Approach
Trauma-Informed Therapy
Working in a way that assumes what happened to you shaped how you are here, and doesn’t ask you to override it.
Trauma-informed is a phrase used loosely enough that it can stop meaning anything. In practice, it means I am paying attention to your nervous system as much as to what you are telling me, and that the pace belongs to you.
It also means I don’t treat your responses as symptoms to be corrected. Hypervigilance, numbing, the impulse to keep things light — these made sense somewhere. I’m more interested in when they made sense than in getting rid of them.
Who this tends to help
- Having been through something you don’t usually talk about
- Feeling unsafe in your body without being able to say why
- Having tried therapy before and found it went too fast
- Not being sure whether what you experienced counts as trauma
What a session looks like
We go at a pace you set. I check in about how something is landing rather than moving straight on. If a session opens something up, we spend the end of it closing it back down — you should be able to leave and go about your day.
I will tell you what I’m doing and why. Surprises are not therapeutic.
What I use this for
-
Trauma & PTSD
For experiences that ended a long time ago and still arrive in the present.
-
Domestic & Intimate Partner Violence
For what a relationship did to you, whether you are still in it or long out of it.
-
Anger Management
For anger that is costing you the people you care about.
Questions about Trauma-Informed Therapy
What if I don’t know whether what happened to me was trauma?
That’s a common place to start and not something you need to resolve before coming in. I’m less interested in whether an experience qualifies as trauma than in how it is affecting you now.
Interested in working together?
Sessions are online, for adults in Pennsylvania and Virginia. $160 per 50 minute session.