Releasing Constraints, Reclaiming Wholeness

The Story Behind the Name

Expansive Self emphasizes the importance of reclaiming the inherent vastness of our being as fundamental to the healing process. It is our expansive Self which allows us to shed habitual and restrictive personal identities and return to the boundless, ever-emerging flow of who we are.

Frameworks that Guide Our Work Together

Body Liberation

Body Liberation is a movement that goes beyond the standard, clinical approach used to treat disordered eating and body image distress by dismantling how fat phobia, racism, and cisheteropatriachy constrict people’s experiences of embodiment. The aim is for people to live more freely and experience pleasure in their beautiful bodies while working to change harmful systems.

Internal Family Systems

Internal Family Systems therapy sees our inner worlds as composed of many parts that want to help us. When our parts carry the burdens of trauma, some become overactive to protect us and others are hidden away and suppressed. We can heal all these parts through developing a relationship between them and our Self, an energy of curiosity, compassion, courage, and confidence.

Somatic Therapy

Somatic therapy reclaims the significance of the body in healing from trauma. Instead of relying on cognition, it emphasizes felt experience as the basis for understanding a person’s system and uses neuroscientific principles to interpret the body’s cues and stress responses and to guide the treatment process.

Buddhist Psychology

Buddhist psychology integrates the teachings of Southeast Asian Buddhist philosophy with western psychotherapy. Through mindfulness, we learn to selectively focus our attention to cultivate wholesome mental formations, to see the interconnectedness of all life and the illusion of separateness, and to reconnect with our basic goodness.

“Nature does not ask permission.
Blossom and birth whenever you feel like it."

Clarissa Pinkola Estés Réyes

Licensed Professional Counselor

Meet Camille Brunel

I aim to bring a spirit of open-mindedness, lightheartedness, and collaboration to the therapeutic relationship. I provide gentle guidance to clients to help them move into discomfort, expand their insight, and discover previously untapped strength and resources, while also respecting each person’s unique process and pacing.

Values

Trauma-informed

Naming what happened to us, not what is wrong with us

Holistic

Healing mind, body, and spirit

Integrative

Incorporating multiple models of care

Anti-Oppression

The political is personal

Person-Centered

Trusting each person’s inherent wisdom

Non-pathologizing

Our challenges are ways of surviving in an inhospitable world

Strengths-based

Emphasizing sources of resilience

Self-Compassion

Is the essential ingredient

Internal Healer

The seeds of healing are within each of us

Deeply Relational

Connection is critical

Weight Inclusive

All bodies are deserving of health and belonging

“Radical self-love summons us to be our most expansive selves, knowing that the more unflinchingly powerful we allow ourselves to be, the more unflinchingly powerful others feel capable of being. Our unapologetic embrace of our bodies gives others permission to unapologetically embrace theirs.”

Sonya Renee Taylor

Let's Work Together

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