NIKKI NOOTEBOOM

A few years ago my life finally fell apart. I couldn’t hold it together anymore. My search started and did not find it in regular care, I knew that for 25 years; I must stay away from there.
Studying abroad (mostly online), taking therapy in the US, everything I learned I applied (and apply) to myself. I learn and experience one thing and that led to new questions and new studies. Books, a lot of books, but I experience everything myself.
Now I help people in my busy practice with the Trauma Informed view of people and therapies and tools that are really effective and ensure everyone’s autonomy. I adapt to my clients, not the other way around. They don’t have to fit into my trick, I’ll make sure I learn what they need.
I am now the one who could have helped me 25 years ago. The knowledge was already there then, but it was not made available. Now it is there (unfortunately still hardly reimbursed), thanks to the Internet. We can find our own way and more and more therapists see the light that the way it is now not only does not work, but often causes more damage.
It revolves around the client and the connection between client and therapist. My person is an essential part of what I do, a person-to-person conversation. This is me, who are you?


NIKKI NOOTEBOOM
Almost all my life I have struggled with myself, my environment, the care provided and life in general. My addiction that got out of hand eventually made me decide to make myself better, because I no longer had faith in Mental Health Care. That help had only deepened and darkened the well.
Through a lot of study and research (see below), I came across the group of scientists who have been working for decades to unravel trauma and find proven effective methods to help people break out of the spiral of fear and reactivity. Trauma? Everything suddenly fell into place; I’m not sick at all, my system does exactly what it’s supposed to do: survive! It is not about what exactly happened that caused the trauma, but what consequences it has for me now; how do I keep myself safe and what is the vulnerability underneath that protection? Transforming the system is where the solution lies and you can’t do that with talk therapies and medication.
People suffer because they are not recognized that trauma is the cause. The existing system does not have the knowledge and looks at people in a ‘sickening’ way. The scientific knowledge has been there for a long time, but kept outside the door. Fortunately, the breakthrough has finally arrived, thanks in part to Bessel van der Kolk’s book: The Body Keeps the Score (Trauma Traces). My goal is not only to help people make themselves better, but also to change the current paradigm.
I can now stay close to myself, I am no longer eligible for the diagnoses they sent me home with and my life is no longer dominated by survival. I can now take responsibility for my life and I have confidence in that. I am now almost 50 and am now the person who could have helped me decades earlier.
You are not sick or crazy as a traumatized person, you are in survival.

This suits me…
At the end of the session I quickly say “Thank you very much” to you.. and that sounds so wafer thin because I also feel so grateful.. Only now do I feel that I really start, and the therapy you give me and how you do that… is so close to me. This suits me… I try to put it into words but it is more than that… a feeling! I am so grateful that you are on my path as my therapist and I learn so much but also that you make it work with your info and exercises, that I feel more clarification and only now get to know myself without all those parts. I really think it’s so special and beautiful that you know how to make me move… learning to detach from all that.