Awareness changes everything.
Constructed Awareness is a gentle, awareness-based approach to healing from trauma, attachment wounds, and emotional distress. Rather than trying to willpower your way through change, CA teaches you to simply observe your experience. This observation is where the real change begins.
VIRTUAL THERAPY FOR TRAUMA | Raleigh, NC, South Carolina, Virginia & Connecticut.
You've tried hard enough.
You might be a good fit for Constructed Awareness if:
You've tried other approaches to therapy and something didn't stick
You're exhausted from trying to willpower your way through change, from beating yourself up about your emotions, from fighting what you're feeling
You want to understand yourself more deeply rather than just fix what feels broken
You want to learn the language of your body and what it's telling you
You're looking for emotional regulation skills that feel gentle rather than forceful
You want to sit with your experience and get curious about it instead of trying to force it away
You believe there might be wisdom in just observing what's happening, without needing to change it
In CA, we shine a “flashlight” onto what’s happening in your mind, body, and external experience, and we approach with curiosity instead of judgment. This simple shift changes everything.
What is Constructed Awareness?
Constructed Awareness starts with a simple premise: you can't change something unless you're aware of it, and bringing awareness to your experience changes the experience itself.
Most approaches to healing rely on willpower: trying to think your way out of a feeling, or forcing yourself to change through effort and determination. But willpower alone doesn't work for emotional experiences. Inner peace isn't earned through effort. It's discovered by learning to observe.
In CA, we bring a awareness to your experience and look at it together without trying to fix anything or force any particular change. We're simply helping you tune into what's actually happening in three places:
Your thoughts — what your mind is telling you, the stories your mind is running
Your sensations — what you feel in your body, how your nervous system is responding
Your external experience — what's happening around you, what you're perceiving in the world
As you develop awareness of these three things, you naturally begin to understand your emotions more deeply. And from that understanding comes agency. You start to trust yourself, your responses, and your ability to respond in ways that align with your values. You learn to ground yourself in ways that actually work for your nervous system. You approach your experience with curiosity instead of judgment.
The change doesn't come from forcing yourself to be different. It comes from simply seeing yourself clearly.
Awareness is like the sun. When it shines on things, they are transformed.
- Thich Nhat Hanh
Constructed Awareness can help you:
Bring awareness to your thoughts, sensations, and external experience without judgment
Build trust in yourself and your body
Ground yourself in ways that actually work for your nervous system
Approach your experience with curiosity instead of criticism
Develop greater distress tolerance by sitting with your experience instead of fighting it
You’ve spent a long time trying to change yourself through effort and willpower. What if you started by simply noticing what’s happening, inside you and around you? You don’t have to fight your experience to change it. Awareness is often where change begins, and it can look different for everyone. With Constructed Awareness, you get to find out what that looks like for you.
FAQ’S
Common Questions
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Constructed Awareness is considered an emerging model by the ASWB. Research on CA is ongoing. See publications here.
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No, you do not need to be good at meditation or mindfulness in order to use the skills learned in CA. In fact, part of the work is teaching clients about awareness based skills and how to use them.
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Mindfulness is part of the CA model. CA uses the three building block framework to apply mindfulness and organize what to be mindful of.
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CA and EMDR are different models. Where EMDR uses bilateral stimulation for memory reprocessing, CA tunes between the building blocks of awareness (mental, sensation, external). CA and EMDR are complimentary and can be used together to deepen the memory reprocessing experience.
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Part of the work in CA is learning how to recognize and tune into the internal and external experience. Oftentimes, as a client learns how emotions are constructed and learns to recognize and regulate their emotions, their ability to tolerate the emotional experience grows. CA teaches clients how to both identify emotions and how to self-regulate if the experience becomes overwhelming.