Attachment-Informed Therapy for Trauma & PTSD
Therapy for When the Past Still Feels Present
If you found your way here, you’ve probably survived a lot.
Sometimes people seek trauma therapy because something clearly traumatic happened and they know they want support adjusting to their “new normal.” Even more often, though, people show up feeling anxious, tense, exhausted, or emotionally shut down — without fully understanding why.
If this sounds familiar, you may already sense that trauma is part of your story, even if you’re not sure how it’s still affecting you. Many people who seek trauma therapy are thoughtful, capable, and keeping it together in their daily lives. From the outside, things may look stable or even successful. Inside, it can feel unsettled, heavy, or stuck.
Here’s the Good News
Therapy can be a place where things start to make sense. Where you can begin to experience moments of relief, not just survival.
Signs You may be carrying unprocessed trauma
In the weeks and months after you experience a traumatic event, the impact can feel obvious. Difficulty sleeping, intrusive thoughts and memories, and feeling hopeless, irritable, or untrusting are often overwhelming.
As you gain distance from the event, unprocessed trauma can show up more subtly. It can look like patterns that slowly drain your energy and sense of purpose.
You might notice:
The same emotional or relational struggles stuck on repeat
Chronic guilt and over-responsibility — both feeling like “too much” and not enough
Blaming yourself for fatigue, burnout, or emotional reactivity
Feeling stuck scrolling, eating, or using substances to numb out
Expecting disappointment or feeling undeserving of good things
Living guided by guilt rather than your own needs or values
These responses often began as crucial survival strategies. Trauma therapy helps you determine whether those strategies still feel useful — and build new ones when they’re not.
Psssst — need a break?
Thinking about difficult memories can be a lot.
Here’s a palette cleanser if you need it.
What Trauma Actually Is (And Why It Stays With You)
Trauma is not just about what happened.
Trauma occurs when an experience overwhelms your nervous system’s ability to cope. Something was too much or too prolonged for your brain and body to safely process at the time.
When many people think of trauma, their minds goe to combat or sexual violence or assault. But it can also include experiences people often minimize, such as:
Growing up with emotionally unavailable or dismissive caregivers
Living with a parent struggling with addiction, incarceration, illness, or their own unresolved trauma
Losing important relationships or attachments
Experiencing chronic instability or unpredictability in childhood
Feeling repeatedly unseen, unsupported, or unsafe in important relationships
Trauma therapy doesn’t just focus on events, but on how those experiences shaped your nervous system, beliefs, relationships, and sense of safety in the world.
A Safe, Collaborative Approach to Trauma Therapy
Starting trauma work can feel vulnerable. Many clients worry therapy will make memories worse, force them to relive painful experiences, or push them beyond what they’re ready for. Others fear they will “do therapy wrong” or choose the wrong therapist or approach.
Trauma therapy with me is collaborative, paced, and guided by your nervous system’s readiness.
Healing doesn’t happen without some level of safety. That means we move at a pace that respects your body, your boundaries, and your capacity. Together, we help your nervous system understand that the danger has passed while reconnecting you with parts of yourself that feel lost, stuck, or overwhelmed.
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Trauma isn’t just something that happened in the past. It often lives in the body and nervous system long after the event is over.
When you experience something overwhelming, your nervous system shifts into survival responses like fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. These responses are protective and automatic.
They helped you get through something difficult when you needed them. Now, they may show up as anxiety, shutdown, people-pleasing, or feeling constantly on edge.
In trauma therapy, we begin by working with your nervous system responses instead of against them. Many clients feel relief simply learning that their reactions make sense based on what they’ve lived through.
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Trauma can make it hard to feel safe, even when life is (relatively)stable. Therapy focuses on helping your nervous system recognize moments of safety, steadiness, and regulation.
This may include learning to notice body sensations (including pleasant ones!), recognizing early signs of overwhelm, and practicing techniques that help your system settle.
We move at a pace that feels manageable and collaborative, always following what feels safe enough for your body and mind, without sacrificing growth.
Through our work, many clients notice they experience presence, connection, and a sense of safety in their bodies more often.
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Our family of origin shapes how safe it feels to trust others (and ourselves). When these relationships don’t feel secure enough, attachment and developmental trauma often follow.
Many clients find themselves repeating relationship patterns that feel confusing or painful, while also deeply craving connection. Therapy helps you understand how these patterns formed to protect you within relationships.
Together, we explore these cycles with curiosity and compassion. This helps build greater self-trust so you can choose relationships that feel more stable, supportive, and true to how you feel deep down.
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A common fear about trauma therapy is that it means you have to relive every detail of your painful experiences. In our work together, trauma processing only happens with your full consent and participation.
We may work with emotions, body sensations, protective parts of yourself, or memories that arise naturally. Many trauma memories are stored implicitly, meaning they may show up as physical reactions or knee-jerk emotional responses (rather than clear narrative memories or thoughts).
The goal is not to force exposure, but to help your nervous system safely process experiences that may still feel unfinished or stuck.
This is the part cognitive approaches can miss, leaving insightful clients feeling confused and stuck. It helps move beyond healing that, while helpful, feels like it’s missing something.
Somatic work, parts work, and brainspotting are helpful tools in this process.
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Trauma often isolates people from their internal resources — a sense of safety, confidence, playfulness, creativity, or emotional openness.
As therapy progresses, clients can sense the freedom to reconnect with these parts of themselves. This may involve inner child or parts work, somatic awareness, or strengthening self-compassion and emotional attunement.
Healing doesn’t mean forgetting what happened. It often means feeling more whole, grounded, and able to move through life with greater flexibility and self-understanding.
What Healing From Trauma Looks Like Over Time
Healing from trauma is deeply personal, but there are common therapy outcomes many clients begin to notice over time, including the following.
Not sure About Therapy?
Starting trauma therapy can feel like a big step. Most people don’t exactly want to do trauma work. More often, the impact of trauma starts to feel too heavy to carry alone. Below, I’ll address some of the most common concerns people have about starting trauma therapy.
Common Concerns about Starting Therapy for Trauma
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My role isn’t to decide whether what you experienced “counts” as trauma. If that word feels too heavy or doesn’t quite fit, I respect that.
If you’ve made it this far on a trauma therapy page, I imagine something here resonated. At the same time, there are many reasons people hesitate to use the word trauma. I often hear things like:
“Other people have survived much worse.”
“I don’t want to see myself as a victim.”
“They didn’t mean to hurt me. I’m probably overreacting.”
“Everyone has been through something.”
Labels and diagnoses are only useful if they help you feel understood and offer a path toward feeling better. You don’t have to call what you experienced trauma for therapy to be meaningful or healing.
What matters more is this:
How do you feel in your body and emotional life day to day, and is that working for you?
If not, therapy can help your nervous system adapt to what you’ve lived through so you can feel more grounded, connected, and like yourself again. -
This is one of the most common and understandable fears people share. If living with the effects of trauma already feels overwhelming, focusing more attention on what you survived can seem like it might make things harder.
I want to be honest: in trauma therapy, we will likely talk about your experiences at least a little. But how much, how quickly, and in what way is something we decide together. You always have a choice and control over the pace.
I use evidence-based trauma therapy approaches and make sure you understand your options so we can choose what feels safest and most helpful for you.
Many clients are surprised to find that trauma therapy often brings:
Relief from finally sharing what they’ve carried alone
A growing sense of safety and steadiness in their body
Less shame and fewer stuck beliefs like “It was all my fault” or “There’s something wrong with me”
More confidence to express themselves and try new ways of showing up in life
While trauma work is emotional at times, therapy done thoughtfully and at the right pace typically leads to relief and meaningful change rather than making symptoms worse.
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You survived a lot and built a life that may look stable or successful on the outside. It makes complete sense to wonder why you would revisit painful experiences now.
Many clients I work with feel confused by the gap between how their life looks and how it feels internally. They often carry gratitude for what they have, while also feeling exhausted by how much effort it takes to keep everything running. Trauma can quietly drain energy, peace, and enjoyment, even when life appears full or meaningful.
Living with trauma often means working incredibly hard just to maintain the status quo. It can become difficult to fully enjoy relationships, accomplishments, or moments of rest because so much energy is spent staying functional.
You absolutely can continue living this way, and may still enjoy so much about the life you’ve built. That choice is always yours.
But if you find yourself wondering why everyday life feels so hard, feeling chronically drained, or quietly asking, “Is this really all there is?” therapy can offer space to stop carrying this alone and see how life can feel fulfilling without the constant exhaustion.
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Many people say this because they’re trying to move forward — and often because they don’t yet see how the past is still showing up in the present. That makes a lot of sense. Trauma rarely feels obvious. Instead, it tends to appear in subtle but persistent ways.
You might reach a goal you worked toward for years, only to feel anxious, dissatisfied, or afraid it could disappear.
You might find yourself in a caring relationship but struggle to trust that it’s safe, sometimes feeling guilty for needing reassurance.
You might finally slow down after years of working, parenting, or caretaking, only to notice difficult thoughts or emotions that had been pushed aside start to crop up.
What happened to you is in the past, but trauma can continue living in the nervous system and body. It may show up as chronic tension, shutdown, feeling constantly on edge, burnout, or difficulty sleeping. Even when you rest, your body might not feel restored.
Trauma therapy focuses on helping your mind and body recognize that the danger is no longer happening, allowing you to experience more steadiness, rest, and presence in your life now.
Then the past can actually feel like it’s where it belongs.
Healing from trauma is possible,
and you don’t have to do it alone.
If even part of you is wondering whether healing from trauma could feel different, you don’t have to have everything figured out to take a first step.