Trauma

Navigating Trauma

Trauma isn’t just about what happened—it’s about how your brain and body were impacted. When an experience overwhelms your capacity to cope, it can leave lasting imprints on your nervous system. You might feel disconnected from your body, stuck in survival mode, or numb without knowing why. These are not just emotional responses—they’re physiological patterns shaped by the body’s attempts to protect you. Trauma can disrupt your sense of safety, identity, and regulation. Therapy offers a space to gently reconnect with your body, build inner safety, and support the brain’s natural ability to heal.


The term "trauma" is often used casually to describe anything distressing, but clinically, trauma refers to experiences that overwhelm the brain and nervous system’s ability to cope. This can include single-incident events that lead to PTSD, or long-term, repeated stress such as complex childhood trauma, which can shape core beliefs, emotional responses, and even identity.

Trauma isn’t defined by the event itself but by its impact—how it disrupts your sense of safety, trust, and regulation. Research shows that traumatic stress can lead to persistent symptoms like hypervigilance, emotional numbness, dissociation, or difficulty forming secure relationships. These patterns are not character flaws; they are survival responses wired into the body and brain.

You may feel confused by your reactions or wonder why you “can’t just move on.” The truth is that trauma reshapes how your nervous system responds to the world. Therapy can help by creating a safe, consistent space to process what happened and how it lives on in your body and mind. Over time, trauma-informed therapy supports healing by helping you regulate your nervous system, reestablish boundaries, and reconnect with your sense of self.

Healing is possible—not by erasing the past, but by understanding it, integrating it, and reclaiming your capacity for safety, connection, and meaning.

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How I Can Help

Here are a few areas we might explore together:

  • Post-Traumatic Stress (PTSD) – Addressing symptoms like hypervigilance, flashbacks, and emotional numbing through grounding and nervous system regulation.

  • Complex Trauma – Unpacking long-standing patterns of shame, disconnection, or people-pleasing rooted in early or repeated trauma.

  • Body-Based Healing – Reconnecting with your body through somatic tools to release stored tension and reestablish a sense of safety.

  • Identity & Boundaries – Rebuilding trust in yourself, clarifying your needs, and developing healthy relational boundaries.

My approach often weaves together cognitive strategies, mindfulness, somatic awareness, and bibliotherapy—tailored to your unique history and healing process. Whether you’re seeking clarity, calm, or reconnection, trauma-informed therapy can support lasting, meaningful change.

Finding Relief From Trauma:

The Work We Do Together

  • Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a well-established and effective approach for working through the lasting effects of trauma. Whether you're navigating the aftermath of a single traumatic event or the ongoing impact of complex trauma, CBT helps identify unhelpful thought patterns shaped by fear, shame, or survival-based coping—such as hypervigilance, self-blame, or beliefs that the world is unsafe and unpredictable.

    CBT offers concrete tools to challenge these thoughts and develop more balanced, supportive perspectives. By learning how trauma has influenced your thinking and behavior, you can begin to reduce emotional distress, build healthier coping strategies, and reestablish a sense of stability, control, and safety in your life.

  • Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) can be especially effective for those coping with the emotional intensity that often follows trauma. Whether you're living with the effects of PTSD, complex trauma, or relational trauma, DBT offers a structured, compassionate approach to help you regulate overwhelming emotions and regain a sense of control.

    This method blends cognitive-behavioral strategies with mindfulness and nervous system regulation, focusing on four core skill areas:

    • Mindfulness – staying present and grounded, especially when trauma responses pull you into the past or future

    • Distress Tolerance – navigating crisis moments without becoming emotionally flooded or shut down

    • Emotion Regulation – understanding and managing strong emotional reactions shaped by past trauma

    • Interpersonal Effectiveness – building safe relationships, setting boundaries, and communicating your needs clearly

    These skills can support you in feeling more stable, empowered, and connected—both to yourself and to others—throughout the healing process.

  • Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) offers a compassionate and effective approach for navigating the emotional impact of trauma. Whether you’re healing from a single event or coping with the long-term effects of complex trauma, ACT helps you relate differently to painful emotions—like fear, shame, grief, or anger—without being controlled by them.

    Instead of trying to avoid or fix these feelings, ACT encourages acceptance of your inner experience while still moving toward what matters most to you. In our work together, we’ll clarify your core values—personal, relational, or creative—and support committed actions that reflect those values, even when emotional pain is present.

    ACT builds psychological flexibility, helping you respond to trauma’s impact with more resilience, self-compassion, and a renewed sense of direction.

  • Mindfulness offers steady, research-backed support in the aftermath of trauma—whether from a single overwhelming event or the long-term effects of complex or developmental trauma. When trauma disrupts your sense of safety, connection, and control, mindfulness helps you gently reconnect with the present moment without becoming overwhelmed by it.

    By noticing thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations with openness and curiosity, mindfulness creates space between you and your trauma responses. This nonjudgmental awareness can calm the nervous system, interrupt cycles of reactivity, and support the brain’s natural ability to regulate stress.

    Over time, mindfulness has been shown to reduce symptoms of PTSD, increase emotional resilience, and help you build a more compassionate and stable relationship with yourself. It’s not about fixing or avoiding your experience—but about learning to meet it with presence and care, one moment at a time.

  • Somatic interventions offer a vital path to healing trauma—not just through insight or talk, but through the body itself. Trauma often lives in the nervous system, showing up as chronic tension, numbness, restlessness, or disconnection from bodily sensations. These physical responses are not random; they reflect how the body has learned to protect itself under threat.

    Somatic therapy helps you safely notice and work with these sensations, gradually releasing stored survival energy and restoring a sense of regulation. Practices like grounding, breathwork, and gentle movement reconnect you with your body’s innate capacity to heal, offering stability where words may fall short.

    This body-centered approach complements talk therapy by addressing trauma at its roots—supporting you in rebuilding a felt sense of safety, presence, and embodied self-awareness. Over time, it becomes possible not just to understand your trauma, but to move through it and reclaim a more integrated, resilient sense of self.

  • After trauma, it’s common to turn inward with blame, shame, or the belief that you should “be over it by now.” These harsh inner voices often echo past experiences of neglect, abuse, or unrealistic expectations. Self-compassion offers a research-backed alternative—a way to meet your pain with understanding rather than judgment.

    Grounded in neuroscience and trauma theory, self-compassion helps calm the threat system in the brain and activate the soothing system, supporting emotional regulation and healing. Instead of reinforcing shame or survival-based coping, you learn to respond to your struggles with care, patience, and acceptance.

    For those recovering from trauma—whether acute or complex—self-compassion can reduce anxiety, build resilience, and restore a sense of safety within. It’s not about ignoring pain, but about turning toward it gently, with the support of your own inner kindness.

  • Creative expression can be a powerful way to process the complex and often overwhelming emotions that accompany trauma. When words aren’t enough—or feel too difficult—art, writing, music, or movement can offer a safe outlet for feelings like fear, grief, anger, or disconnection. These forms of expression allow the body and nervous system to release what may be hard to articulate.

    Research shows that creative practices can activate brain regions involved in emotional regulation, integration, and healing. By engaging with creativity, you're not just telling your story—you’re reshaping it in a way that supports resilience and self-understanding.

    Whether used alongside talk therapy or as its own pathway, creative work helps bring unconscious material to the surface, supports nervous system regulation, and reconnects you with a sense of agency and meaning—especially when trauma has left you feeling fragmented or stuck.

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