You learned how to survive. Therapy can help you experience more than survival.
Trauma can shape how you relate to safety, emotion, closeness, conflict, and yourself—even long after the original danger has passed.
Trauma often lives in our bodies, not just in our memories.
You may understand intellectually that the past is over and still find your body reacting as if danger is close. You may shut down, become hypervigilant, criticize yourself, avoid vulnerability, feel responsible for other people's emotions, or struggle to know what you need.
These responses are not character flaws. We approach them with curiosity, knowing that they developed for good reasons in circumstances where you needed protection.
Experiences we can work with
- Childhood and relational trauma
- PTSD and trauma symptoms
- Childhood sexual abuse and sexual assault
- Domestic violence and abusive relationships
- Shame, guilt and self-blame
- Emotional numbing or disconnection
- Hypervigilance, anxiety and fear
- Attachment and abandonment wounds
- Relationship and family conflict
- Identity and intergenerational experiences
Safety first. Then, emotional transformation.
Trauma therapy should not require you to force yourself into overwhelming experiences. We will work collaboratively and pay attention to your capacity, defenses, emotions, and body. As safety develops, therapy can become a place to experience grief, anger, care, strength, tenderness, and other emotions that may once have been too dangerous or lonely to feel.
The goal is not to change or erase the past. It is to help the past have less power over how you experience yourself and your relationships in the present.