Trauma & complex trauma therapy
EMDR, Brainspotting, and Flash Technique for adults who are tired of carrying this alone—whether the trauma happened last year or in childhood.
Practice details
You've carried this long enough
Most people who come to this work have already tried to move on — and found that the body keeps reacting in ways that don't make sense from the outside. Overwhelmed and numb at the same time. Exhausted from holding it together. Carrying things no one ever helped them process.
None of that is weakness. It's a body that learned how to survive.
You don't have to keep doing this alone.
What you need isn't more coping strategies or someone to validate that it was bad. You need therapy that works with how trauma actually reorganized your world—your body, your relationships, your sense of what's possible.
What trauma can feel like
Your nervous system is doing what it learned to do—protect you. But now those protective responses are keeping you stuck:
In your body:
- Chronic tension that won't release
- Sudden panic or rage out of nowhere
- Shutting down or going numb when emotions rise
- Feeling unsafe in your own skin
In your relationships:
- Getting overwhelmed by conflict that "shouldn't" be overwhelming
- Withdrawing when you want to connect
- Testing people to see if they'll leave
In your daily life:
- A constant sense of dread
- Shame that sits under everything
- The feeling that the past is still happening inside you
And in your sense of self:
- Not knowing who you are underneath the survival strategies
- Feeling like you're performing normalcy
Your nervous system adapted to protect you. And with the right support, it can also heal.
What changes, and what doesn't
The trauma doesn't get erased. The events that happened still happened. What changes is how they live in your nervous system, and how much of your present day they're still running.
Clients describe it differently depending on what they came in carrying. Someone whose body has been bracing for years notices, one afternoon, that their shoulders are down. The person who has been flooding in conflict finds a half-second pause where the flood used to start — long enough to choose. Numbness gives way to anger arriving with edges, and the edges aren't dangerous. The intrusive memory comes back and there's nothing underneath it anymore; it's just a memory.
None of this is sudden. But people feel it when it happens. The first time you sit through a conversation that used to wreck you and notice you're still here, breathing, present — that's not nothing. That's the work showing.
Shame keeps showing up, but it moves through faster; it stops taking the whole day hostage. And at some point you notice you've stopped bracing for the other shoe to drop — not because life got safer, but because you can handle what comes.
What I can say honestly: most people who do this work long enough get some version of their life back. Their relationships change. Their sense of what they can handle changes. The past stops being a constant pull on the present. The timeline varies a lot — by what the trauma was, how long it's been organizing the system, what else is in someone's life. But the direction is real, and it's the direction this kind of therapy is actually shaped to go.
How we get there
I'm not pushing you into overwhelm. Most of what I do is the opposite — helping build enough nervous-system safety that the parts of you that have been holding tight don't have to anymore. Processing happens from there, not from forcing past it.
My approach integrates:
Existential–Phenomenological Therapy — We slow down, explore meaning, and understand how your lived experience shaped your emotions, body, and identity. Processing memories is part of it; the larger work is making sense of how trauma reorganized your world.
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) — Structured, evidence-based processing for memories that still carry emotional charge. I'm EMDRIA Certified. Learn more about EMDR →
Brainspotting — A deeper-access modality for trauma stored beneath words. Especially helpful for clients who feel shut down, numb, or frozen—when talking about it keeps you at a distance from actually feeling it. I'm Certified in Brainspotting. Learn more about Brainspotting →
Flash Technique — A gentle, low-distress method used before EMDR when traumatic material feels too overwhelming to approach directly.
Relational Trauma Work — Trauma heals in connection. I bring warmth, steadiness, and attunement so you can safely experience emotions and parts of yourself that had to be shut down. We work moment-by-moment with shame, fear, emotional avoidance, and the protective patterns that once kept you safe but now keep you isolated.
Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy (when appropriate) — For clients approved by a medical prescriber, I offer KAP preparation, dosing support, and integration. Low-dose KA-EMDR can help process stuck trauma, while traditional KAP can soften rigid defenses and shame. Learn more about KAP →
The account of why this kind of change lasts — memory reconsolidation, in plain language — is in How Therapy Actually Changes Memory.
What it feels like to work together
We go slowly. Some clients process trauma without ever narrating the details—EMDR, Brainspotting, and Flash Technique don't require you to retell what happened.
However you arrive—activated, numb, or somewhere in between—we work at your nervous system's pace. If previous therapy helped you understand what happened but didn't change how your body responds, this work goes where talk therapy often can't.
If what you're carrying is tangled up with masculinity, or with queer identity, the men's therapy and LGBTQ+ affirming therapy pages describe how I hold that.
Clients tell me the work feels different from talk therapy, but not in the way they expected. The difference isn't speed and it isn't intensity. It's that the body is in the room. We're not just discussing what happened to you; we're attending to what your nervous system is doing while we discuss it. That changes what's possible to reach.
What trauma therapy can help you do
Over time the practical changes tend to cluster: triggers announce themselves before they hijack the nervous system, emotions regulate without numbing or exploding, traumatic memories get processed without retraumatization. Relational patterns rooted in survival loosen into something chosen. The rest of it — self-compassion, trust, a fuller emotional range — follows from those.
Common Questions
Do I have to talk about the trauma in detail?
No. Flash Technique, EMDR, Brainspotting, and relational pacing allow us to work effectively without retelling painful events.
What happens if I shut down or dissociate?
We slow down, orient, and work with the shutdown itself. It's part of the process.
Do I choose between EMDR, Flash, or Brainspotting?
Most clients use a combination. Flash Technique often comes first to reduce overwhelm. When ready, EMDR or Brainspotting takes the work deeper.
Will this feel overwhelming?
Good trauma therapy is never forced. We go at a pace that keeps you safe, grounded, and connected.
What if I've had a psychedelic experience that brought up trauma?
If you've surfaced trauma through psilocybin, MDMA, ketamine, or other psychedelic experiences and need help processing what came up, I provide specialized integration therapy. Learn more about psychedelic integration →
What if weekly sessions aren't enough?
Most of the time, weekly is enough. When it isn't, what's usually needed is more time on a specific piece of material that isn't opening in the standard window — not a different modality, just more room in a single sitting. When clinically appropriate, we may schedule a 90-minute session, prorated from the standard session rate.
How I think about this work → Approach
If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988. For the full list of crisis resources, including LGBTQ+, veterans, and first responder lines, see our FAQ page.
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