Complex Trauma Therapy
Nothing happened. It just kept happening.
Therapy for trauma that was ongoing rather than a single event. Pasadena and telehealth across California.
Book a free consultDoes This Sound Like You
Some of this may land.
- You cannot point to one incident, which has made you doubt whether it counts.
- You read about trauma and think that sounds serious, mine was just normal life.
- You are excellent in a crisis and strangely unwell when things are calm.
- You scan every room for the mood of the person in charge of it.
- Your nervous system has two settings, and neither of them is rest.
- You learned very early that being easy to have around was the safest thing to be.
The Work
What the Work Looks Like
Stability before excavation
Complex trauma work goes badly when it starts too fast. We build resourcing and regulation first, so that going toward the hard material is a choice you can make rather than something that happens to you.
Where EMDR fits
Single-incident trauma often responds to EMDR quickly. Complex trauma is layered, so we target it in sequence rather than all at once. Sometimes that is EMDR from early on, sometimes months in, and sometimes not at all.
Parts, not symptoms
Parts work gives us a way to work with the protective strategies you built as a child instead of trying to talk you out of them. They were reasonable. They are also expensive to keep running.
The body's account
Developmental trauma lives in posture, breath and startle more than in narrative. Trauma-informed somatic work gives us access to what talking about it does not reach.
What Changes
What Changes
The first change is usually range. Instead of numb or flooded, there starts to be a middle, and the middle is where an actual life happens.
Later, the story shifts. Not that it was fine, but that it was not about you being fundamentally defective. That reframe tends to hold, because it is arrived at rather than argued for.
I am not going to tell you how long this takes. Anyone who quotes you a number of sessions without knowing your history is guessing.
Nearby
Where this work happens.
Come as you are.
A free, confidential ten-minute call. No paperwork, no pressure, and no obligation to book anything afterwards.