TRAUMA-INFORMED THERAPY IN SARASOTA, FLORIDA
Your next chapter can hold more than what happened to you.
Therapy to explore the experiences behind your patterns, process what still feels painful, and build greater connection to yourself and your relationships.
What is trauma?
Trauma can describe the lasting effects of experiences that felt overwhelming, threatening, or deeply distressing. Those effects may influence how you experience safety, respond to uncertainty, and connect with others.
You may find yourself staying alert, avoiding certain situations, or feeling disconnected from your emotions. You might understand that your circumstances have changed while still reacting in ways that feel connected to an earlier experience.
People can be affected differently by similar events. In therapy, we focus on how your experiences have affected you and what you need now.
Together, we can explore these responses with curiosity, understand how they developed, and work toward new ways of thinking, feeling, and responding.
Types of trauma I work with
Repeated & Complex Trauma
Repeated or prolonged experiences of abuse, neglect, or other distressing circumstances can affect your sense of safety, your relationships, and how you understand yourself. Therapy offers space to explore these experiences and the ways you learned to cope.
Single-Event Trauma
A specific event, such as an assault or another frightening experience, may continue to affect your emotions and daily life. Therapy can help you explore its impact and address the distress associated with memories or reminders.
Childhood & Early Relationship Experiences
Early experiences of abuse, neglect, inconsistent care, or unmet emotional needs may continue to influence trust, self-esteem, and boundaries. We can explore these connections without expecting you to have a clear explanation of your childhood before beginning.
Birth & Reproductive Trauma
Difficult pregnancy, birth, fertility, postpartum, or reproductive experiences can leave you with emotions you have had little opportunity to process. There is room here for grief, anger, fear, disappointment, and the ways these experiences affect your relationships.
Relationship Trauma
Painful experiences within significant relationships, including abuse, betrayal, or violations of trust, can affect how you approach closeness. We can explore what happens when connection feels uncertain and what you need in your relationships today.
Family & Intergenerational Experiences
Painful family histories can influence expectations, roles, and ways of relating across generations. We can explore the patterns you have experienced, how they affect you, and what you want to approach differently.
Signs past experiences may still be affecting you
You may notice distress in moments that seem unrelated to what happened. Sometimes it appears in your relationships, your expectations of yourself, or the ways you respond when something feels uncertain.
Feeling on edge or expecting something to go wrong
Avoiding people, places, or conversations that bring up difficult memories
Feeling numb or disconnected from your emotions
Experiencing strong reactions that are difficult to understand
Struggling to trust or feel comfortable with closeness
Seeking control when circumstances feel uncertain
Carrying shame or blaming yourself for what happened
Finding it difficult to express your needs or set boundaries
Repeating relationship patterns you want to change
Understanding your history but still feeling affected by it
These experiences can have different explanations. We can explore what is contributing to them within the context of your life.
You may already know why you avoid conflict, expect rejection, or stay prepared for the worst. That understanding can be valuable, while responding differently in a difficult moment may still take practice and support.
Our work makes room for both. We can explore where a response began, notice how it appears today, and work with the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that keep it going.
This might mean examining a belief about blame, approaching a reminder you have been avoiding, or recognizing what you need when you feel yourself shutting down.
The aim is to connect understanding with changes you can experience in your everyday life.
Why can understanding what happened still leave you feeling stuck?
How do we work with the experiences behind your patterns?
My approach is primarily psychodynamic and integrative. We consider your history, current concerns, relationships, and goals when deciding how to work together.
-
You may notice that one part of you stays alert, another avoids painful feelings, and another wants to move forward.
Parts work helps us explore these different responses and what they may be trying to protect. Together, we can understand the needs beneath familiar patterns and consider other ways to meet those needs now.
-
Trauma can leave you with painful beliefs about responsibility, safety, trust, control, or your own worth.
Cognitive Processing Therapy helps identify and examine these beliefs, sometimes called “stuck points.” We can explore how they contribute to distress and work toward more balanced perspectives on what happened and what it means for your life today.
-
Some memories or reminders may continue to bring up intense distress. When appropriate, desensitization-based approaches involve gradually working with those reminders in a planned, supported way.
We will discuss what the approach involves and how it fits your needs. The work focuses on reducing distress and strengthening your ability to distinguish a memory from what is happening in the present.
-
Psychodynamic therapy explores how earlier experiences may influence your emotions, relationships, and ways of coping today.
We might consider why certain interactions feel threatening, how you learned to protect yourself, or what makes asking for support difficult. Understanding these connections can help you develop more choice in how you respond.
-
You do not need to share every detail during a consultation or your first session. Some approaches involve working directly with memories, while others may begin with present concerns and patterns. We will discuss what an approach involves before deciding how to proceed.
-
Yes. We can talk about what helped, what felt difficult, and what still feels unresolved. Your previous experience can help us understand what you are looking for now and whether my approach may be a good fit.
-
You can begin with what you remember and what is affecting you now. We do not need to fill in missing details or decide on a label before exploring your concerns.
-
Please bring that concern into our conversations. We can discuss what feels manageable, check in about distress, and adjust the focus or pace. You can ask questions, request a pause, or tell me when something does not feel helpful.
-
The length of therapy depends on your experiences, current circumstances, goals, and the approach we use. We will review how the work is going and discuss next steps together.
-
I offer virtual trauma therapy for women located throughout Florida, as well as in-person sessions in Sarasota. During the consultation, we can discuss your needs, privacy, and which setting may be appropriate for you.
FAQs
You don’t have to carry it alone.
Schedule a free 20-minute consultation to talk about what brings you here, ask questions, and explore whether working together feels like the right fit.