Trauma Therapy
The past left a mark. It doesn't have to own the future.
The short version
Trauma therapy is a place to understand how past experiences are shaping the present, process what happened at a pace that feels manageable, and build a stronger sense of safety within yourself and your relationships.
Many people come in knowing exactly what happened. Others notice the effects without a clear source: anxiety, emotional shutdown, difficulty trusting, relationship patterns that keep repeating, or a persistent feeling of unsafety that's hard to explain. Both are valid starting points.
You do not need a formal PTSD or complex PTSD (C-PTSD) diagnosis to do this work. I work with adults experiencing the effects of childhood trauma, emotional abuse, attachment trauma, narcissistic abuse, sexual trauma, relational trauma, and C-PTSD.
Common Effects
Hypervigilance, Anxiety & Reactivity
Feeling constantly on alert, bracing for danger, emotional reactivity, overthinking, or struggling to fully relax even when nothing is wrong.
Emotional Shutdown & Dissociation
Numbing, disconnecting from yourself, difficulty accessing emotions, feeling detached, or disappearing emotionally during stress or conflict.
Relationship & Identity Patterns
Fear of closeness, people pleasing, difficulty trusting, emotional walls, shame, self-blame, or repeating painful relational dynamics.
How I Work with Trauma
Trauma work requires pacing. Moving too quickly into painful material can feel overwhelming or retraumatizing, especially for nervous systems that have spent years adapting to unpredictability or unsafety.
Part of therapy involves understanding where these patterns came from, why your nervous system adapted the way it did, sometimes called fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. Some of this draws on polyvagal theory, the idea that your nervous system shifts between different gears to keep you safe, and once we know which gear you tend to land in, we can work with it instead of against it. Building safety also means expanding your window of tolerance, your capacity to stay present with difficult emotions without becoming overwhelmed or shutting down.
Trauma also lives in the body, not just in memory. Many people carry chronic bracing, numbness, emotional flooding, or nervous system activation long after the original threat has passed, and therapy helps build the capacity to stay present with that instead of overwhelmed or disconnected from it.
The goal is to change how much power the past still has over your relationships, emotional life, and sense of self. If substance use or compulsive behaviors developed as ways of managing what the nervous system couldn't settle on its own, we'll work on that too.
My approach integrates psychodynamic therapy, attachment-based work, CBT, emotion-focused therapy (EFT), internal family systems (IFS), AEDP, and somatic techniques, including somatic experiencing.
What Therapy Can Help With
Childhood Trauma & Attachment
Childhood trauma, attachment wounds, emotional neglect, narcissistic family dynamics, fear of closeness, emotional shutdown, inner child work, hyper-independence, people pleasing, flashbacks, and recurring relationship patterns.
PTSD, C-PTSD & Survival Responses
Hypervigilance, dissociation, panic, emotional flooding, chronic anxiety, sleep disruption, shutdown, nervous system overwhelm, and the lasting effects of living in survival mode.
Sexual Trauma & Emotional Abuse
Emotional abuse, gaslighting, shame, boundary violations, self-blame, grief, identity confusion, and rebuilding self-trust. Sexual trauma often carries its own layer of shame that makes it harder to name and harder to seek help for.