Darshan Stevens

I have spent much of my life with depression and anxiety as close companions. Like most of us, I have experienced traumatic situations. I also carry the intergenerational trauma from my family; I believe we all carry this in one form or another, both through nature as epigenetics show, and through nurture, the family environment we grow up in, (which has been shaped in large part by the trauma of generations prior)

Historically, the way in which my anxiety and depression has shown up is in the form of climate anxiety— a sense of a looming collapse of the environment and society. I grew up in a household where from a young age I was taught there was a probable imminent demise of civilization just on the horizon. Often this was delivered via a combination of new-age spiritualism and conspiracy theory (otherwise known as conspirituality). Because of the added imprinting from my family of origin, the present-time crisis has had a very potent impact on my nervous system.

Living in the anthropocene and late-stage capitalism it's true that our survival is not a given, and neuroscience now teaches us that things that are unpredictable are perceived as a threat to the brain and nervous system. So feeling unsafe and having a prevailing sense of unease makes sense in our current context.

However, even though looking out at the world shows that my anxiety is not unwarranted, my nervous system is particularly wired to have a trauma response to this adversity due to my specific family of origin trauma.

This is the specific kind of therapy I am interested in doing with you. Where we are not blind to systemic injustice and real-world issues that are trauma-inducing. However, we root around and find the personal pieces in your history that make living in these times, with this adversity even more difficult. If we can help heal those things, it will make it easier for us to face what is happening in our world with more resilience and build capacity for action, hopefully personal and collective.