Therapy for Trauma

The aftermath of trauma ripples through your life long after the experience is over. It impacts your sense of Self, undermines your feelings of safety in the world, and can make it hard for you to connect with and trust others. It can be caused by a single event or on-going stressors. Sometimes the trauma is easily identified such as physical/sexual abuse, an accident, or a significant loss. Other times, it’s harder to define, stemming from stressors such as a childhood where love felt conditional and needs consistently went unmet.

Even if the memories are no longer at the forefront, the unhealed effects of these overwhelming experiences can disrupt your daily functioning. In fact, many of the issues people come to therapy with are due to lingering and unresolved pain from the past. In everyday life, unresolved trauma might look like:

• Overwhelming emotional reactions; other times feeling numb 
• Trust issues
• The need to be in control at all times
• An inability to allow yourself to slow down and rest
• Destructive ways of coping
• Multiple mental health diagnoses; feeling “stuck” in mental health struggles
• Difficulty saying “no” and setting boundaries
• Sexual difficulties
• Core feelings of shame and guilt
• Struggling to feel worthy of love; feeling undeserving of having needs 
• Feelings of emptiness
• Zoning out, numbing out, a feeling of disconnection from Self
• Flashbacks, nightmares
• Living in fear and always on high alert waiting for the next threat
• Feeling physically or emotionally unsafe 
• the list goes on…

These intense responses can leave you feeling at war with yourself and relationships. Please know that no matter how long ago the trauma was, healing is possible. While you can’t change what happened to you, you can change the way you relate to it. The hurt and harm you feel from the past doesn’t need to resurface every time something familiar shows up. I have worked with courageous individuals who, in their adult years, were able to integrate and heal younger wounds.  

I would be honored to guide you in this journey as I believe that a solid therapeutic relationship is vital to healing. We will move at a pace that works for you and find a path forward that invites integration, self-compassion, and emotional freedom. Doing the hard work of healing, allows you to reclaim what has been taken from you, empowers you to choose a different way of responding to patterns you have been trying to break, and creates space for you to experience more ease, peace, joy, and pleasure in your life.