As a licensed marriage and family therapist, Cora Keene understands that a healthy clinician–client relationship is built on a solid foundation. She focuses on helping her clients feel safe, supported, and welcomed. Once this is established, a productive therapeutic relationship can bloom. Cora loves helping her clients reach their goals swiftly.
Cora specializes in eating disorder (ED) recovery, healing trauma, and working with folks in the LGBTQI+ community. Having healed from an eating disorder herself, she relates to her ED clients’ struggles with body image. She also understands how our feelings about our body can evolve over the different stages of life.
Cora is a Certified Clinical Trauma Professional level II with more than 12 years providing trauma-informed treatment. She utilizes various approaches, including internal family systems (IFS), narrative-solutions therapy, and somatic therapy modalities.
What does it take to heal from an eating disorder?
Cora has observed that clients who heal from their eating disorders often seem to share some common qualities:
- They realize that the challenge of recovery is worth it.
- In the depths of an eating disorder, it can be hard to see how recovery would be beneficial. But once you are on the other side of it, there’s no question that it is.
- They connect with friends, family and/or community for support.
- Social isolation and lack of support persons is one pattern she has found that makes recovery challenging. It is one of the first places she likes to start with folks, helping them build more meaningful and fulfilling relationships without the ED.
- They are willing to be vulnerable.
- It can be hard and scary, but it’s what will help bring healing.
Digital trauma—a growing trend
Cora is noticing more and more clients reporting that they’ve witnessed atrocities on social media. For them, this is bringing up feelings of disgust, anxiety, terror, helplessness, and a feeling that life is meaningless. This is digital trauma, and it’s important to seek help if you’re struggling with strong reactions to media you’ve consumed. As artificial intelligence makes it easier to create sexually explicit “deepfake” videos using a person’s likeness without their consent, image-based sexual abuse (IBSA) is emerging as an unfortunate new and more personal type of digital trauma.
Cora’s therapeutic style is rooted in trauma healing, and she relates on a personal level, since she has walked the path of healing after experiencing significant trauma in her own life. Committed to growth and learning, she recently completed a powerful training with Dr. Arielle Schwartz on internal family systems (IFS) and somatic approaches to trauma treatment—modalities Cora was already familiar with, but she appreciated the fresh perspective that Dr. Schwartz shared on these topics. “She has such a deep compassion and authenticity that she brings to the work that I admire,” says Cora.
“I feel blessed to work with clients.”
There are many aspects of being a therapist that Cora loves: the little milestones, the new clients, the “graduates,” the intervention that lands, the foray into vulnerability and depth. She feels blessed to work with her clients and witness them in this way.
On the flip side, her least favorite part of the field is insurance. She feels that the insurance companies often undervalue and underpay clinicians. Insurance also often makes things difficult for clients seeking support during emotionally vulnerable times in their life. “It is a gross and terrible system,” she reflects.
Cora’s favorite therapy-related books:
- “For people with an eating disorder or body image concerns, I always recommend The Body is Not An Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love by Sonya Renee Taylor. It is an incredible read that really helps folks start to see the social justice and equity lens of recovery that for many can enhance motivation to recover and also support in developing relationships.”
- “I also really appreciate and have been recommending It Didn’t Start With You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle by Mark Wolynn. It’s got some really great advice and information that many clients have found helpful in their healing, especially surrounding carrying burdens of shame and guilt that create obstacles to healing.”
Conclusion
Therapy is by no means always easy, but it can help bring peace to your life. It also better equips you to navigate the challenges this world presents. If you are yearning for a deeper connection to yourself and others, or if you are suffering, therapy can be a wonderful tool to bring about positive change and forward momentum.
Would you like to work with Cora?
Reach out today for a complimentary intake call!
