Phoebe Allen, LCSW

Phoebe Allen is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) and trauma therapist at Sustainable Wellness and practices on Onondowaga (Seneca) and Haundenosaunee land in the Neighborhood of the Arts of Rochester.  Phoebe received her Masters degree from New York University and completed the B. Robert Williamson Jr. Leadership Fellowship in 2016. She specializes in brain-based therapies to treat complex trauma and is an emergent therapist. This is to say, she provides personalized care to all clients, and invites any relevant piece of wisdom or observation taken from literature, media, art, music, nature, spirituality, or random occurrence in your life that can offer pause, insight or even levity to your trauma-based condition and build a deeper connection to yourself, family or community.

Having studied trauma over the last 20 years, through personal and professional work, she has grown to merge her overlapping interests in decolonizing minds and healing attachment wounding through trauma-focused therapy. This is done with an understanding that the brain holds a natural ability to heal itself when given the right conditions with proper timing and placement of application. And when there is a clear therapeutic alliance, these conditions are able to be established inside and outside her office. This synergy allows the client to naturally establish a sense of safety, dignity and belonging, naturally building a greater capacity to focus on difficult memory content in order to reprocess trauma in the brain. By “reprocessing trauma,” we can have the body maintain a sense of safety when recalling a traumatic memory, time period or people that have negatively impacted your life. To do this, Phoebe will explore various brain-based interventions with you like, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), Brainspotting, Internal Family Systems (IFS), Somatics and other nervous system-based practices. These interventions work to sustain healing conditions in the (nonverbal) subcortical region of the brain, where regulation of basic functions like sleep, appetite, hormone production, memory, emotion, pleasure, pain and sex drive are anchored. Phoebe will also pull from Ego State and Schema Therapies, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) as needed to assist before, during and after trauma treatment. Phoebe also works in collaboration with a team of physicians to help clients access Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP) when medically eligible. Phoebe finds that psychedelics set up a neurological landscape well suited for safe trauma reprocessing work.

Some of us may not realize the relational or attachment based struggles we’ve experienced in infancy, childhood or even adulthood can be described as trauma, yet, when considering that we are biologically primed for survival through human connection, we come to understand that attachment wounding is trauma. That being said, Phoebe has a particular interest in treating relational issues individually and in parent/child attachment or family work. In navigating the fallout of trauma and intergenerational trauma, she works with clients who experience (Complex) Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, depression, anxiety, dissociation and conversion disorders for long term treatment; and offers short term treatment through “intensives,” (extended sessions) to help reprocess large swaths of traumatic information in one or several days. After installing safety and trust in the office, together with Phoebe, you will look to identify and reorganize attachment patterns, survival responses or conditioned tendencies that no longer serve you. Together, you “train your brain” and overtime these new muscles start to work like an updated computer software, giving you a new blueprint by which you view your world.

Since human survival is largely dependent upon attachment related safety and connection, folks who have disconnection in their lives may feel “fragmented,” or disconnected from a whole sense of “Self,” and others. Whenever a client reports feeling “stuck,” Phoebe explores trauma, stress and/or disconnection in the family tree. With modern research in epigenetics, neuroscience and the science of language, we are able to see that trauma information is passed down genetically, where gene expression can be influenced by the physical and relational environment. Phoebe finds that inherited and historic trauma shows up in session often and may look like a sudden emotional affect or body sensation felt intensely as chronic pain or “stuck-ness.” When we stay curious about the “how & why” of chronic conditions, human behavior and culture, we can address the multidimensional needs of clients who have disconnection and trauma linked to colonization, slavery, forced migration, land theft, food insecurity, state violence, institutional oppression, discrimination and racism, sexism, ableism, classism, transphobia and homophobia.

As a white cis female, Phoebe helps heal the maladaptive emotional, psychological & physiological effects of white-bodied people who have ancestral roots benefiting from colonization and oppression. As you look at the cultural, spiritual and economic systems of value a client’s come from, you can examine how family trauma and/or survival strategies have impacted you or your family. You can then begin to understand and shift from the habitual patterns that feel once felt “impossible” to change by adding “big picture” context and move towards resolution with less subjugation. No matter what side of power and privilege a client falls on, all persons have been impacted by these value & power structures. Oppressive forces in our past, present and future have served to, and continue to, divide/disconnect and disempower BIPOC generations, while stroking fear, paranoia, isolation, perfectionism, antisocial behaviors and a strong sense of urgency among groups who are designed to “benefit” from this organization of power. Such social and psychological adaptation is passed down generationally and may present as aggression, depression, anxiety, troubled relationships, codependency & narcissism, addiction, abuse, chronic pain and legal problems, etc. When examining these dimensions across a lifetime and lineage, we can better contextualize trauma, while depersonalizing and metabolizing the grief and rage it has caused and the patterns that develop as a result to protect against that pain.

Phoebe wants to acknowledge that while she practices research-based practices in the office, this research is less than four decades old, and ancestral healing or “root work,” has been well understood and practiced by Indigenous and Aboriginal communities for centuries. The work in her sessions will be clinical, yet emergent and she welcomes you to integrate your own personal and/or spiritual beliefs as a resource as well as any source of insight.