About Carmen

My own healing journey helped direct my path of becoming a psychotherapist. The work I was doing in therapy was so transformational to my life, that I was inspired to change careers. At the time I was working as a neuromuscular therapist and working with people in pain and injuries. I also worked in the health and fitness industry. I witnessed people trying to get healthy in ways that seemed to do the very opposite. As I worked through my own emotional challenges and got deeper to the root causes of my issues, I noticed that my mood shifted, my body became healthier, and my outlook about health began to change. I started to notice that many of my clients that weren't getting better seemed to have more than physical injuries. There were a lot of emotional issues, trauma, and relationship problems that seemed to be at the root of their pain patterns. 

In 2005, I finished my first master’s degree in spiritual psychology and then in 2012, I finished my second master’s degree in clinical psychology. As a clinician trained in many years of postural therapy and hands-on neuromuscular therapy, I knew how intertwined the mind and body were with each other. My spiritual studies focused on finding deep seated belief systems and learning how powerfully these belief systems run our lives. Then I focused my studies on somatic and relational psychology. Somatic psychology is the study of how the body, nervous system, thoughts, and emotions need to be processed as one. Relational therapy is looking at the deep profound nature of how important the relationships in our lives affect us. I feel lucky to have had some incredibly talented teachers through the years helping to pass on their wisdom. In early 2022, I was trained in the Neural Organization Technique (NOT). NOT focuses on the prenatal and neonatal neurological development or our primitive reflex systems and how they get disorganized due to trauma. All these years later I come back to hands-on neuro therapy. This time combined with the trauma work.

My fascination with the nervous system has led me to continue studying the effects of trauma on the brain and body. Science and medicine are only starting to appreciate the intricate nature of this connection. From attachment theory to dissociation theories to neuro development, research is teaching us the devastation of early relational wounding and fear on a child's developing nervous system and the innate reflex systems that get interrupted due to trauma. Trauma therapy continues to evolve and change as the study of psychoneurobiology advances. This is very exciting as we learn more, we can also begin to understand how to heal faster and more completely. 

In 2014, I helped launch Helix Health Care Group. Helix was founded as a new and innovative program for mental health and addiction in Toronto, Canada. The first of its kind, we wanted to open a center that helped people heal with all the latest somatic and trauma therapies backed up with neuroscientific research. I worked as a lead psychotherapist and trauma specialist and as the Director of Training and Education. I am a Registered Psychotherapist with the CRPO. I am trained in Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Advanced EMDR therapy, Structural Dissociation therapy, Relational Somatic Psychotherapy, Deep Brain Reorganization, and Neural Organization Techniques.

Thank you for your interest and let me know how I can help.