Your nervous system is just doing what it learned to do
You might not think of yourself as someone who has PTSD, because you’re still showing up, still getting things done, still holding your life together from the outside. But something’s different after what happened, and you know it's there even when you aren’t sure how to explain it.
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​What trauma hard to talk about is that a lot of it is invisible. You’re not falling apart, you’re probably doing well from the outside and functioning at a level that most people can’t notice much of a difference in you. But there’s still a glaring difference between how you’re life looks and how it feels to be living it. Sometimes that difference has been there so long that you feel like this is just who you are, that things might not ever get any better.​
Things keep showing up uninvited
You stay ready for something to happen.
Even when nothing is actually wrong, you’re on alert and can't turn it off, and your exhausted by it all at the end of the day
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Certain things take you right back.
A sound, a smell, a situation that feels uncomfortably familiar. One moment you’re here, and the next you’re somewhere else entirely, and it's hard to find your way back to the present.
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You’ve gone a little flat.
Not sad exactly, just disconnected and a bit numb. Less present than you used to be, less interested, harder to reach even for the people you care about.
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Your body hasn’t let it go.
Sleep that doesn’t come or doesn’t help, tension that lives in your shoulders or chest, an energy level that doesn’t match what’s on your plate.
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Part of you feels like it’s still back there.
You can function in the present, but there’s a version of your life that feels just out of reach, and what happened is part of what’s keeping you from it.
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Things can change when the past loses its grip on the now
Most of the people who came in for trauma therapy have spent a long time trying to figure out how to deal with it on their own and manage it instead of learning how to move through it. Often staying busy, keeping certain things at an arm’s length, and getting good at “not going there.” That works fine…until it doesn’t, and people eventually find that the effort to just manage it starts being too much. Therapy isn’t here to make you relieve every little detail; its to get you back to living your life fully.
As therapy goes on, the part of you that’s always on the lookout begins to settle down and you can start to think about what happened without being transported back to that moment. Your “out of nowhere” responses start to make more sense and are already starting to happen less often. The closeness returns to the relationships you’ve been holding at a distance, and that energy that you’ve been spending just to keep going starts returning to what matters.
As we work together, we'll get specific about what's impacting you the most:
We start by building some stability.
Before we go anywhere difficult, we’ll work on the tools that help you stay in the present moment when things get hard. There’s no pressure to move faster than makes sense for you.
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We’ll use EMDR when you’re ready for it.
EMDR helps your brain finish working through experiences that got stuck, reducing the emotional weight they carry without requiring you to retell everything in detail.
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I’ll be direct and we’ll move at your pace.
You’ll always know where we are in the work, and between sessions you’ll have practical tools you can actually use, not just things to think about.
Therapy for Trauma Can Help You...
Get tools that actually help
We'll build practical ways to handle the really hard moments: when you're tirggered, when sleep won't com, when the anxiety spikes, so you're not just white-knuckling through it.
Work Through what's been stuck
Using EMDR, we'll address the experiences that are still carrying weight, taking the charge out of them without requiring you to relive everything from the beginning.
Make sense of what's happened
A lot of trauma responses get read as a personality, weakness, or just being difficult. Understanding why you respond the way you do changes how you feel about yourself.
Start doing things you're avoiding
As the reactions ease up, the avoidance tends to ease with the, and the parts of your life that have gotten pushed away start coming back up.
Show up in relationships
The self-protection, the reactions, and the difficulty letting people get close: these things change as we work through what's underneath them, and the people in your life usually notice before you do.
Stop managing and move past it
Coping has its place, but the goal here is to reduce what you need to cope with and start living with more enthusiasm.
FAQ
No, and that's actually one of the things that makes EMDR different from regular "talk therapy." You don't have to walk through every detail for therapy to work. We go at your pace, and you can share at your own rate.
Do I have to talk through everything that happened in detail
EMDR uses guided eye movements to help your brain finish processing experiences that got stuck.
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Read more here: About EMDR
What is EMDR and how does it work?
Trauma isn't about how dramatic something looks from the outside, it's about what it did to you and the impact it keeps having. If something left a mark that's still affecting how you live, it's worth dealing with regardless of the label we use.
I'm not sure if what happened to me is trauma. Does that matter?
It depends on what you're working on and how long it's been impacting you. We'll talk about what to expect early on and we'll track things as we go. Often, people start feeling benefits within a couple of months of therapy.