THE HAVENING TECHNIQUES IN TORONTO

At Victoria Donahue Integrative Psychotherapy in Toronto, I offer The Havening Techniques to help you heal trauma, alleviate anxiety and stress, and foster emotional healing. Havening is a powerful, scientifically-backed therapeutic technique that uses gentle touch to create a calming effect in the brain. By activating the brain’s natural healing mechanisms, Havening enables you to overcome past trauma, regulate emotions, and create lasting positive change. 

WHAT IS THE HAVENING TECHNIQUES?

Havening is a neuroscience-based approach that uses a combination of gentle touch, visualization and attention. This helps to process distressing memories alleviating trauma and anxiety. It works by creating a safe and soothing environment in the brain, which allows it to process and rewire negative emotional memories. Havening helps to reduce the impact of traumatic events by activating specific brain pathways while regulating the nervous system. Calming the amygdala, which is responsible for processing fear and emotional responses, triggering calming responses and creating lasting emotional relief and healing.

Havening is effective for various emotional challenges, including PTSD, anxiety, stress, and depression. By addressing the root causes of emotional distress at the brain level, Havening helps reset negative patterns, allowing you to feel more peaceful and in control.

HOW DOES THE HAVENING THEARPY WORK?

In Havening, we use specific touch techniques combined with guided visualization to activate the brain’s natural healing processes. The touch stimulates the somatosensory part of the brain, which directly impacts the limbic system, including the amygdala, where emotions and traumatic memories are processed.

The process involves the following steps:

• Activating the brain’s calming system: By gently stroking the arms, face, and hands, Havening activates the brain’s calming receptors, helping to reduce the emotional charge attached to distressing memories.
• Processing emotional memories: While the gentle touch is applied, we guide you to recall the distressing memory, allowing the brain to process and reframe it. This helps to neutralize the emotional response tied to the memory, including the intense reactions triggered by the amygdala.
• Rewiring negative patterns: Through the combination of touch and cognitive techniques, Havening helps rewire the brain’s neural pathways, including the amygdala, creating new, healthier emotional responses to past triggers.

The end result is a reduction in the intensity of negative emotions, helping you to move forward with greater emotional balance and clarity.

WHO CAN BENEFIT FROM THE HAVENING TECHNIQUES?

The Havening Techniques can benefit individuals experiencing a wide range of emotional challenges, particularly those dealing with trauma, anxiety, stress, or phobias. It is especially effective for those who:

• Are healing from past trauma, including PTSD and childhood trauma.
• Struggle with anxiety, stress, or depression.
• Have experienced emotional overwhelm or burnout. 
• Have phobias or negative emotional triggers.
• Want to release emotional baggage from past experiences. 
• Seek to improve emotional self-regulation and resilience.
• Are looking for a gentle, effective method to heal from emotional wounds. 

WHAT MAKES THE HAVENING TECHNIQUES DIFFERENT FROM OTHER THERAPIES 

What sets Havening apart is its unique approach that combines gentle touch with psychological techniques to directly impact the brain’s emotional processing centres, including the amygdala. Unlike traditional talk therapy, which primarily focuses on the cognitive aspect of trauma and anxiety, Havening targets the neurological pathways, creating lasting change in how trauma and emotional stress are experienced.

While many therapies require prolonged sessions to process trauma, Havening works much more quickly by bypassing the conscious mind and accessing deeper emotional centers of the brain, like the amygdala. This neuroscience-based approach makes it an incredibly effective method for individuals seeking fast, deep emotional relief from trauma and stress.

HOW HAVENING CAN HELP YOU HEAL

• Heal traumatic memories: Havening helps to neutralize the emotional charge of traumatic memories, freeing you from their negative influence and allowing you to move forward with emotional clarity.
• Reduce anxiety and stress: The calming touch and brain reprogramming help regulate the nervous system, alleviate feelings or anxiety, stress and emotional overload. By addressing the amygdala’s overactivation, Havening reduces emotional reactivity and enhances emotional balance.
• Overcome emotional triggers: Havening helps to break the emotional connection to specific triggers, reduce fears and anxiety associated with stressful and traumatic memories. 
• Increase emotional resilience: By rewiring your brain’s responses, including those from the amygdala, Havening helps to build emotional strength and resilience, enabling you to handle life’s challenges with greater ease. 
• Foster lasting emotional healing: Havening offers long-term relief by addressing the root causes of emotional distress, providing sustainable emotional healing.

IS THE HAVENING TECHNIQUES RIGHT FOR YOU?  

The Havening Techniques may be right for you if you are struggling with the effects of past trauma, anxiety, stress, or emotional overwhelm. If you feel stuck in patterns of fear or negative emotional triggers, Havening can help you release these patterns and create lasting change in how you respond to life’s challenges.

If you’re looking for a gentle, effective, and scientifically-supported method to heal from emotional distress, Havening Therapy can be a powerful tool to help you move forward in your healing journey.

START YOUR HEALING JOURNEY WITH THE HAVENING TECHNIQUES IN TORONTO

To book an appointment or to schedule a free 15-minute phone consultation to learn more about how Havening can help with trauma and anxiety BOOK HERE. All modalities offered work equally well virtually as in person.