Trauma Therapy

in San Francisco and California

Feeling like your body is still stuck in what happened, even though your mind knows it's over? Hypervigilant, numb, or cycling between the two? Avoiding anything that reminds you of it while simultaneously unable to stop thinking about it? You're not broken. As a California psychologist specializing in trauma therapy, I help women throughout California process traumatic experiences, calm their nervous systems, and reclaim safety in their bodies and relationships through online therapy.

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Woman sitting by a window in her bedroom, reflecting on a past experience that doesn't sit well with her

My Approach to Trauma Therapy

My approach to trauma work is body-centered, parts-based, and deeply relational. I integrate somatic experiencing, Internal Family Systems (parts work), attachment theory, and psychodynamic therapy to address trauma where it actually lives: in your nervous system, in the protective parts of you that formed to survive, and in your capacity to trust connection. Trauma isn't just a memory. It's a physiological state your body gets stuck in, and healing requires working with your body, not just your thoughts.

I offer online individual therapy for trauma throughout California. All sessions happen via secure video (Zoom) from wherever feels safest to you. This work is done at your pace, respecting your nervous system's capacity. There's no timeline, no pressure to "just get over it," and absolutely no forcing you to relive details before you're ready.

My focus is on creating sustainable healing through:

Working with Your Nervous System

We help your body learn that the threat is actually over, using somatic techniques to release trauma held in your body and build your capacity to feel safe.

Connecting with Your Protective Parts

We work with the parts of you that formed to survive the trauma (the part that shuts down, the part that's hypervigilant, the part that numbs) with compassion rather than judgment.

Rebuilding a Safe Connection

Trauma often happens in relationships and heals in relationships. We work on restoring your capacity to trust, be vulnerable, and feel safe with others.

What Trauma Therapy is NOT.

Before we talk about what trauma therapy is, let's be clear about what it's not:

Trauma therapy is NOT forcing you to relive every detail. You don't have to recount graphic descriptions or "tell the whole story" unless and until you choose to. Some trauma work happens without ever narrating what happened.

Trauma therapy is NOT pushing you faster than your nervous system can handle. We move at the pace your body sets, not some arbitrary timeline. If something feels too activating, we slow down or shift approaches.

Trauma therapy is NOT about "getting over it" or "moving on." Trauma changes you. The goal isn't erasing what happened or returning to who you were before. It's integrating the experience so it stops controlling your present.

Trauma therapy is NOT retraumatizing. Good trauma work creates safety first, builds resources and coping skills, and only moves into processing when your system is ready. You're in control.

Trauma therapy is NOT blaming you for what happened to you. Trauma is what happened TO you, not what's wrong WITH you. Your responses (shutting down, hypervigilance, avoidance) are adaptive survival strategies, not character flaws.

What is Trauma?

Trauma is what happens inside you as a result of what happened to you. It's not just the event itself but how your nervous system responded when you were overwhelmed and couldn't fight, flee, or get away. Trauma gets encoded in your body as incomplete survival responses, leaving your nervous system stuck in a state of threat even when the actual danger has passed.

Trauma can result from a single overwhelming event or from chronic, repeated experiences. It affects your sense of safety, your ability to trust, your relationship with your body, and how you connect with others.

Common trauma responses include:

Hypervigilance and constant scanning for danger
Flashbacks, intrusive memories, or nightmares
Emotional numbing or feeling disconnected from yourself
Panic attacks or intense anxiety in triggering situations
Difficulty sleeping or staying asleep
Avoiding people, places, or situations that remind you of the trauma
Feeling unsafe in your own body
Difficulty trusting others or forming close relationships
Intense shame, guilt, or self-blame

Granite cliff in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California

Trauma in Women

Women experience certain types of trauma at disproportionately higher rates than men, and the impact of trauma on women is compounded by societal factors that silence, dismiss, or blame survivors. Women are more likely to experience sexual violence, intimate partner violence, reproductive trauma, and medical trauma. And women are often told their trauma responses (being emotional, needing support, struggling to "just move on") are signs of weakness rather than normal reactions to abnormal events. Women are also more likely to develop PTSD after trauma than men, partly due to the types of trauma women typically experience (interpersonal violence carries higher PTSD risk) and partly due to lack of social support and systemic dismissal of women's experiences.

Gendered Trauma Experiences

Women face specific trauma types at higher rates:

Sexual assault and harassment (1 in 4 women experience sexual violence)
Intimate partner violence and domestic abuse
Reproductive trauma (miscarriage, traumatic birth, postpartum complications)
Medical trauma (dismissed pain, lack of informed consent, obstetric violence)
Childhood sexual abuse

Cultural Factors Compounding Women's Trauma

Societal responses to women's trauma often create additional harm:

Victim-blaming and questioning ("What were you wearing?" "Why didn't you leave?")
Minimization of women's trauma experiences
Pressure to forgive, heal quickly, or "not let it define you"
Silencing and dismissal when women speak about abuse
Expectations that women remain relational and accommodating even after relational trauma

Types of Trauma.

Single-incident trauma from one overwhelming event (assault, accident, natural disaster, sudden loss).
Repeated or prolonged trauma, often in childhood, typically involving betrayal by caregivers (ongoing abuse, neglect, witnessing violence).
Trauma occurring during formative years that shapes brain development, attachment, and sense of self.
Trauma occurring within relationships (abuse by partner or parent, betrayal, abandonment), affecting ability to trust and connect.
Sexual assault, abuse, harassment, or coercion. Can be single-incident or ongoing.
Trauma from medical procedures, childbirth, illness, or experiences of medical neglect or harm.
Trauma from witnessing or being exposed to others' trauma (common in healthcare workers, therapists, first responders).

Dramatic rocks at sunset in Joshua Tree, a good place for reflection and therapy

How I Work With Trauma.

Trauma therapy requires working with your body, not just your mind. I use approaches designed specifically for trauma healing, always at your pace and with your consent. The goal isn't erasing what happened. It's helping your body and mind understand that the threat is over, so you can stop living in survival mode and start living your life.

Dry grass rolling hills of Northern California

Somatic Experiencing and Body-Based Work

Trauma gets stored in your body as incomplete survival responses. Your nervous system wanted to fight or flee but couldn't, so that energy gets trapped. Somatic work helps complete those interrupted responses and release trauma from your body.

We work with physical sensations, breath, movement, and your nervous system's responses. This might look like noticing where you feel tension, tracking sensations as they shift, using gentle movement to discharge activation, or helping your body learn the difference between "then" (threat) and "now" (safety).

This isn't talk therapy about your body. It's actually working WITH your body. When you notice your shoulders tensing or your breath getting shallow or your jaw clenching, we pay attention to that. We track it, and help your nervous system complete the cycle it got stuck in.

Light pouring in the window on a warm and sunny day, therapy in California

Internal Family Systems (Parts Work)

When you experience trauma, parts of you split off to protect you. One part shuts down emotions so you don't feel too much. Another part stays hypervigilant to prevent it from happening again. Another part might hold all the shame or blame. These aren't metaphors. They're real psychological structures that developed to help you survive.

Parts work helps you understand and befriend these protective parts instead of fighting them. We explore what each part is trying to do for you (even when it's causing problems now), what it's afraid will happen if it stops, and what it needs to feel safe enough to relax.

For example, if part of you goes numb when you get triggered, we don't try to force that part to stop numbing. We get curious: What is this part protecting you from feeling? What does it believe will happen if you feel it? What would it need to trust that you can handle emotions without being destroyed by them?

Two people hugging, happy to see each other and strengthen their attachment

Trauma, especially relational trauma (abuse, betrayal, abandonment), damages your ability to trust and connect. Attachment-focused work addresses how trauma affected your beliefs about relationships, safety, and whether people can be trusted.

If your trauma came from someone who was supposed to protect you (parent, partner, authority figure), your attachment system learned that closeness equals danger. We work on slowly rebuilding your capacity for secure attachment: the ability to need people without losing yourself, to trust without ignoring red flags, to be vulnerable without feeling like you'll be destroyed.

The therapy relationship itself becomes part of the healing. You get to practice trusting someone in small ways, setting boundaries, asking for what you need, and experiencing that someone can stay consistent and safe even when you're messy or struggling.

Attachment-Focused Trauma Work

A sandy path down to the beach and ocean, a good place to offer yourself some self-compassion

Psychodynamic Processing

This is the meaning-making work. We explore how trauma shaped your beliefs about yourself, other people, and the world. We look at how you've organized your life around avoiding similar harm, often at great cost (isolation, hypercontrol, never trusting, never relaxing).

We also work with the parts of your experience that don't fit neat narratives: the complicated feelings (relief mixed with grief, anger at yourself, guilt about surviving), the ways you've blamed yourself to maintain a sense of control ("If it was my fault, then I can prevent it next time"), the secondary losses trauma created.

Psychodynamic work honors that trauma is complex. There's no simple story, no clean resolution. The work is about integration: holding all the contradictory parts of your experience without needing to make it make sense.

Who Benefits from Trauma Therapy.

Women Whose Bodies Are Still Stuck in Threat

If you experience:

Constant hypervigilance (scanning rooms, checking locks, unable to relax)
Your body reacting to reminders as if the trauma is happening now
Panic responses to things that logically aren't dangerous
Feeling like you can't turn off the alarm system in your body
Difficulty feeling safe, even in objectively safe situations

Therapy focuses on helping your nervous system recalibrate, releasing the incomplete survival responses trapped in your body, and building your capacity to recognize actual safety.

Women Who Dissociate or Feel Disconnected

If you notice:

Feeling numb, disconnected, or "not really here"
Losing time or not remembering parts of your day
Watching your life from the outside rather than living it
Difficulty staying present in your body
Feeling like parts of you are split off or unreachable

Therapy uses gentle somatic work and parts-based approaches to help you reconnect with your body and integrate dissociated parts, at a pace that feels safe for your system.

Women Struggling with Relational Trust After Trauma

If you find yourself:

Unable to trust anyone, even safe people
Pushing away connection while desperately wanting it
Feeling like you have to be hyperindependent because relying on others isn't safe
Expecting betrayal or abandonment in relationships
Difficulty being vulnerable or letting people in

Work centers on slowly rebuilding your capacity for safe connection, addressing attachment wounds created or worsened by trauma, and learning that not everyone is the person who hurt you.

Women Carrying Shame or Self-Blame

If you struggle with:

Blaming yourself for what happened to you
Deep shame about your trauma or how you responded
Believing you're "damaged" or "broken" because of what happened
Difficulty accepting that it wasn't your fault
Feeling like you should have fought harder, left sooner, known better

Treatment addresses the internalized shame and self-blame, helping you distinguish between what you're responsible for (nothing) and what happened to you (not your fault), while working with the parts of you carrying that blame.

Common Questions about Trauma Therapy.

No. You never have to share graphic details unless you choose to. Some trauma work happens entirely through working with body sensations, nervous system responses, and parts, without ever narrating the event itself. When and if you do talk about what happened, it's at your pace, and only the parts that feel relevant to your healing. You're always in control of how much you share.
It varies significantly based on the type of trauma (single-incident vs. complex), how long ago it occurred, your support system, and your nervous system's capacity. Some people notice shifts in a few months. Complex trauma often requires longer-term work, sometimes 1-2 years or more. But you don't have to commit to a specific timeline. We work session by session, and you can pause or adjust as needed.
That's completely normal. Trauma often disrupts memory formation. Dissociation, the brain's protective response, can create gaps in memory. You don't need complete memories to heal. We work with what your body remembers (sensations, emotions, responses) even when your mind doesn't have a clear narrative. Sometimes memories become clearer as you heal; sometimes they don't. Both are okay.

Good trauma therapy shouldn't retraumatize you or make things significantly worse. If therapy is consistently leaving you more activated, flooded, or destabilized, something needs to adjust. There can be temporary increases in awareness or emotion as you start processing what you've been avoiding. But this should be manageable and should happen within a window your nervous system can handle. We build resources and coping skills first, then titrate (work in small doses) the trauma processing.
Many people heal from trauma through therapy alone. Others benefit from medication (particularly SSRIs or SNRIs for PTSD symptoms) in combination with therapy. As a psychologist, I don't prescribe medication, but I can help you assess whether a psychiatric consultation might be helpful and provide referrals to trusted psychiatrists if needed.
This is complex and depends on the situation. If you're currently in an unsafe or abusive relationship, safety planning is the first priority. I can help you think through options and connect you with resources. If the person is a family member you have contact with but aren't dependent on, we can work on processing the trauma while also developing strategies for navigating ongoing contact (if you choose to maintain it). Healing is possible even when the person who harmed you is still in your life, though it's often more complicated and requires very clear boundaries.