Rustin Foster

What I love most about providing therapy is experiencing moments of growth and clarity with clients. When I started, I worked primarily with teens that experienced trauma who feared therapy – their lived experiences were difficult, and they didn’t feel they could open up about them. They felt broken and unable to face the present, even for a moment. Humans of all backgrounds and cultures have similar developmental challenges. Our unique ways of struggling through the world and the rigid gender and behavior roles we impose on each other produce trauma nearly every time something happens not according to plan. It doesn’t take a hurricane to cause trauma! Our brains latch on to perceived failures, vowing never to repeat them. When the brain cannot make sense of experiences, it pushes them down into the unconscious, where they continue wreaking havoc on our bodies without the moderation of our conscious mind. The body stores painful memory in the strangest places, creating chronic pain, addictions, physical disease, and difficulty in our relationships with other people. We lose sight of what makes life worth living and our perception becomes nothing but pain and fear. We become prof