Trauma & PTSD

Compassionate Online Therapy for Adults and Teens | Serving All of California

Trauma can feel like the past won’t let go, showing up in nightmares, flashbacks, and a constant sense of being on edge.

It can affect your relationships, your health, and your ability to trust yourself and others. Therapy can help you process what happened so you can live in the present without being trapped by the past. We help address trauma in many forms, including:

✦ CHILDHOOD TRAUMA
✦ SEXUAL ASSAULT
✦ COMBAT TRAUMA

✦ ACCIDENTS OR INJURIES
✦ EMOTIONAL ABUSE
✦ LOSS AND COMPLICATED GRIEF

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YOU'RE NOT ALONE

You don't have to have a dramatic story to qualify as someone who's been through trauma.

Sometimes it's one big event. Sometimes it's years of small ones. Sometimes it's something you didn't even recognize as trauma until you started noticing how your body reacts to things that should feel safe.

A lot of our clients come in saying "I should be over this by now." But trauma doesn't work on a timeline. Your brain stored it a certain way for a reason, and no amount of willpower or positive thinking is going to unstick it on its own. That's not a flaw. That's just how the nervous system works.

You're not broken. You're carrying something that needs a different kind of attention than you've been giving it.

How We Help.

Trauma therapy isn't about reliving the worst moments of your life on repeat. It's about processing what happened safely, at your pace, so it stops running the show. That work tends to focus on three areas:

✦ BUILD A FOUNDATION OF SAFETY ✦

Before we go anywhere near the hard stuff, we make sure you have the tools to stay grounded. Trauma work only works when you feel safe enough to do it. We don't rush that.

✦ PROCESS WHAT'S STUCK ✦

Traumatic memories don't fade the way normal ones do. They stay raw, intrusive, and reactive. We use targeted, evidence-based approaches to help your brain reprocess those experiences so they lose their charge and become part of your past instead of your present.

✦ REBUILD TRUST AND CONNECTION ✦

Trauma can make it hard to trust yourself, other people, and the world in general. As the past loosens its grip, we help you reconnect with the relationships, instincts, and sense of safety that trauma took from you.

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Therapeutic Methods

Most of us spend enormous energy trying to push away thoughts and feelings we don’t want. ACT takes a different approach. Rather than fighting your inner experience, you learn to make room for it while still moving toward the life you actually want. The focus is on clarifying your values and building the psychological flexibility to act on them, even when things feel hard.
If the same patterns keep showing up in your relationships, they often trace back to how you learned to connect as a child. Attachment-based therapy looks at those early experiences and how they shape the way you relate now. With your therapist, you make sense of your patterns and build the kind of secure connection that lets relationships feel safer.
CBT is one of the most researched and widely used approaches in therapy for good reason. It works by helping you notice the connection between what you think, how you feel, and what you do. When you can identify the thoughts driving your distress, you gain the ability to challenge and change them. The result is practical, lasting shifts in how you experience and respond to everyday life.
EFT gets beneath the surface of conflict to the emotional needs driving it. Developed specifically for couples and families, it helps partners understand the cycles they get caught in and why. From there, the work focuses on reshaping those cycles into something more connected and secure. It is particularly effective when distance or repeated conflict has left one or both partners feeling unseen or alone.
Some memories don’t process the way they should. Instead of fading, they stay raw and intrusive, continuing to shape how you feel and function long after the event has passed. EMDR uses guided bilateral stimulation to help your brain reprocess those experiences so they lose their charge. Many clients notice significant relief in fewer sessions than traditional talk therapy, making it one of the most powerful tools available for trauma recovery.
If you and your partner have ever struggled to talk about the big stuff (money, family, expectations, intimacy) without it turning into a fight or going nowhere, Prepare/Enrich gives you a structured way in. A research-based assessment maps your strengths and growth areas, then guides tailored conversations with your therapist. Over time, you build a more connected partnership rooted in real understanding.
Mindfulness-based therapy teaches you to observe your inner experience without being consumed by it. Rather than reacting automatically to thoughts and emotions, you learn to pause, notice, and respond with intention. This builds emotional resilience over time and reduces the grip of stress and anxiety on your daily life. The result is a quieter, more grounded way of moving through the world.
Psychodynamic therapy is for people who want to understand themselves more deeply. It explores the unconscious patterns, early experiences, and relational dynamics that quietly shape how you think, feel, and behave today. Rather than focusing only on symptom relief, it aims for genuine insight into not just what is happening but why. That depth of understanding is what makes real and lasting change possible.
Not every client needs or wants to spend time excavating the past. Solution-focused therapy starts with where you want to go and works backward from there. It draws on your existing strengths and resources, helping you identify what is already working and build on it. It is a practical, goal-oriented approach that works especially well during periods of transition or when you have a clear outcome in mind.