Hello, and Welcome!
I’m Christopher Frechette LCSW, a therapist and fellow childhood-trauma survivor working in the practice of Patrick Teahan LICSW.
With childhood-trauma survivors, we focus on finishing childhood business and reclaiming intimacy in relating to self and others, creating healing communities with groups, and healing alliances with individuals.
While earning a masters in Social Work at Salem State University, I received clinical training both in community mental health (with adults who have severe mental illness) and at the Veterans Administration Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Outpatient Clinic in Brockton, MA. I also have a certificate in integrative somatic trauma therapy (The Embody Lab). Additionally, I am a certified life coach.
My training builds on my personal journey of healing from childhood trauma, which began with reading about childhood trauma when I was 18 and continued with a series of therapeutic relationships. In my mid-40s I began the most transformative phase of my journey: five years of therapy with Amanda Curtin LICSW, who developed the Relationship Recovery Process (RRP) group model of childhood trauma therapy. I subsequently received professional training in this model. Like Patrick, I practice the RRP model and am engaged in research about it.
Additional experiences enhance my capacity to understand and work with childhood-trauma survivors.
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As a cisgender man (he/him) active in the LGBTQ+ community, I recognize how the social stigma and exclusion associated with queer identities can contribute to childhood trauma.
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Personal and professional experience have shown me the harmful effects that religion, especially rigid or fundamentalistic religion, too often has on childhood-trauma survivors. I have advanced degrees in ministry (MDiv, Santa Clara) and theology (STL, Boston College; ThD, Harvard). Prior to becoming a therapist, through decades of work as a spiritual counselor, including in prisons, I supported trauma survivors in their healing journeys, including to help them be free of effects of toxic religion.
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I have published multiple articles about trauma and spirituality, and I have taught about trauma in the context of religion at St. Mary’s University (San Antonio) and College of the Holy Cross in undergraduate courses, and at Boston College in graduate courses for social work and behavioral health students, as well as for ministry students.
As part of my self-care, playing piano and composing music help me express feelings creatively and give me joy.
For more information on the Relationship Recovery Process (RRP)
inner-child trauma model, click here.
For over 100 videos about the RRP model and how it works,
click here to see Patrick Teahan's YouTube channel.
See my Academia.edu page for information about my publications.
