Trauma is the things that happened back then but continue to impact you now. It’s the vulnerable parts inside of you carrying the wounds, pain, and beliefs from the experiences themselves, and it’s all the protective parts that are trying to make sure that is never felt again. It’s a nervous system trying to keep you safe by tending towards alertness and arousal or towards shut down and collapse.

You may know for certain that you experienced trauma or parts of you may have minimized your experience in order to survive and carry on. We often recognize trauma by its symptoms. An anxiety that keeps you vigilant and tracking for any signs of criticism, anger, or unpredictability. An exhaustion from caretaking or holding the responsibility to manage the emotions of others. A ceaseless pressure to go it alone or get it right because the consequences feel too high if you don’t. An impulse to suppress or numb emotional or body discomfort with drugs, alcohol, sex, video games, food, or scrolling.

With trauma work, we move slowly. We build trust. We help and support your protective parts by acknowledging and recognizing all that they have done for you. We also learn to pay attention to your nervous system, to recognize the cues that signal a lack of safety and meet them with compassion and presence.

While we cannot change what happened in the past, we can offer parts of you something they never felt before—validation, witnessing, and opportunities to unload the negative beliefs that were picked up at the time of the trauma.

My work here is focused on adults who have experienced interpersonal or relational trauma: caregiver abuse or neglect, adult attachment figures who were unavailable due to their own mental health struggles (alcoholism, narcissism, depression, BPD), social exclusion or bullying, and systemic oppression (which I see as a relational trauma on a mass scale).