Healing the past to change your presentTherapy for Childhood & Complex Trauma
In-person in Reno and telehealth throughout California & Nevada
What does childhood trauma look like in adulthood?Trauma shapes how you react, how you connect, and how you feel in your own skin.
Living with trauma means your nervous system is working overtime to protect you from threats that are no longer there. Even when life is calm on paper, you might feel an underlying restfulness you can’t turn off, sudden waves of overwhelm, or an instinct to pull away from the people you care about.
You aren't dramatic, broken, or failing at self-care. Your body is doing exactly what it was wired to do during chronic stress or unpredictability. Somatic trauma therapy helps your nervous system finally recognize that you are safe today and break the cycle.
What is Complex Trauma?
Science now shows trauma isn’t just the big things: abuse, accidents, or loss. It’s any experience that was too much, too soon, or for too long. This includes:
A parent who expected constant perfection.
Lack of early regulation and/or attachment
Being unwanted
Prolonged neglect or interpersonal harm
Bullying where escape is difficult or impossible
A family who couldn’t see, hear, or validate you.
Being blamed for things beyond your control.
Growing up around anger, criticism, or rejection.
Being told not to feel, or that you feel too much.
Experiences of discrimination
Feeling frequently out of body or numb in your early life.
Gender or sexuality shame.
Trauma TherapyFAQs
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+ Feeling like you’re broken, unloveable, or something’s fundamentally wrong with you
+ Feeling disconnected from your body
+ Struggling with relationships+ Having difficulty with sleep or recurring nightmares
+ Pervasive feelings of shame
+ Easily becoming numb, detached, or dissociated
+ Feeling like you could never name what exactly is wrong
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+ Family history
+ Attachment wounds
+ Intergenerational patterns
+ Systems of oppression
+ Disruptive relationship patterns & chasing love
+ Self-hate & self-worth
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+ Increased Comfort discussing your feelings
+ Emotional Resilience: Stop feeling flooded or paralyzed by your emotions.
+ Build Secure Relationships: You break the "anxious-avoidant loop" and feel worthy of deep, consistent, and healthy connection.
+ Quiet the Inner Critic: Soothe the shame.
+ Authentic Living: Deepen your self-awareness & live as your true, whole self
+ Closure: The past remains a part of your story, but it no longer runs your life.
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Absolutely. Clinical research confirms specialized trauma therapy can create measurable changes. Because trauma is often stored below conscious thought, traditional talk therapy often hits a wall. Studies confirm that body-based interventions down-regulate hyper-active alarm responses in the amygdala, improve heart rate variability, and restore executive brain function.
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Traditional trauma therapy often relied on detailed exposure, but modern somatic and experiential approaches don't require you to retell or dissect every painful event.
Because complex trauma is held in the body’s threat-detection system, we focus on how your nervous system holds onto that stress today rather than getting stuck in old narratives. We work at a measured, safe pace (starting with grounding and body awareness) so you stay in control and never feel overwhelmed or re-traumatized in session.
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It depends. For a single adult trauma, natural recovery can happen once safety is restored. But for complex, developmental trauma, time alone isn’t usually enough. The nervous system simply adapts by hardwiring survival responses like hyper-vigilance or emotional shutdown into your daily life.
“It’s a joy to be hidden, and a disaster not to be found.”
D.W. Winnicott
Here, the science matters. I use evidence-based, proven methods that treat trauma at the root.
The techniques:
Somatic Experiencing (SE)
Focus: The Body & Nervous System
When a threat occurs, your body mobilizes energy to defend itself. If that energy can't be resolved, it gets "locked" in your system as chronic anxiety, hypervigilance, or burnout. SE works directly with your body's physical cues to release that stored survival stress, helping your nervous system finally stand down and reset. (Note: Currently in advanced professional training).
Internal Family Systems (IFS)
Focus: Internal Dynamics & Protection
IFS looks at the mind as a collection of "parts." For trauma survivors, parts of you may feel stuck in past pain, while other parts (like a relentless inner critic or an over-working perfectionist) work overtime to keep you safe. Instead of fighting these habits, we help these protective parts step back so you can lead from a steady, confident core.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
Focus: Memory Integration
When you experience trauma, the brain can struggle to file the memory away properly. EMDR uses bilateral stimulation (like side-to-side eye movements or tapping) to re-engage your brain’s natural processing system. This allows you to unhook the "charge" from past painful experiences so they no longer hijack your present.
Most therapy talks in circles. Here’s what we do instead:
Step 1: Understand the past
Tell me about your past, where you’re stuck, and what you want to change.
Step 2: Experience regulation from the bottom up
Working directly with your situation & body, we slow things down to help your nervous system feel secure in real time.
Step 3: Practice new choices
We’ll learn to catch triggers in the moment. Instead of defaulting to automatic reflex, you practice pausing, choosing your response, and steering your own life.