Trauma and PTSD Therapy
It Ended. Your Body Did Not Get the Message.
One of the three things clients most often name when they come to me is needing to process and move past trauma experiences. That work is possible, and it does not require you to hand over the whole story on day one.
What It Tends to Look Like
- A tone of voice, a smell, a date on the calendar, and your whole system drops.
- Keeping people at a distance you could not explain if asked.
- Sleep that never quite goes deep, or dreams you wake up bracing from.
- Feeling numb and overwhelmed in the same hour.
- Telling the story flatly, as though it happened to someone else.
- Blaming yourself for something you could not have controlled.
Trauma is not only the events that obviously qualify. A childhood spent managing an unpredictable adult counts. So does a birth that went wrong, a relationship that eroded you slowly, or a loss nobody treated as serious.
How We Work on It
Pacing is the whole thing. You are in control of your therapeutic process — you decide what gets said, in what order, and when we stop. We will not go digging because a treatment plan says week four.
First we build stability: what settles your body, what you do when something gets triggered, who you can call. Then, when you are ready, we work with what happened using CBT-informed methods — separating what was true then from what your nervous system still predicts now, and taking apart the belief that it was somehow your fault.
The goal is not to relive it, and not to erase it. It is to take it out of the driver's seat.
The goal is not to relive it, and not to erase it. It is to take it out of the driver's seat.
You Set the Pace
Nothing here requires you to be ready before you are.
Some people arrive able to say it all in the first hour. Others take months to get near it, and spend that time building a life that can hold the conversation. Both are legitimate therapy. What I will do is tell you honestly what I am seeing, keep the room steady, and go where you lead.
Support Between Sessions
Trauma work can stir things up outside the hour. We plan for that together before we begin. If you ever need support right away, call or text 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, and call 911 if you are in immediate danger. Confidential support for sexual assault is available 24/7 from RAINN at 800-656-4673.
You set the pace. Nothing gets opened here before you decide it does.
You Do Not Have to Explain It All to Begin
A free consultation is a conversation about whether this feels safe enough to start. That is the only decision in front of you today.