How We Treat One Another Matters! ®

Charlotte Dillon, PhD, MPS, SEP, DARe trained, is a clinical psychologist and the owner of Gateway Psychological Services, Ltd.  She believes that we are created from love, for relationship, and as such, we live our best lives when we are connected and nourished in healthy relational systems. Throughout the course of our life, we experience the tension between the opportunities as well as the challenges we encounter within relationship as we grow and become more fully alive. The evolving sciences of neurobiology support this idea. Daniel Siegel, one of Dr. Dillon’s favorite neuroscientists says, we are “emerging entities that come from our interaction with others.” Thus, how we deal with one another in relationship mutually impacts our transformations, for good and for bad, and how we treat one another matters. What we say and how we say it can be life-giving or life-zapping.  

Bidden or not, God is Present (Carl Jung)

Dr. Dillon and her staff are trained in the integration of the spiritual with the psychological, and will integrate a client’s spiritual history and experience as part of the psychotherapy process, as invited. We live in a very complex world and as clinicians, we are grateful for new awareness and understanding which has emerged especially over the past 30 years, of how we grow best in relationship, with focus on the integration of body, mind and Spirit. This integration lends insights and tools into how we heal and unlock our potential to grow into our best selves, and potentially become agents of change in our world. At Gateway, we embrace the Ignatian idea that God is found in everyone, in every place and in everything. Thus, relationship to body, mind, and Spirit drives the major lenses of Attachment Theory, the neurosciences, and developmental models through which we view our human experience.

Persons who have experienced developmental and/or relational trauma, spiritual desolation and/or overwhelming life stress are ideal candidates for work with Dr. Dillon.  She grew up in a pastor’s family, and has a special tenderness for pastors and church leaders, who need a safe and confidential place to be fully human.  Dr. Dillon has extensive experience consulting, teaching, and doing psychotherapy with pastors and church leaders.  She has been adjunct faculty with the Institute of Pastoral Studies of Loyola University in Chicago, and facilitated the annual Alumni Lenten Retreat for Loyola in 2017. Dr. Dillon welcomes contact from any church leader who is seeking workshops/retreats in her areas of specialization, as well as those seeking consultation and/or psychotherapy services.   Please note her workshop schedule under the services tab.   How We Treat One Another Matters: Right Relationships for the Sake of Becoming our Best Self is a favorite workshop to present.

Trauma Training

Somatic Experiencing

Dr. Dillon completed her three year Somatic Experiencing (SEI) Practitioner Training in 2016. SE is a body based trauma intervention program, developed by Peter Levine, Ph.D.  Dr. Levine says:  “Traumatic symptoms are not caused by the event itself. They arise when residual energy from the experience is not discharged from the body. This energy remains trapped in the nervous system where it can wreak havoc on our bodies and minds.” Somatic Experiencing is a body based trauma intervention model that addresses the repair of nervous system dysregulation in the service of healing developmental and other traumas. SE trainings are ongoing worldwide, including the Chicago area. Information and training schedules can be found on the Somatic Experiencing International website.

Dr. Dillon assists with Somatic Experiencing trainings and is approved to provide personal sessions for Beginning through the Advanced tiers of training. The schedule for SE trainings can be found on the Somatic Experiencing International’s website. Trainings are currently being conducted remotely and in person. The SEI faculty are working diligently to keep everyone safe and to provide a training that is both empowering and effective.

Somatic Resilience and Regulation

In 2018, Dr. Dillon completed her training with Steve Terrill in Somatic Resilience and Regulation (SRR). SRR is a somatic and attachment approach that utilizes supportive touch in the treatment of early trauma and its related symptoms. Steve is also the creator of Transforming the Experience Based Brain (TEB), which is now in the Chicago area. Information about Steve’s trainings can be found at austinattachment.com.

Dynamic Attachment Re-Patterning Experience

Dr. Dillon is a certified Dynamic Attachment Re-Patterning Experience (DARe) session provider, which has involved extensive personal and professional training in the DARe model, developed by Diane Poole Heller. Diane’s vision and creation of DARe embraces a set of powerful strategies, taught in four modules, which address developmental and relational trauma.  DARe modules are interactive, during which time participants explore how body/mind based therapy techniques, Attachment Theory, and a variety of spiritual practices and perspectives can be used in tandem to effectively address relational ruptures in our clients, as well as in our own developmental histories. The modules are a blend of didactic presentations, demonstrations, and experiential exercises. 

The transformational impact of DARe addresses developmental wounds both within our attachment system as well as within our nervous system, so it is a very bottom up paradigm of interventions. The combination of SE within DARe is a dynamic combo which takes in not only what is happening in our autonomic nervous system but also in our relational fields.  We are created with a social engagement system and what we now know about the attachment system and our nervous system tells us we are created for secure relationships.  The work with SE and the DARe programs stick, producing very positive and long-lasting transformations.  Dr. Dillon knows from personal and professional experience that it is in the integration of the body, mind and soul that we heal.  

Trauma Solutions brought DARe to Chicago in 2019; current trainings can be found on Diane’s website at trauma solutions.com.

Education

Dr. Dillon received a PhD in Counseling Psychology from Northwestern University and has been licensed as a clinical psychologist in the state of Illinois since 1991.  She has considerable clinical experience in a variety of settings and trained both at the Family Institute of Chicago, now of Northwestern University, and at Cook County Hospital.  She furthered her graduate education by obtaining a Master's in Pastoral Studies in 2006 from the Institute of Pastoral Studies at Loyola University Chicago, where she had the honor to develop and teach the Human Growth and Development course at the Institute from 2007 to 2014.  

Professional Organizations

Dr. Dillon is a life-time member of the American Psychological Association; she and her staff operate under the ethical guidelines of the A.P.A.

Dr. Dillon can be found on the DARe certified practitioners list, the Somatic Experiencing International directory, and the Psychology Today website.

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