Trauma, PTSD & Abuse Therapy
Trauma doesn't just live in your past. It lives in your body, your reactions, your relationships — until you have the right support to process it. I offer specialized trauma and PTSD treatment for adults and teens, for people who know something happened and know they haven't fully moved on from it, even after trying.
Trauma Shows Up in More Ways Than People Realize
Not everyone who has been through something traumatic walks around thinking "I have PTSD." Trauma has a way of disguising itself as anxiety, hypervigilance, emotional numbness, difficulty trusting people, or just a persistent sense that something is off. If you find yourself managing symptoms rather than actually feeling better — staying busy, staying guarded, staying one step ahead of your own emotions — that's worth paying attention to.
Trauma doesn't always come from a single dramatic event. Childhood neglect, emotionally unsafe relationships, ongoing stress, and accumulated losses can have the same impact on the nervous system as an acute traumatic event. Common signs include:
- Flashbacks and intrusive memories that surface unexpectedly
- Hypervigilance — feeling constantly on alert even when you're safe
- Avoiding people, places, or situations that remind you of what happened
- Emotional numbing, or difficulty experiencing joy or closeness
- Nightmares, insomnia, or disrupted sleep
- Irritability and reactivity that feel out of proportion, or a short fuse that wasn't always there
- Negative self-beliefs — "I'm damaged," "it was my fault," "I can't trust anyone"
- Difficulty with trust and intimacy in relationships
Trauma Comes in Many Forms
Whether your experience was a single event or a long pattern, whether it happened last year or decades ago, trauma is treatable. I work with:
- PTSD from accidents, assault, combat, disasters, or other acute traumatic events
- Childhood trauma — neglect, abuse, unstable or unsafe home environments, early losses
- Relational and attachment trauma — betrayal, emotional abuse, coercive control, or repeated experiences of not being safe with people
- Complex PTSD (C-PTSD) — trauma that accumulated over time, often interpersonal, resulting in deeper disruptions to self and identity
- Medical trauma — difficult diagnoses, procedures, ICU experiences, or traumatic childbirth
- Grief and traumatic loss — sudden or traumatic bereavement, or grief that remains stuck
- Secondary and vicarious trauma — burnout and trauma responses in caregivers, first responders, and helping professionals
- Community and collective trauma — the lasting impact of systemic violence, displacement, discrimination, or community loss
Evidence-Based Treatment That Goes Beyond Coping
Effective trauma treatment isn't about talking around what happened indefinitely — it's about helping your nervous system process and integrate what it wasn't able to at the time.
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is one of the most researched and effective treatments available for trauma and PTSD, and it's a primary modality I use. Unlike traditional talk therapy, it doesn't require you to describe what happened in painful detail — it uses bilateral stimulation to help the brain finish processing experiences that got "frozen" in the nervous system. Read more on the EMDR Therapy page.
Alongside EMDR, I draw on somatic awareness — working with the body's role in trauma and the physical responses that keep you stuck — and parts-informed work, understanding the different internal responses to trauma and helping them work together rather than against each other.
What You Can Expect to Gain
Trauma treatment isn't about erasing what happened — it's about changing the relationship you have with it, so it becomes something that happened to you, not something still happening.
- Relief from flashbacks, intrusive memories, and nightmares
- A nervous system that isn't constantly braced for something bad
- Freedom from shame-based beliefs like "I'm broken" or "it was my fault"
- The ability to be present without being pulled back into the past
- Healthier relationships — more trust, less reactivity, more ease
- A clearer, more stable sense of who you are outside of what happened to you
What Trauma Treatment Looks Like
Initial evaluation (90 minutes). A thorough intake to understand your history, how trauma is showing up in your life right now, and what you most want to change.
Stabilization and foundation (4 to 6 sessions). Before moving into trauma processing, we build a solid foundation — emotional regulation skills, grounding techniques, and a therapeutic relationship where you feel genuinely safe. This phase isn't filler; it's what makes deeper healing possible.
Trauma processing (6 to 12 sessions). Using EMDR and other evidence-based approaches, we work through the specific memories, beliefs, and body-based responses keeping you stuck. You stay in control of the pace.
Integration and next steps. We consolidate the gains you've made, address any remaining targets, and prepare you for life without the weight you came in carrying. Some clients feel complete at this stage; others continue with maintenance or deeper work.