Too much, too fast, too soon or too little, too late, not enough.
What is Trauma Therapy?
Trauma therapy helps you understand how past experiences may still affect your mind, body, and relationships, while developing greater safety, self-awareness, and choice in the present.
Trauma Therapy
Trauma therapy is not about forcing yourself to revisit painful experiences or spending every session talking about the past. It is about understanding how your experiences may still be shaping the way you think, feel, relate, and respond in the present—and creating more choice in how you move through life.
Trauma can affect much more than our memories. Experiences that felt overwhelming, unsafe, or impossible to process can show up as anxiety, emotional overwhelm, shutdown, people-pleasing, perfectionism, difficulty setting boundaries, relationship patterns, or a nervous system that seems to be constantly “on.” Sometimes you know exactly what happened. Other times, you simply know that something feels difficult without understanding why.
Trauma therapy can provide a space to slow down and become curious about these patterns without judgment. Rather than trying to make yourself stop feeling a certain way, we work together to understand what your mind and body may be communicating and develop greater capacity to respond with intention rather than automatically reacting from old patterns.
Trauma is any event that had the capacity to overwhelm us; something we were unable to integrate into our sense of self. Estimates place around 70% of people experiencing trauma in their lifetime, which comes in many different forms.
Trauma Modalities
I use Internal Family Systems (IFS) and Somatic Experiencing (SE) to support a deeper, more compassionate understanding of the ways trauma can affect both the mind and body.
IFS offers a way of understanding ourselves as having different “parts”—for example, a part that overthinks, tries to keep everyone happy, pushes you to achieve, or wants to withdraw when things feel overwhelming. Rather than seeing these responses as problems to get rid of, IFS invites us to become curious about what these parts are trying to protect and what they may need from us now.
Somatic Experiencing brings attention to the body's responses to stress and trauma. Instead of relying solely on talking about what happened, we may gently notice sensations, impulses, tension, movement, or shifts in your nervous system as they arise. The goal is not to force your body to relax, but to build greater awareness, capacity, and choice while staying within a manageable window of experience.
Together, these approaches create a trauma therapy process that is mindful, embodied, and collaborative. We can explore your history when it feels useful while also paying attention to what is happening in the present moment. You remain an active participant in the process, and we move at a pace that respects your boundaries and capacity.
