We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Megan Moon. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Megan below.

Megan, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

In some ways, I have been building Reclamation Psychotherapy piece by piece my whole life. I grew up in rural Texas as a poor queer undiagnosed nuerodivergent kid. There was a lot of emotional neglect, addiction, and lack of safety in my daily lived experience. I spent the majority of my young adulthood trying to create a life for myself that did not reflect the one I grew up in. When I entered my own therapy as a client after the death of my sister, the parts of me that were neglected by others were finally given an opportunity to come forward with a safe compassionate witness and tell their story. As I continued my healing journey I knew I wanted to provide this safety for others as well. So as a first generation college graduate, I then applied to a masters program to become a therapist. Since then, I have been working with the most amazing clients and utilizing my clinical training as well as my lived experience to support others navigating childhood trauma. It is what I am meant to do and it is the biggest honor of my life.

When we grow up in instability and relational chaos we do not even realize that we are living out of survival mode instead of being connected to our true selves. I named my therapy practice Reclamation Psychotherapy because for me healing from childhood trauma is a process of reclaiming ourselves piece by piece. I have a quote from James Baldwin on my website that beautifully encapsulates this process for me:

“It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I’d been taught about myself, and half-believed, before I was able to walk on the earth as though I had a right to be here.”

I work with my clients to identify the adaptive coping strategies that they developed in childhood and create space for us to grieve why that coping strategy was necessary while creating choice for the client. Do we want to keep this coping strategy in our toolkit? Do we want to do the often difficult but freeing work of creating a new path forward?

The most common adaptive strategies that I see in my caseload are appeasement and hyper-independence. We do not just become people pleasers because it’s a good time. Appeasement is a survival strategy from learning over and over and over again that to maintain connection (likely with our family of origin) we must erase our needs, take up as little space as possible, and live to make others happy. This is SUCH a smart adaptation and it also keeps us disconnected from our feelings, our needs, our desires, our boundaries etc. and keeps our nervous system in pretty constant fight/flight. I love helping my clients learn to identify their body sensations and feelings, their needs, their boundaries as well as taking the brave step of sharing those needs with others. We slowly build our capacity to ask for what we need by taking small relational risks that can change our lives.

Hyperindependence is an adaptive coping strategy that comes from the childhood experience of being disappointed when asking for help over and over again so much so that we learn to only rely on ourselves. It makes sense we come to this conclusion and it kept us safe *and* in adulthood this often has us feeling burnt out, isolated, and ashamed of our needs.

A difficult but beautiful part of relational trauma recovery is that yes, we are harmed in relationships but we heal in relationships. By taking small relational risks with trusted others even if that person is your therapist we can learn that people do want to help us, that we are worthy of community care, and that we were never supposed to survive all that we have by ourselves.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Sure! My name is Megan Moon. I am a relational trauma therapist and the owner of Reclamation Psychotherapy serving all of Texas virtually.

What does therapy with you feel like?
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I am a relationally oriented trauma therapist. This means that while I have training and education in specific therapeutic modalities that will inform our work together, I acknowledge that the sacred relationship between therapist and client is where deep healing can happen. Research shows that the largest contributing factor to positive outcomes for clients in therapy is the connection with their therapist.

This can feel very vulnerable because we are often traumatized in relationships yet we can only heal in safe supportive and affirming relationships. We often do not know we should be treated better until we are. One of the most beloved parts of this work for me is to be a safe person for my clients and make way for deep healing to happen.

I am an attachment therapist. This means that I believe that our earliest and most foundational relationships shape our sense of self, our worldview and how we relate to others throughout life. In our work together, we will explore your childhood experiences to be curious about what emotional learnings you may have developed in order to stay safe. A common one I see in my work with clients is “if i stay small and do not have needs, I will be okay.” So many of us are unknowingly living from our “survival self” after trauma. Together we will explore your emotional learnings, be curious about if they are still serving you and see what other options are available to you so that you can reclaim your power and worthiness after trauma.

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I am an intersectional feminist and work from an anti-oppressive lens. This means that I will always do my best to take into account all parts of your identity and how society and those in power treat those identities. Many of what the medical model of therapy call “diagnoses” are very natural responses to trauma and contending with oppressive, capitalist, colonial systems. Anxiety makes sense when we have known so little safety in the world and are being actively oppressed.

I honor our work as collaborative. There is an inherent power dynamic in therapy. I do my best to decrease that felt sense of powerlessness for my clients and truly believe that you are the expert on your lived experience. I call our work our work for a reason. We are doing it together.

You are allowed to have boundaries and limits in session. I welcome you to say things like:

​”No, that doesn’t feels true for me.”

“I am not ready to talk about that yet.”

“Megan, It made me feel upset when you…”

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I am a body and nervous system oriented therapist. Many of my clients come to me sharing that they are not feeling much relief from their trauma symptoms through regular talk therapy. This is because traumatic experiences store themselves in our bodies and nervous systems. Additionally, in an effort to protect ourselves after trauma, we often disconnect from the body. I utilize Interpersonal Nuerobiology and Somatic Experiencing techniques to slowly and with consent help my clients reconnect to the sensations of their bodies to release trauma and reconnect with their gut and intuition.

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While trauma recovery is hard work at times we will also laugh, cuss, celebrate the good and talk sh*t when needed. These are also essential parts of healing in my humble opinion.

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I am

lgbtqiap+ identified and affirming

S*x worker friendly

Fat positive + HAES aligned

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All bodies, identities, and abilities are welcome here.
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Many of my clients identify as:

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LGBT+

Neurodivergent

Deeply Feeling/Highly Sensitive People

People Pleasers

Hyper-Independent

Black sheep of their families

Survivors of childhood abuse and neglect

Living with Complex-PTSD

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I love this question! There is so much unlearning in healing work and definitely in building a business. I think the most crucial thing I had to unlearn before launching my business would be that I needed approval from others to trust my vision and move forward. Don’t get me wrong, mentorship is absolutely important and we can learn so much from collaborating with others. At the same time, the vision for my business had been brewing inside of me for so long, yet I felt like I was waiting for some perfect moment of readiness or for someone else in a position of power in my field to understand my vision. Once I released that, I could more clearly listen to my gut, tune out self doubt, and be in creative authentic flow and before I knew it Reclamation Psychotherapy existed. My offer to other business owners would be that sometimes we get stuck on meeting the standard ways that our business is ‘supposed’ to function and I say be the new standard. If you feel like you do things differently and you do not see it reflected anywhere else that might be because you are meant to create it. Your unique lived experience, your voice, your humor, your expression is what is needed and the right clients will be drawn to you for that reason.

Your authenticity is your superpower.

Any fun sales or marketing stories?

Okay so I am a trauma therapist right? So we are often in really difficult heavy feelings with our clients. At the same time, humor was a key tool in surviving my childhood and I find that to be true for many of my clients as well. Sometimes when everything is bad laughing makes it manageable. You know that feeling when one more thing goes wrong and instead of completely falling apart you start cracking up? I don’t know what I would have done without that release through laughter sometimes.

I was hesitant to incorporate humor into my professional social media page because I never want to make others feel like I am making light of their experience. In the name of authenticity however, I wanted to reflect the humor that is often between my clients and I as well as humor being a valid coping mechanism. SO, I posted this reel on my page @relationaltraumarecovery where I am standing at a podium as though I am making an announcement to the media. The audio says “the rats are absolutely going to hate this announcement, but the rats don’t run this city, we do.” With the words “when my people pleasing clients start advocating for themselves and setting boundaries.”

So am I calling people that rely on others making themselves small rats??? YES. lol so a professional risk but the risk paid off and it is one of my favorite posts to this day.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.reclamationpsychotherapy.info/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/relationaltraumarecovery/
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@relationaltraumarecovery?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc

Image Credits

The two professional photos in the green house one standing and smiling the other seated were shot by C. Rounds who now lives in Chicago. caitlinrounds.com