Individual trauma therapy
"We cannot selectively numb emotions, when we numb painful emotions, we also numb the positive emotions."
~Brene Brown
Safe, insightful, supportive
With direct, proven approaches to helping you process and resolve complex trauma, I don't just help you “get past” the past. I help you to understand the trauma and its impact, make sense of what happened to you, and restore your life so you can feel safe, secure, and whole again. I specialize in helping individual adults heal from the damaging effects of abusive and neglectful relationships, whether in childhood or adulthood. I provide psychotherapy to individual adults in California via HIPAA secure telehealth.
Complex Trauma (C-PTSD) Specialty
Trauma impacts your mind, body, and emotions and can seem impossible to heal. You may be constantly and unpredictably triggered by things that happened to you in the past, controlled by feelings of shame, anxiety, anger, depression, and fear, and even turn to substance abuse, cutting, and other harmful or impulsive behaviors to cope.
Growing up in a chaotic home environment due to caregivers' mental illness or substance use, or suffering physical, sexual, or emotional abuse as a child or adult can profoundly affect your sense of self. You may not even realize how profoundly these experiences affect you.
Trauma can profoundly affect fundamental aspects of yourself and your ability to relate to others, resulting in problems in the areas of:
Therapy can help you identify parts of your self and patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting that are actually survival responses to trauma triggers. These response once served you, but now get in the way, and are often just as damaging as the initial event. I can help you create adaptive self-care and coping skills to manage and heal deep trauma and attachment wounds so that you can feel safe, calm, and thrive in life. Together we will build and strengthen your sense of self-worth, self-acceptance, and ultimately self-love.
Trauma can profoundly affect fundamental aspects of yourself and your ability to relate to others, resulting in problems in the areas of:
- Emotion regulation difficulties such as too much or too little emotion, limited awareness of feelings, difficulty with self-soothing
- Chronic feelings of fear, anger, shame, sadness, helplessness, hopelessness
- Impulsive or self-destructive behaviors related to difficulties managing emotions (addictions, self-harm, disordered eating)
- Being in a persistent state of arousal (startling easily/being jumpy)
- Sense of self as bad, inadequate, weak, powerless, worthless, undeserving
- Self-critical and self-blaming; hypersensitivity to criticism & rejection
- Identity problems such as not feeling whole, lacking a clear, stable sense of self, inner sense of confusion, frequent changes in career, life goals, etc.
- Alterations in attention and memory
- Problems with trust and intimacy in relationships
- Difficulty with boundaries, self-assertion, and setting limits in relationships
- Difficulty connecting with others (sense of isolation or alienation)
- Frequent physical health problems such as chronic pain, irritable bowel syndrome, headaches, hypertension, sexual pain and dysfunction
- Hypersensitivity to physical contact, sounds, and other stimuli
- Difficulty with sleep: falling asleep/staying asleep
Therapy can help you identify parts of your self and patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting that are actually survival responses to trauma triggers. These response once served you, but now get in the way, and are often just as damaging as the initial event. I can help you create adaptive self-care and coping skills to manage and heal deep trauma and attachment wounds so that you can feel safe, calm, and thrive in life. Together we will build and strengthen your sense of self-worth, self-acceptance, and ultimately self-love.
I'm here to help You
My specialty in working with relational and complex trauma is informed by neuroscience, attachment research, and more than a decade of clinical work with trauma survivors. This background provides insight into not only why trauma has such a profound effect, but also how exactly to heal. I have advanced training and certification in treating complex trauma (Certified Complex Trauma Professional - CCTP-II) from the International Association of Trauma Professionals and have trained with experts in the treatment of complex trauma such as Bessel van der Kolk and Janina Fisher, as well as Daniel Siegel, the creator of Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB), a theory and working model of how we are shaped by the interplay of genes in the context of relationships.
Let me help you heal and thrive
Restore your sense of safety, feel more stable and secure, and build healthy relationships with the people that matter most to you. I welcome diverse populations in individual therapy, including all sexual orientations, genders, and relationship structures.