About Me
Victoria Potter, M.A., CCC, SEP
Victoria has a private practice as a counsellor in Calgary, Alberta. She has her M.A. in Counselling Psychology and is registered with the Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association (CCC). She has worked in the field of body centered psychotherapy for the last 15 years. Her specialty is using Somatic Experiencing (SEP) and Somatic Resilience and Regulation, both trauma healing models, to help individuals who have experienced difficulties work toward self acceptance, joy and a little more ease in the world. Victoria also has extensive experience in the treatment of eating disorders and relational difficulties.
Victoria makes her home in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. She loves to ski, bike, climb and be on her paddleboard as much as possible in the summer. She has two daughters and a grandson who are the lights of her life.
"My deepest belief is that we have the innate capacity to heal given the right support for our nervous systems. It is possible to learn and heal from trauma and move forward in the joy and freedom that is our birthright."
— Victoria
My Story
I have struggled with being present in the world for as long as I can remember. Early trauma made the world feel scary and hard to navigate, it was hard to be here in a body that had no resilience or capacity for difficulty. For a long time I used food and other addictions to get relief.
Then, I began using yoga to develop some space and breath in my system. It felt like the only safe way to inhabit my body. There was a measure of healing in the process of yoga and I began to wonder if there might be other ways of healing through the body.
I started exploring body based psychotherapy for my own healing and for my clients. While I was in a course with Gabor Maté, he suggested I investigate Somatic Experiencing. This process changed my life. It gave me more resilience, more capacity, more access to joy and the ability to be myself in the world. As I began to share this with clients I noticed the same was true for them. They began to feel differently in the world. They began to have more ability to deal with life on life's terms.
As I healed more deeply, it became apparent that there were more layers of disturbance. The wounds of early childhood set up a neurological deficit that could only be addressed with developmental trauma work. And so I began to do this work for myself and continued to study the work of Kathy Kain and Steve Terrell who are the pioneers of Somatic Resilience and Regulation therapy. Today, I still study with both of these teachers and continue to learn and grow so that I can offer this work to my clients.
— Victoria