Pasadena · Trauma
Trauma Therapy in Pasadena, CA
For the thing you have described as not that bad for several years running.
Book a free consultThe Presenting Problem
Trauma is rarely the word people lead with.
Most people do not book a first session saying the word trauma. They say they are exhausted, or short with everyone they love, or that a small thing at work put them on the floor for two days and they cannot explain why. The nervous system keeps its own records, and it does not care whether the event was dramatic enough to qualify.
So we start with what you notice. The sleep, the startle, the way certain rooms feel. The history comes out on its own schedule, and you are never required to tell me the whole story to be taken seriously.
How We Proceed
A rough shape, not a script.
- Stabilization first. Resourcing, sleep, and whatever is currently on fire.
- Then the patterns. What sets it off, what happens next, what it costs you.
- Then the material itself, at a pace you set, often with EMDR.
- Then integration, which is the least dramatic and most useful part.
In This City
Pasadena runs on competence, which hides a lot.
A lot of the people who sit in the Raymond Avenue office are extremely functional. They run departments, teach, keep families organized, hold together a household that would fall over without them. Nobody in their life would guess. Functioning is not evidence that something resolved, it is often evidence of how hard someone has worked to make it invisible.
The office being downtown means people come on a lunch hour or straight from campus, still in work mode. We spend the first few minutes letting that drop before we do anything else.
The Work
Talking about it is not the whole treatment.
I draw on EMDR, internal family systems, psychodynamic work and somatic attention, and I choose based on you rather than running one protocol on everyone. Sometimes the useful move is understanding the pattern. Sometimes it is the body finishing something it never got to finish.
I will not tell you how many sessions this takes, because I would be making it up. I will tell you honestly how I think it is going.
Practical Details
Cost, scope, and the first call.
Sessions are $225 for 50 minutes, in person at 65 N Raymond Ave or by secure video anywhere in California. Superbills are available for out-of-network reimbursement, and there is no sliding scale published. I am Alexa Aversano, LMFT, license CA 140766.
Severe mental illness and psychotic disorders are outside my scope. Start with a free 10-minute call and we will figure out whether I am the right person.
More on this:Complex Trauma Therapy · EMDR Therapy · The Pasadena Office
Come as you are.
A free, confidential ten-minute call. No paperwork, no pressure, and no obligation to book anything afterwards.