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, overthinking, emotional reactivity, or struggling to fully relax even when nothing is technically 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 people whose nervous systems have spent years adapting to stress, unpredictability, or emotional unsafety.
My approach integrates psychodynamic therapy, attachment-based work, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), emotion-focused therapy (EFT), internal family systems (IFS), accelerated experiential dynamic psychotherapy (AEDP), and somatic techniques depending on what feels most supportive and appropriate for the work.
Part of therapy involves understanding where these patterns came from, why your nervous system adapted the way it did, and how those survival responses continue shaping relationships, emotions, self-worth, and daily life now.
Trauma also lives in the body, not only in memory or narrative. A lot of trauma exists in the body before it fully exists in language. Many people experience chronic bracing, numbness, emotional flooding, tension, or nervous system activation long after the original threat has passed. Therapy helps develop greater awareness of those responses while building the capacity to stay present with difficult emotions rather than becoming overwhelmed by them or disconnected from them.
The goal is not erasing the past. It is changing how much power it continues to have over your present relationships, nervous system, emotional life, and sense of self.
Substance use and compulsive behaviors sometimes develop as ways of managing what the nervous system cannot settle on its own. If that is part of the picture, we'll work on that too.
What Therapy Can Help With
Childhood Trauma & Attachment
Childhood trauma, attachment wounds, emotional neglect, narcissistic family dynamics, people pleasing, fear of closeness, emotional shutdown, hyper-independence, 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.