Miriam Schacter

In our sessions we engage in collaborative dialogue and exchange. This dialogue nurtures personal agency and identifies resources for facing personal distress, significant changes in life, trauma, or loss. Within the scope of psychodynamic psychotherapy, we may opt to draw from Sensorimotor Psychotherapy and Internal Family Systems approaches.  In our sessions, we may also draw from Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, emotionally focused approaches, as well as non-violent communication for collaboratively-based conflict resolution.

Sensorimotor approaches (or SP) are often used in treating situational trauma, such as car accidents, assault, abrupt life-transitions, and other shocking events. Sensorimotor techniques can also be used in the process of uncovering important resources that may not have been accessed or developed due to developmental and relational trauma, such as long-term family conflict, abuse or systemic violence. Clients who have experienced developmental trauma often express feelings of being stuck, overwhelmed, numb, “floaty”, enraged or flooded and hijacked by the nervous systems’ survival responses such as fight, flight, freeze, submit, attach, fawn, or feigned death.  In this form of work, we engage in a safe and slow process of integration and transformation en route to nurturing experiences of stability, centeredness, and healthy vitality.

In sessions, we might also choose to blend SP with Internal Family Systems (IFS) work as IFS helps people identify, question, and work with what can be referred to as  “parts of self.” Richard Schwartz describes the goal of IFS therapy as supporting the individual to resolve conflicts among parts of self internally, rather than playing them out with others repeatedly. I have found that combining body-inclusive skills with more cognitively-mindful parts-workhelps clients locate a consistent and centered “meeting place” within themselves. This centredness creates a transformed sense of self-agency, leadership, integration, and equanimity.

* Miriam will be opening a waitlist for Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) for couples combined with IFS in July 2022.

In the past, I worked on both the business and medical sides of physical therapy in hospitals and clinics for chronic and acute injury or diagnosis. My training in dance combined with my work as a physical therapy assistant eventually led me to providing workshops for the American Dance Therapy Association, Arthritis Society, Aphasia Institute, Toronto Rehabilitation Institute, Dancing with Parkinson’s and University Health Network.

Following my work in healthcare and the arts, I trained for 7 years in psychodynamic psychotherapy at The Centre for Training in Psychotherapy. I sought out further education in Sensorimotor Psychotherapy and IFS partly due to my belief in the importance of non-verbal expressions of experience within a dialogue-based approach, but also in effort to continue co-sculpting a comprehensive set of tools for working with clients who seek assistance with traumatic memory, emotional processing, meaning making, and attachment repair. My practice continues to develop in tandem with the expanding fields of traumatology and interpersonal neurobiology. Moreover, I remain influenced by the arts, martial arts, solution-focused practices for business, psycho-ecology, and humanitarianism. If you have questions or seek further information, let’s talk.

An initial email, phone call, or video consult is a good way to connect; if we feel we are a therapeutic match, let’s work together to consider your questions and needs.

To schedule an initial talk or session (in-person or on-line), please contact me at 416-939-1672 or therapy@miriamschacter.com.

Note that I offer on-line, phone, or in-person sessions depending on pandemic-related safety measures and preferences.

My office is located in Toronto at 204 St. George Street Toronto, ON. just north of St. George station. There is free parking on site.  For information and details about booking, fees, or resources please check out my website at www.miriamschacter.com