Trauma Therapy
Has Trauma Robbed You Of Your Sense Of Safety?
Are your thoughts, emotions, actions, or decisions being hijacked by a painful experience from your past? Do you feel ashamed or regretful at times for your reactions to triggers or reminders?
Perhaps you have a hard time trusting others or feeling safe in relationships—or the world in general—which limits the way you live. Or maybe you’re curious about why your past still affects you, and you’re looking for someone who can help you live more fully in the present.
Symptoms Of Trauma Can Manifest In Complex, Often Conflicting Ways
You may feel numb and disconnected from everyone and everything, or experience strong feelings of anger, sadness, and fear. Maybe you find yourself highly anxious, constantly on guard as if you are waiting for the other shoe to drop—or perhaps you have somatic symptoms like body aches and pains or trouble sleeping.
Reminders of trauma may occur often in your everyday life, and managing your reactions to them may feel overwhelming and challenging. Working with a therapist can help you heal from the original trauma at the root of those responses and help you manage those reactions while you heal.
Everyone’s Experience of Trauma is Unique
Trauma may be caused by a single, large-scale event, such as an assault or a life-threatening accident. It can also be the result of less intense, repeated, painful experiences like bullying, verbal abuse, or emotional neglect. Sometimes, trauma will make its mark on people's lives so gradually and so subtly to the outside world that it can almost feel invisible or difficult to name.
Even the most loving parents can cause relational trauma when their own emotional limitations prevent them from being able to tolerate their children's expression of particular feelings, such as sadness or anger. Being repeatedly told these aspects of yourself are unwelcome either through a lack of responsiveness or rejecting responses, such as "stop crying," "don't be a baby," and "calm down," can be fragmenting and erode a child's sense of safety and self-worth over time. In a similar way, some religious institutions cause us to feel shame about aspects of ourselves that feel vital to us by responding to them with rejection or degradation.
There’s also the trauma of existing in the world as a member of a marginalized group. For example, constant exposure to racism, misogyny, or homophobia through cultural messaging, individual interactions, or institutionalized bias, whether witnessed or directly experienced, can also be traumatic.
Because trauma can rob individuals of their sense of safety and trust, especially in relationships, reaching out for help can feel scary. As a trauma-informed therapist, I know that your experience of safety in therapy is primary and I will work with you to create and maintain that safety.
Therapy Helps You Discover The Strength Within To Overcome Trauma
Many people seek treatment because their intellectual understanding of their trauma has not resulted in changing their reactivity to triggers. And that makes a lot of sense because traumatic experiences change us on a neurological level that is not altered by intellectual understanding. Fortunately, it can be altered by working with a trauma counselor using techniques that will help you heal and regulate your nervous system.
Although you have been hurt by traumatic experiences, you’ve shown incredible strength and resilience by making it this far—to a place where you are aware you deserve help to make your life better. While the symptoms that have developed out of your trauma may feel like a burden, they have likely arisen as a way of coping from a part of you that had the courage, wisdom, and creativity to figure out how to survive. Together we can enlist those same internal resources to help you move from surviving to thriving.
My Philosophy About Trauma Treatment
I respect that it takes time to address traumatic experiences, and I also know that doing this kind of work requires building a foundation of trust and safety in the therapeutic relationship. I will always encourage you to share and explore your experience at a pace and in a way that feels safe to you.
While trauma therapy aims to heal the core injury or wound, that admittedly can take time. So while we are doing that deep work of healing, we will also work on managing the symptoms and difficulties that trauma creates in your day-to-day life. You will learn valuable mind-body skills for directly and consciously regulating how you think, feel, and respond to triggers.
Working together, we’ll discover where certain reactions come from, why you respond with such intensity, and how we can work with the nervous system directly to modify these responses.
Although I understand that symptoms and certain ways of coping with trauma are likely troubling to you, I also know they might serve a protective function that may provide a sense of safety or relief. Therapy will not be about simply abandoning coping mechanisms and symptoms that are troubling to you, but rather about understanding them and healing until they are no longer needed.
Some Approaches We Might Use In Trauma Counseling Sessions
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing) is a powerful intervention we might decide to use that rewires the nervous system’s reaction to trauma, providing results that go far beyond talk therapy.
Psychodynamic perspectives help us understand how early childhood relationships impact your relationship with yourself and others.
Internal Family Systems (IFS) is another model of trauma treatment that informs my work. IFS offers additional perspective and tools that can help you heal any parts of yourself that may have been wounded in the past, as well as those that are still trying to protect you in ways that actually cause you harm in the present.
For example, if you grew up in a home that was chaotic and unpredictable due to parental alcoholism or some other mental illness, there may be a part of you that learned to cope by trying to control every aspect of yourself, your environment, and/or your relationships in order to feel safe. IFS healing methods work with those parts of you so that they feel safe enough to let go of those behaviors.
In addition to these more traditional psychotherapy tools, I have decades of experience studying and teaching yoga and meditation which enables me to incorporate mindfulness, breathing, and grounding techniques into our work together, if that makes sense for you.
Whatever your needs are, you are reading this because some part of you knows you have the strength and resilience needed to change things for the better. I believe that trauma counseling can help you discover a life free of overwhelming emotions—a life with stability, comfort, healthy relationships, and even joy.
Perhaps You’re Considering Trauma Therapy But Still Have Some Concerns…
My problems aren’t that big of a deal—other people have it worse.
The pain you are feeling doesn't have to be bigger or more significant than anyone else’s to warrant attention. Trauma comes in all shapes and sizes—all real and deserving of help and healing.
Whether you were raised by verbally abusive parents as a child or were the victim of sexual abuse as an adult, trauma therapy can help you feel safe, balanced, and in control of your life.
I’m worried that trauma counseling means facing painful memories or parts of myself I don’t like.
That fear of facing pain makes a lot of sense and we will respect it, listen to it, and understand it to ensure that you are always comfortable with the pace and the focus of our work together. Perhaps you have had experience with other counselors that have labeled your fears as "resistance" or failed to recognize the purpose it has served you, only seeing it as an interference with their goal for your therapy.
That will not happen in the space we share. You deserve to hold onto anything that keeps you feeling comfortable and secure until we figure out how you can feel safe enough letting it go. That is actually part of the healing, not a "resistance" to healing.
What if I am so broken that nothing will ever make things better—not even trauma therapy?
There’s a part of you that worries nothing will help. Maybe it’s even afraid of having hope and being let down. But that fear doesn’t represent the whole of who you are. Some part of you also visited this website because it knows that with help, you can heal.
All parts of you are welcome and encouraged to show up in this space—the doubtful parts, hopeful parts, frightened parts, and any other parts of you that feel any other ways about healing your trauma.
Nobody shows up to trauma therapy without some parts of them being reluctant or weary, and that is okay. If you are ready to commit to the change you know you are capable of, trauma counseling can help you in ways you may never have thought possible.