anna Kemp
M.A. Counselling Psychology, Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying)
- Adults, Teens and Youth
- Virtual Sessions Available
- Daytime, Evenings & Weekends
- Couples Therapy
- Communication issues
- Parenting Challenges
- Anxiety
- Depression
- Trauma
- And More!
Sara Hashimi
Registered Social Worker
- Adults, Teens and Youth
- Virtual Sessions Available
- Daytime, Evenings & Weekends
- Anxiety
- Childhood Trauma
- Birth Trauma
- Parenting
- Depression
- Grief
- And More!
Shane Pokroy
Registered Psychotherapist, MA, CRPO 13240
- Adults
- Couples
- Virtual Sessions across Ontario
- Daytime and Evenings only
- Anxiety
- Relationship Issues
- Life Transitions
- And More!
SOULFUL THERAPY
At Soulful Therapy, we facilitate healing using the following approaches:
Compassionate Inquiry
Compassionate Inquiry is a sacred journey in healing, integration, and personal growth developed by Gabor Maté. It invites you to explore your emotions, beliefs, and past experiences with curiosity and empathy, free from judgment. We help you identify the root of your challenges, guiding you toward self-discovery, self-acceptance, and a deeper understanding of your true self.
Brainspotting Therapy
Brainspotting Therapy™ is a gentle, body-based approach that uses specific eye positions, or “brainspots,” to help you access emotions and experiences that may be difficult to put into words. It can support deeper processing of trauma, stress, and other patterns held in the body and nervous system.
EMDR Therapy
EMDR Therapy can help when you know you want to move forward, but certain memories, triggers, or emotional reactions still have a strong hold on you. By helping your brain process difficult experiences in a new way, EMDR can make those experiences feel less overwhelming, so you may feel calmer, more grounded, and more able to respond to life from the present rather than from the past.
Emotions Focussed Couples Therapy
The EFT Couples Therapy Intensive is designed for couples who love each other but feel stuck in the same arguments, distance, or disconnection. Through focused, extended sessions, you can begin to understand what’s really happening underneath those patterns, feel more seen and understood by each other, and find a clearer path back to connection.
Expressive Art Therapy
Expressive Arts Therapy offers another way to explore what you’re feeling when words don’t quite capture it. Through creative expression, it can help you process difficult emotions, reconnect with yourself, build confidence, and rediscover a sense of playfulness, curiosity, and possibility.
Inner Child Integration
Inner Child Integration is a powerful way to reconnect with and reparent the parts of you that are often triggered. This method gently guides you to feel your childhood emotions and experiences with all of your adult capacities. By doing this, you can integrate the earliest times when your needs went unmet, which continue to impact your current-day reactions, behaviours, and patterns. We offer a kind and safe place for you to accept yourself with compassion, and a peaceful way to attend to your inner child when you are triggered.
NARM Therapy
NARM Therapy can help you understand the patterns that formed when you were trying to feel safe, connected, or accepted—and gently begin to loosen their hold. Rather than reliving the past, NARM helps you reconnect with yourself in the present so you can feel more grounded, more authentic, and more free to choose how you move forward.
Nervous System RESET Therapy
Nervous System RESET Therapy helps you become more aware of how stress shows up in your body and learn gentle ways to help your system settle. Over time, you can feel more grounded, more resilient, and better able to move through life’s ups and downs with a greater sense of calm, safety, and ease.
Sensorimotor Psychotherapy
Sensorimotor Psychotherapy helps you notice and understand the ways stress and past experiences can show up in your body—through tension, numbness, restlessness, or feeling overwhelmed. By gently working with those body-based reactions, you can build a greater sense of safety, self-trust, and calm without having to relive everything that happened.
Somatic Psychotherapy
Somatic psychotherapy honours the deep connection between your mind and body and acknowledges that traumatic experiences can be held in the body, not just in thoughts or emotions. As you become more aware of these sensations in the body, you can attend to the needs that they are expressing and heal the physical and emotional impacts of your experiences. Through breathwork, body scanning, movement, focusing, and mindfulness, we integrate your bodily experiences with your emotional and mental processing, allowing you to release tension and gain profound insights, restoring balance and overall well-being.
Laura Farberman
Clinic Owner & Founder | RSW, MSW
ABOUT SOULFUL THERAPY
Why Work With Soulful Therapy
COMPLEX TRAUMA CAN DEVELOP WITHIN RELATIONSHIPS
Because complex trauma often develops within relationships, the therapeutic relationship can be an important part of healing. At Soulful Therapy, we offer a warm, compassionate space where you can begin exactly where you are, without pressure to share more than you are ready for. We work collaboratively and at a pace that respects your nervous system, boundaries and personal history.
Our Unique Approach Offers:
Safe
We create a supportive space where you can explore difficult experiences without pressure. Therapy moves at a pace that respects your boundaries, nervous system and readiness.
Grounded
Learn to recognize your nervous system responses and develop tools that help you feel more present, steady and connected to yourself when emotions or triggers arise.
Connected
Explore how complex trauma has shaped your relationship with yourself and others, while building greater self-trust, healthier boundaries and more secure connections.
Soulful Therapy Is Built On:
- SAFETY
- REGULATION
- SELF-TRUST
- COMPASSION
- CONNECTION
OUR APPROACH
What CPTSD Therapy Can Look Like
Every person’s experience with complex trauma is different, but sessions often involve a gentle process of grounding, exploration and integration.
1
Grounding & Building Safety
We begin by noticing what is happening for you in the present, including emotions, body sensations and nervous-system responses, while developing strategies that help you feel more grounded, regulated and safe.
2
Understanding Patterns
Together, we explore recurring triggers, relationship dynamics and coping strategies with curiosity and compassion, helping you understand where these patterns came from and why they may once have been necessary.
3
Processing & Creating Change
As greater internal safety develops, we can begin working with deeper emotions, beliefs and experiences while practising new ways of responding to yourself and others with greater awareness, choice and self-trust.
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Questions About CPTSD Therapy
What is the difference between PTSD and CPTSD?
Both PTSD and CPTSD can occur following traumatic experiences and can involve symptoms such as intrusive memories, avoidance and feeling persistently alert to danger.
CPTSD also involves ongoing difficulties with emotional regulation, self-concept and relationships.
CPTSD is recognized as a distinct diagnosis in the World Health Organization’s ICD-11. It includes the core symptoms of PTSD, along with ongoing difficulties with emotional regulation, self-concept and relationships.
Can childhood trauma cause CPTSD?
CPTSD can be associated with prolonged or repeated trauma, including traumatic experiences during childhood.
Emotional neglect, abuse, abandonment, unstable caregiving environments and other ongoing relational experiences can affect the development of safety, attachment, emotional regulation and self-worth.
Not everyone who experiences childhood trauma develops CPTSD, however, and similar symptoms can have many different causes.
Do I need a CPTSD diagnosis before starting therapy?
No, you do not need to have a formal diagnosis to seek support for complex trauma, emotional dysregulation, relationship difficulties, childhood trauma or other concerns associated with CPTSD.
Your therapist can work with the experiences and challenges that are affecting you now.
Can CPTSD therapy be done online?
Yes. Soulful Therapy offers virtual therapy appointments to clients across Ontario.
Online therapy may be particularly comfortable for some people doing trauma work because sessions can take place within a familiar environment.
Whether online therapy is the right approach for you can be discussed during your consultation.
How long does CPTSD therapy take?
There is no universal timeline for complex trauma therapy.
Your history, current concerns, goals, resources and readiness all influence the therapeutic process.
Because complex trauma often involves patterns that developed over many years, therapy focuses on meaningful and sustainable change rather than trying to rush the process.
Will I have to talk about everything that happened to me?
No, trauma therapy does not require you to disclose every detail of your experiences before you are ready.
At Soulful Therapy, we work collaboratively and at a pace that respects your boundaries and your capacity for emotional regulation.
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What Healing From Complex Trauma Can Look Like
There isn’t one definition of healing or a timeline you are supposed to follow. Progress can begin quietly: recovering from triggers more quickly, recognizing overwhelm before it reaches a breaking point, setting boundaries with less guilt, noticing your inner critic without automatically believing it, and choosing relationships that feel safe and reciprocal rather than simply familiar.
- Feeling more present and comfortable in your body
- Understanding your emotional triggers
- Developing greater emotional regulation
- Building trust in your own perceptions and needs
- Creating healthier boundaries
- Reducing shame and harsh self-criticism
- Developing more secure and authentic relationships
- Feeling less controlled by past experiences
Healing does not require becoming a completely different person. It can mean having more freedom to be yourself.
ONLINE CPTSD THERAPY ACROSS ONTARIO
CPTSD Therapy Online Across Ontario
Soulful Therapy provides online CPTSD therapy for adults throughout Ontario.
Virtual therapy allows you to meet with your therapist from a familiar environment without travelling to an office.
Whether you live in Toronto, Hamilton, Ottawa, London, Kitchener-Waterloo, Barrie, Muskoka or elsewhere in Ontario, virtual sessions make it possible to access complex trauma therapy from home.
Are you ready to start exploring your best self?
How To Get Started
Offering online therapy sessions to individuals across Ontario.