Rustin Foster (he/him)
What I love most about providing therapy is experiencing moments of growth and clarity with clients.
When I started, I worked primarily with teens that experienced trauma who feared therapy – their lived experiences were difficult, and they didn’t feel they could open up about them. They felt broken and unable to face the present, even for a moment.
Humans of all backgrounds and cultures have similar developmental challenges. Our unique ways of struggling through the world and the rigid gender and behavior roles we impose on each other produce trauma nearly every time something happens not according to plan. It doesn’t take a hurricane to cause trauma! Our brains latch on to perceived failures, vowing never to repeat them. When the brain cannot make sense of experiences, it pushes them down into the unconscious, where they continue wreaking havoc on our bodies without the moderation of our conscious mind.
The body stores painful memory in the strangest places, creating chronic pain, addictions, physical disease, and difficulty in our relationships with other people. We lose sight of what makes life worth living and our perception becomes nothing but pain and fear. We become profoundly traumatized. Our time is spent avoiding or numbing each moment, with no leftover capacity for experiencing or enjoying.
Instead of trying to fix you, I will instead to help you see the good already present within yourself – the good you knew when you were young but then forgot about when forced to squeeze into the various boxes life demands. When you re-learn to tap into what’s truly good about yourself and we cultivate it together, for an hour per week, the world can transition from terrifying to challenging, then to exciting.
I am trained in trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy (TF-CBT) and use components of dialectical behavior therapy, motivational interviewing, and many other therapeutic modalities – but no matter the technique, what creates healing is the quality of the therapeutic relationship. From the moment you enter the office or connect to the virtual therapy room, I seek to create a sense of safety around you to help support you in being able to be present, sit with the painful past and build a future you enjoy.
