Therapy for Trauma
When painful past experiences are interfering with life today, a trauma therapist can help.
After a painful experience, most of us just want to move forward and get on with our lives. Unfortunately, we often find that our minds and our bodies aren’t cooperating with that plan.
Trauma can make your world shrink. Things that should be simple feel like a minefield of triggers. Energy meant for the things you care about is used up just getting through the day.
Unwanted memories, fear and dread, and a constant state of vigilance are just some of the challenges people typically experience after a traumatic event. And they can make it difficult to be present in our personal and professional lives.
Fortunately, therapy for trauma can help.
Trauma Therapy Can Help You:
✔ Eliminate intrusive memories, nightmares, and flashbacks
✔ Regulate your emotional response to trauma triggers
✔ Stop avoiding people, places, or situations
✔ Improve relationships impacted by trauma
✔ Feel more comfortable and secure in your body
✔ Build trust in your own perceptions, feelings, and instincts
✔ Make sense of traumatic experiences so that you can move forward
Trauma Therapies That Work
We strive to use evidence-based approaches in a way that’s flexible, culturally responsive, and adapts to your needs. Every Stella Nova therapist has been trained in trauma-informed approaches to therapy. Some of us have additional, specialized training or certification in trauma therapies, including:
Somatic Therapy
EMDR
Internal Family Systems
DBT Skills
Want to connect with a trauma therapist? Our Intake Specialists will help connect you with a stellar therapist who can help.
It’s free, friendly, and zero-commitment to get started.
Common Types of Trauma We Treat:
- Childhood abuse or neglect
- Accidents or natural disasters
- Workplace and corporate trauma
- Experiences of systemic oppression
- Illness and medical trauma
- Physical violence and assault
- Traumatic grief and loss
- Emotional or psychological abuse
- Sexual assault, abuse, and exploitation
- Immigration trauma
You’re in the driver’s seat when it comes to trauma therapy.
It makes sense if you’re feeling nervous about starting trauma therapy.
Most people try everything they can to manage trauma before considering treatment: Pushing it down. Positive-thinking. Self-medicating. Pouring themselves into work or their relationships.
But the trauma’s still there. Stuck.
If you’re considering trauma therapy, it’s probably because you’re beyond sick of the impact it’s still having on your life. Or on the people you care about.
We know it’s no small thing to get started. We’re committed to meeting you wherever you’re at right now. You’re in the driver’s seat, setting the goals and the pace for our work together.
Find a Trauma Therapist Near You
Our therapists have current openings and are ready to connect with new clients. Schedule a free, 20-minute phone consultation today, and meet your new therapist within a week!
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I know if I experienced a trauma?
Our clients often start therapy unsure if they’ve experienced a trauma or not. That’s a perfectly good starting place for therapy.
Traumatic experiences are events that threaten our sense of safety and security in the world. While some events, such as a violent assault or a serious accident, are more easily recognized as traumatic, others, like emotional abuse, may be less obvious. But they can still have profound impacts on our sense of self, our safety, and our relationships with others.
Whether your experience was trauma or something else—if you’re struggling, we can figure it out together.
Why can't I just move on after a trauma?
This is not your fault! Traumatic memory is actually recorded in our brains differently than other memories. Our nervous systems respond to it as though it’s a current threat, not something that happened years or even decades ago. That’s why it takes more than willpower or a positive attitude to move on after trauma. You may intellectually know a bad situation is over, but your nervous system does not.
Trauma therapy can not only teach you coping skills, but help to rewire how those memories are stored in your brain. They eventually become like other memories—probably always unpleasant to recall, but without the power to derail you when they come up.
How long does trauma therapy take?
The answer to that question is unique to you and your situation. While trauma treatments can sometimes be effective in as little as 3-4 months, others find it takes years before the treatment feels complete and resolved. It depends on a number of factors, including the complexity and type of trauma. For example, recovering after a simple accident that occurred recently is likely to require less treatment than a long history of abuse dating back to childhood.
Even if your personalized treatment will require more time, that doesn’t mean it will take years to start seeing benefits. The work you’re doing along the way can benefit your relationships, self-image, emotional resilience, day-to-day functioning, and more.
Can trauma therapy make things worse?
Trauma therapy, like all medical and mental health treatments, does have risks. When we start paying attention to a trauma that we’re used to burying, ignoring, or self-medicating away, it can be scary and uncomfortable. Some people find that symptoms intensify before they get better.
However, trauma therapists take steps to minimize discomfort and symptom flare ups. We make sure that clients have tools and resources they can draw on for support before jumping into trauma processing. And we put you in charge of how slow or fast we go. You’re always in the drivers seat when it comes to your therapy.
What other services do you offer?
We offer therapy for a wide range of mental health concerns, including trauma, depression, anxiety, burnout & work stress, relationship issues, chronic pain, and more. Our clinic specializes in the mental health needs of women and LGBTQIA+ people of all genders. We treat individuals age 18+ as well as couples of all genders and sexual orientations.
