Trauma Therapy in Pennsylvania
What happened to you cannot contain you.
You’re tired of feeling like there’s just something “off” about you that makes you different from everyone else.
Despite your success, stability, and all the work you’ve done to put your life together, you aren’t feeling like yourself. Normally? You laugh easily, you have a sense of optimism and drive, and you have energy for the things in your day. But that version of you feels far off. You feel haunted.
Reality feels twisted in ways that make you feel sick. Your sense of time feels bent. There’s a hollow and empty feeling in your core that you can’t shake. You’re zoning out more, getting through the day with brain fog. Sleep has been difficult — maybe you’ve been waking up from nightmares.
You have a hard time feeling close to anyone. You find yourself suspecting others’ intentions — they’re mad at you. they’re going to hurt you. they’re going to hate you. they’re going to leave you. It feels like your vulnerabilities are exposed on your sleeve and your mind is screaming, don’t let anyone see you.
You feel a consuming urge to prove yourself, protect yourself, or disappear. Your loved ones try to reach you, but there’s a huge wall that neither you nor they can get through. For how much responsibility is on your shoulders, you can’t believe you’re feeling so lost.
You’re in the right place.
Whether you have never felt like this before, or if you are no stranger to the dark corners of your mind, this amplification of negative experience can be disorienting. You may be experiencing these signs and symptoms:
Irritable, snappy, on edge
Derealization (feeling like there’s something off in the space around you)
Depersonalization (feeling strange, distorted, or disconnected in your body)
Confusion (difficulty knowing what’s real or if you’re just making things up)
Amnesia (memory loss in the short-term, or memory gaps in longer periods of your life)
Nightmares (vivid frightening images during sleep)
Dwelling on negative past events
Pessimistic, distrustful, overly cynical view of the self, others, or world
These are trauma symptoms. Signs that may be pointing you back towards old, unprocessed overwhelm.
It’s not an accident that people and relationships are not easy for you.
When you’re with your partner or spouse, there’s a part of you that listens for changes in their voice so you can assemble your defenses to protect yourself.
When you’re surrounded by happy couples and families, there’s a part of you that envies and hates them for having what you didn’t have growing up. And it’s still a struggle to obtain what they have.
When you’re with your friends, there’s a part of you that doubts if they’re real and starts shutting you down at the thought.
And for as much as it’s often preached as necessary for your health, you feel like you just don’t have community.
Overextending yourself for others while ignoring yourself. Fearing you’re not giving people enough for them to stay while simultaneously shrinking down to near nothing so when you get discarded, you aren’t surprised.
The worst part of it all?
No one knows this is how you feel or that you want out.
Call it your trauma, your baggage, your wounds, vulnerabilities, insecurities, or your bullsh*t. Whatever your words for it are, you understand that the way that you’ve been treated by people affects your capacity to connect with people.
I am here to tell you:
Your needs are real and important.
You do matter.
And it is possible to act like it once you know in your bones that you are greater than what has happened to you.
Areas of Expertise
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Single-incident trauma: one event
Complex trauma: multiple, often overlapping events
When people experience a series of highly stressful events or are immersed in a highly stressful environment for a long time, the impact often goes much deeper than single-incident trauma.
Experiences that can engender complex trauma can include:
childhood abuse or neglect
cult or cult-like experiences
domestic violence
toxic workplace environment(s)
racial stress, microaggressions
sexual harassment
any kind of abuse — physical, psychological, sexual, emotional, or financial
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Attachment trauma: the significant disruption of the normal process of bonding with your parents and caregivers.
Childhood trauma: general adverse experiences that occurred from ages 0-25
Events or circumstances that can engender attachment or childhood trauma include:
divorce
parental abandonment
foster care
adoption
controlling parent
physically or emotionally unavailable parent
parent with mental health issues
parent with poor boundaries
parent with alcohol abuse or other substance abuse
parent with other addictive habits, e.g. gambling, shopping, sex
emotionally immature parent
incest
generational family patterns of abuse, neglect, addiction
being a descendant of a survivor of genocide or war
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Religious trauma is a form of complex trauma in that it usually happens environmentally and over time.
high-control religion (abuse of faith and obedience)
theological teaching grounded in fear and judgment
charismatic but manipulative faith leader
religious and spiritual teachings twisted to shame and judge the faithful
discouraged integration with the rest of society
encouraged judgment of outsiders
encouraged a savior attitude towards nonbelievers
discouraged critical thinking or questions
policing of appearances
overt or covert grooming and sexual abuse
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All systemic trauma is complex trauma. Systemic trauma stems from systemic oppression.
all forms of discrimination and oppression
capitalism
poverty
prolonged financial stress
racial profiling and violence
race-based traumatic stress
immigration and acculturative stress
displacement
being a descendant of a survivor of genocide or war
Imagine learning to face the unfaceable…
& to love the parts of you that died
back to life.
How does trauma therapy work?
If you’re a trauma survivor, you're familiar with the disconnect between what you know to be true and what you feel to be true.
“I know I’m as good a person as anyone else, but I can’t help but feel I don’t deserve good things.”
“I know people love me, but I can’t believe or accept it, even when I want to.”
First, trauma healing is relational. For those who have endured painful and twisted things, you need to share your story to another human being who will not collapse or attack you for your story. Getting clarification and validation where you need it from me will help you be a better witness to your own self, too.
Second, I’ll help make your logical knowings and your emotional knowings meet in your body, so you can make true peace between what you know and what you feel. Somatic Internal Family Systems and EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing) help to unlock the parts of you that have been waiting to be freed.
In session with me…
You won’t have to do anything perfectly.
You won’t have to apologize for the rawness of your story, your anger, your grief.
You’ll be deeply respected for how you had to survive and you get to make your own meaning of it all.
And I’ll invite your innate healing force forward into the room.
We will dig deeply into the imprints of your trauma, find and feel into the past and present places you get stuck, and
spiral upward together.
Trauma therapy can help you:
Have a safe place to talk about uncomfortable things
Gain skills to manage trauma symptoms
Acquire more peace of mind knowing how to validate yourself
Get more comfortable with your own voice
Practice expressing your needs, wants, and discomfort
Restore an ability to trust the people who routinely show you that they are there for you
If you feel like the world is swallowing you whole, here’s what I really want you to know:
Trauma, like death, is a part of life. And so is regeneration.
FAQs about Trauma Therapy
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Relational trauma refers to any wounding that occurred in formative relationships, whether the wounding happened in your developmental years with family or as an adolescent or young adult in your romantic relationships.
It is incredibly common for people with relational trauma to be unsure if they have trauma. You may have heard of the distinctions between big T trauma and little t trauma and how relational trauma falls into the little t category. This distinction often tends to keep people with relational trauma from reaching out to get the help they need because they believe it’s not as bad as what others have experienced.
If you have an unresolved wound related to relationships, and it negatively affects you and how you relate to others today, that is important enough to take care of.
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You may find that, before you’re ready to let go of your past, that you need to tell those stories for yourself, to feel validated in what happened to you, or that you need to trust that I am actually here for you, care about you, and remember you.
If you’ve done that kind of work before, we may move right into memory reconsolidation — meaning we work to put the past to rest. Somatic resolution and integration, parts work (IFS), or EMDR (or any combination) work to resolve unconscious/implicit beliefs and behaviors related to the trauma.
Memory reconsolidation is what helps free up space in the mind and body to believe new thoughts about yourself and others and form new relational patterns.
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This depends on how in-depth you understand your traumatic experiences and your patterns of re-enactment and on your readiness to change your patterns.
Weekly therapy may be helpful for a gradual experience of gaining insight and stabilization, doing memory reconsolidation, or trauma integration. Biweekly may be right for some.
Intensive therapy may be the right choice for facilitating movement in any stage of trauma therapy in a rapid and brief amount of time.
Let your nervous system determine your pace.
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Book a consultation and let me know about your previous therapy experience and your current goals with me. If we’re a good fit, we’ll set up a first session.