Trauma Therapy
Online in California & Bay Area
Something happened, or kept happening, and your body learned to stay ready. Maybe you startle easily, feel numb, or find yourself pulled back into moments you'd give anything to leave behind. Maybe nothing dramatic happened by the world's standards, and yet you carry something heavy that you can't fully name or explain. You've wondered if you're too broken to heal, or if this is just who you are now.
It isn't. And you aren't.
Trauma doesn't live only in memory. It lives in the body: in the way you brace before a difficult conversation, in the exhaustion of staying alert all the time, in the distance you feel from yourself and the people you love. At Compassionate Tides Therapy, I work with adults ready to develop a different relationship with what happened, not just talk around it.
You might be in the right place if:
You find yourself reacting to present situations with an intensity that feels out of proportion, and part of you knows it even as it's happening. You feel chronically on edge, easily startled, or unable to fully relax even when things are calm. You go numb, check out, or feel strangely disconnected from your own life. You avoid people, places, or situations that shouldn't feel dangerous but do. You've been told you have anxiety or depression, but those labels have never quite captured the full picture. Perhaps you find yourself doubting if a situation your replay was “really that bad,” or feels mismatched to your responses or reactions. Relationships feel harder than they should: closeness brings up fear, conflict sends you into a spiral, or you keep people at a careful distance without meaning to. Sleep is difficult. Your body holds tension you can't think your way out of.
Trauma is one of the most common and most misunderstood experiences in mental health. You don't need to have survived something catastrophic to be carrying its weight.
Is this you?
What makes this approach different
Traditional talk therapy asks you to describe what happened. Somatic and trauma-informed therapy asks how your body has been responding ever since.
There is a reason you can understand what happened, know it's in the past, and still feel it as if it's present. Your nervous system isn't behind. It's doing exactly what bodies do: staying ready based on what it has learned. Those responses, the bracing, the alertness, the distance, aren't errors to correct. They're adaptations that made sense, and may still be making sense in ways worth understanding rather than overriding. This work isn't about convincing your body it was wrong. It's about coming into relationship with it.
My approach to trauma is body-centered, relational, and paced to your nervous system, not to a protocol timeline.
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is one of the most researched trauma treatments available. EMDR works by helping the brain integrate traumatic memories that have remained fragmented or overwhelming. Rather than requiring you to talk through the details of what happened, EMDR uses bilateral stimulation to help your nervous system integrate the experience so it can become part of your story without interrupting it. Many people find that experiences they've carried for years begin to shift in ways that talking alone never touched.
Somatic Therapy works with the body directly, because that’s where experience registers first. Somatic approaches help you develop a different relationship with your physical experience: learning to notice sensation, work with activation, and expand your capacity to be present with your own experience.
IFS (Internal Family Systems) offers a way to understand and work with the parts of you that trauma created. The part that keeps functioning, the part that carries the pain, the part that's angry, the part that's convinced it happened because of something fundamentally wrong with you. IFS works with those parts through compassion rather than force, so healing doesn't require you to fight yourself.
Trauma-Informed Care throughout means pacing matters, your window of tolerance matters, and your sense of agency in the room always matters. We don't push through. We work with.
This is not about reliving what happened. It is about living with more choice, connection, and purpose so your life can be guided by your values rather than by old wounds.
Presentations I frequently work with:
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A specific event, whether an accident, assault, medical crisis, or sudden loss, that your nervous system never fully integrated. PTSD can look like flashbacks and nightmares, or it can look like a persistent low-grade sense that the world is no longer safe.
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When trauma was ongoing, relational, or began in childhood, the impact goes deeper than a single set of symptoms. C-PTSD often shows up as difficulty with emotional regulation, deep shame, troubled relationships, and a fragmented sense of self. It requires a different and more layered approach than single-incident trauma.
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Trauma of a sexual nature carries particular layers of shame, self-blame, and confusion that deserve specialized, affirming care. You don't have to explain yourself or justify your experience here.
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Caregivers, healthcare workers, first responders, therapists, and others who witness or absorb others' pain are not immune to trauma. Vicarious trauma is real, it accumulates, and it deserves the same quality of attention as any other.
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Frightening diagnoses, difficult procedures, loss of bodily autonomy, or navigating complex medical systems can leave lasting marks on the nervous system, even when the medical situation has resolved.
What to Expect
We always begin at a pace that honors your nervous system's capacity. Some people need time to build trust before approaching trauma narratives directly. Rushing can retraumatize rather than heal. We build the foundation first. Often that starts bottom-up: stabilizing sleep, body symptoms, or distress so trauma processing becomes more accessible.
Sessions are telehealth, available to adults throughout California. I am a private-pay practice and can provide superbills for potential out-of-network reimbursement.
Frequently Asked Questions
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No, and with approaches like EMDR and somatic therapy, detailed verbal retelling is often not the primary mode of working. Many people find this a relief. We work with what your system is ready to work with, at the pace it can tolerate.
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No. Trauma is not a competition, and severity is not determined by how an event looks from the outside. What matters is what your nervous system did with the experience. If you're still carrying it, it counts.
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Yes, and your previous experience matters clinically. Trauma therapy that moves too quickly or doesn't sufficiently resource the nervous system first can feel destabilizing. A different approach, paced differently, often produces very different results. We'll talk about what happened before and let that shape how we work.
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EMDR involves processing specific memories using bilateral stimulation, typically eye movements, tapping, or sound, while holding elements of the memory in mind. It often feels less like traditional therapy and more like something shifting at a level beneath words. Many people describe noticing a memory losing its grip without being able to fully explain how. You can read more on the EMDR page.
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It depends significantly on the nature and complexity of the trauma, your history, and your goals. Single-incident trauma often responds more quickly than complex or developmental trauma. We assess this together and revisit it as we go.
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Yes. I offer a free 20-minute consultation for prospective clients. You can book directly here.
You've spent long enough carrying what your body was never meant to hold alone.
Healing from trauma is possible. And it doesn't have to mean reliving everything to get there.
