You’ve been trying to live
with what happened.
What if it isn’t the only option?
Medical Stress & Trauma
Support for what you’ve been through, and what’s ahead.
Medical stress and trauma is the mental and physical impact of medical experiences that felt frightening, overwhelming or isolating, and may have created powerlessness. It can affect anyone, especially children, following anything from a painful routine procedure, insensitive staff to a life-threatening emergency.
Medical stress or trauma can occur unexpectedly or as anticipated, before, during or after care. It may follow a single event or repeated hospitalizations, procedures or distressing interactions.
The body itself can serve as a reminder. After a heart attack, for example, noticing your heartbeat may bring renewed fear. Other effects can include unwanted memories, worry, or difficulty returning to familiar routines and meaningful activities.
Your experience matters — what happened, how it felt at the time of occurrence, and how it continues to affect your life. Even if it seemed like a routine procedure to others or your distress never appeared in the medical notes, it is real. When that distress, goes unrecognized, by you and others, it adds to the challenge of recovery.
Medical stress due to any cause can be reduced in intensity or resolved completely, even if it occurred during childhood. It is not true that time heals all wounds. Addressing the lingering effects help to restore a sense of safety, trust in the body and proactivity, to support and advance your recovery.
The Mosaic Method™ provides a dynamic and creative approach to addressing medical experiences that can complicate treatment and recovery.
Why Reducing Stress Matters
The body plays a crucial role in psychological change, whether we stress and relax. because the body, mind and emotions function as a continue system, as a unit. As stress increases and burdens feel heavier, the body’s ability to function at its best decreases.
Imagine coming home after a difficult or painful experience, whether it was unexpected or something you believed was coming. You might feel breath-catching pain in your body and have worries and fears weighing on your mind (and body).
Focusing on the stress or trauma will distract you from healing or accomplishing health-related tasks, such as resting. Stress may seem like just a thought, but negative thinking triggers a full-body stress response, such as increased pain, fatigue or tension.
Every day medical stress can become chronic stress that weakens the immune system, increases the risk of infection and slows physical healing. Being in fight or flight shuts down systems the body considers nonessential for immediate survival, including the very systems recovery depends on. The body’s inborn healing capacity is suppressed systemically because stress affects every aspect of our being, even if the event was unfair and wrong.
As an example, some research suggests that psychological stress and high anxiety before surgery can be linked to the administration of more anesthesia during surgery, resulting in a higher need for pain medication during recovery.
Trauma and stress affect both the body and mind, so a comprehensive approach, such as The Mosaic Method, is needed to fully relieve the reaction a person has had to an experience.
The Mosaic Method Case Example:
Master Ballet Dancer Returns to the Stage After Injury
A master ballet dancer had a persistent limp following a foot injury and surgery. Despite physical therapy and being told nine months earlier that his foot had healed fully, he was unable to dance during his final professional year before retirement.
Using Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) and hypnotherapy, we explored the tension he felt in his foot. Grief emerged around leaving his homeland and family, and what it meant to have “stepped away” from them and the love he missed.
Through a guided dialogue focused on the tension, he worked through the grief he described. At the end of the session, much to his surprise, he walked down the hall without a limp! He returned to the stage to complete his final professional year.
How The Mosaic Method™ Helps
The Mosaic Method™ is a creative, guided process designed to help resolve medically related stress and trauma. Your unique response to this experience involves your body, beliefs, emotional patterns, and social interactions, all influenced by what happened. This encounter with yourself gently connects you to the heart of what you’ve been through and brings forward your wise self.
I developed this method after noticing a critical gap in healthcare: many people don’t realize how much medical stress can affect their health, and that it can be resolved. This is true for illness, procedures, or surgery, and trauma from the ICU or similar experiences. My goal is to help you release of the emotional intensity, and regain you sense of agency and to increase your well-being. A serious illness or a surgical mistake can’t always be fixed, but you can still come to terms with your next steps toward a new way of internally holding it, so you can heal.
Talk therapy offers valuable insight and behavioral strategies, and many of my clients use it alongside this work.
However, stress and trauma affect the body too. Your nervous system and overall physical health respond to stress in a continuous way when it hasn’t been resolved. Recent research and in my experience show that the subconscious expresses itself through the body, in tension, pain, fatigue, and reactions you can’t explain. When these symptoms show up in daily life, they can seem unrelated to what started them, so the connection isn’t always obvious.
Because the work can also be nonverbal, you don’t have to retell everything to find relief. Together we work with what you’re experiencing now, including your body, emotions, and mind, and what you are ready to process. The result can be greater resilience and well-being you can build on during and after recovery.
An Experience Beyond Words
Each Mosaic Method™ session is a curated, creative process, personalized to you, your life, and your circumstances.
Together, we move beyond the symptoms to the pieces of the experience that are available and ready to be worked with. You’ll release the emotional stress from what happened and be able to put it behind you in a new way. As one piece eases, the rest of them often follow. New insights, broader perspectives, and clarity can improves health and ease stress-related pain.
In a session, you might be invited to gently tap on acupressure points (EFT) or be guided to tune into where the body carries the experience. How we heal can have a cultural connection or dictate. Revisiting and clearing old programming, conditioning, or experiences that shaped you gives you back the power of choice today.
Case examples: From a client – “No one in my family heals after surgery well.”
Throughout, I stay closely attuned to you and your experience. You can pause, ask questions, tap through discomfort, or change direction at any point.
I hold a space that’s respected, supported, and safe for you to express yourself in. We begin where you are.
What Changed for Clients
"Wowed my entire medical team!"
I used Sanna’s Empowered for Surgery audio collection to...
"Refreshing & Unique Approach!"
Sanna is a Blessing! Her approach is refreshing and ...
"Invaluable! Helped me on day one."
The tapping (Emotional Freedom Technique) is invaluable. ...
"Powerful Insights - Opened My Eyes!"
Thank you. Powerful insights. This Genogram and ...Why Medical Trauma Matters To Me
My dedication to understanding body-related and medical trauma, and its impact on one’s life, is deeply personal.
My father spent four years in the hospital and underwent more than 50 surgeries after sustaining severe wounds in WWII. Dubbed the ‘Miracle Soldier,’ he lived through his remaining years suffering in chronic pain and what I later came to understand as complex PTSD.
I am profoundly grateful for the care that saved him. But his survival came at a cost that stayed with him for the rest of his life, and that’s where my interest began. There are effective, efficient ways to resolve what medical trauma leaves behind. I’ve spent my career learning them.
Take the First Steps
Step 1: Let’s Talk About It
A complimentary Connection Call gives us the opportunity to talk through your concerns and get your questions answered.
Step 2: Creating Your Experience
We will set an appointment. I’ll explain how I work exclusively with you, discuss fees, and provide detailed preparation for your session.
Step 3: Preparing for an Appointment
You will receive Getting-To-Know-You forms to complete before the appointment. I will review your responses prior to our meeting. Look for practical guidelines about your appointment.