Trauma & PTSD Treatment · Est. 2019

Healing isn't forgetting.
It's learning your nervous system a new story.

Evidence-based EMDR, somatic experiencing, and prolonged exposure therapy — for the people who have carried it long enough.

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How Treatment Works

What happens
in the room.

Three evidence-based modalities, each explained in clinical terms and in plain language — because understanding what's happening is part of how it works.

Phase 01 · Weeks 1–4

EMDR

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing works by activating bilateral stimulation — typically eye movements — while holding a traumatic memory in mind. This disrupts the memory's encoded emotional charge, allowing the brain's natural processing system to complete what was frozen at the moment of trauma.

Sessions are 90 minutes. You are never asked to describe the event in detail. The memory is held, not spoken.
In Their Words
"I kept waiting for it to feel like reliving it. It didn't. It felt more like watching something from the other side of thick glass — still there, but not reaching through anymore."
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Phase 02 · Weeks 3–8

Somatic Experiencing

Trauma lives in the body before it lives in language. Somatic experiencing tracks the physical sensations — the held breath, the tightened jaw, the braced shoulders — and gently guides the nervous system through the incomplete survival responses that were interrupted at the time of the event.

Conducted on grounding mats in softly lit rooms. No exposure to the traumatic narrative is required in early phases.
In Their Words
"My therapist asked me to notice where I felt it in my body. I said my chest. She didn't push further. We just sat with my chest for a while. Something in it shifted — not all at once, but enough."
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Phase 03 · Weeks 6–12

Prolonged Exposure

Prolonged exposure works by systematically and gradually approaching trauma-related memories, feelings, and situations that have been avoided since the event. The avoidance, while understandable, reinforces the nervous system's message that the memory is still dangerous. PE teaches the brain that the memory can be survived.

Pacing is always client-led. You hold the brake. Therapist holds the map. No session moves faster than you can tolerate.
In Their Words
"Week seven, I drove past the intersection for the first time. I didn't pull over. My heart rate spiked — I noticed it, I breathed, and it came back down. That's what progress felt like. Not the absence of the response. The ability to move through it."
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The Twelve-Week Arc

What progress looks like
when it isn't linear.

Weeks 1–2

Stabilization

No trauma processing happens in the first two weeks. This is deliberate. We map your nervous system's current state, establish grounding techniques you can use between sessions, and build enough safety in the therapeutic relationship that the work ahead is possible.

Honest Translation

Most clients feel relieved that nothing intense happens yet. Some feel frustrated — they came to fix something and we're asking them to slow down first. That frustration is data. We work with it.

Weeks 3–5

First Contact

We begin approaching the material — carefully, and always with your consent before each step. EMDR bilateral stimulation starts. Somatic sessions focus on the body's held responses. You will notice the memory more, not less, in this phase. That is the process working.

Honest Translation

"The memory still comes. But the chest tightness starts to loosen." — this is the most common report at week four. Not resolved. Loosening. That's what early progress looks like.

Weeks 6–9

Active Processing

The middle phase is the most demanding. Memory reconsolidation is active. Clients often report vivid dreams, unexpected emotional surges, and a temporary increase in hypervigilance. This is the nervous system reorganizing. We track it session by session.

Honest Translation

This is the part no one warns you about: feeling worse before you feel better is real. We will tell you when you're in it. You won't be surprised by it.

Weeks 10–12

Integration

The final phase focuses on consolidating gains — building a coherent narrative of what happened and what it means now, reinforcing the new neural pathways, and establishing a maintenance plan. Many clients extend beyond twelve weeks by choice.

Honest Translation

"I still know what happened. I just don't live there anymore." Progress at twelve weeks doesn't look like forgetting. It looks like the memory having less authority over the present day.

The timeline is a guide, not a contract. Some clients move faster. Some take longer. Both are normal.

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Who We See

You don't have to fit
a particular story.

Combat Veterans

The ones who flinch at fireworks.

You did what you were trained to do. Your nervous system did what it was built to do. The problem is that the threat is gone and your body didn't get the memo. EMDR was developed in part for exactly this. The hypervigilance, the startle response, the dreams — these are not character flaws. They are a nervous system that saved your life and doesn't know it can rest.

In-person and telehealth available. VA coordination on request.

Accident Survivors

The ones who haven't driven since the impact.

The car is fixed. The bones healed. But you still white-knuckle every intersection, you check mirrors obsessively, and you avoid the highway entirely. Avoidance is the thing that keeps the fear alive. We don't push you back into the driver's seat on week one. We work on why the thought of it still feels like the accident is happening right now.

Somatic experiencing is particularly effective for accident-related PTSD.

First Responders

The ones carrying calls they never talk about.

You absorb what others can't witness. You go back. You normalize it because you have to. And then, at some point, something doesn't normalize. A particular call. A particular face. A particular sound. You don't have to have a dramatic breakdown to qualify for treatment. The slow accumulation is enough.

Confidential scheduling, no employer notification without explicit consent.

Childhood Trauma

The ones who just learned it has a clinical name.

You always knew something happened. You've spent years managing its effects — the hypervigilance in relationships, the difficulty trusting, the shame that doesn't seem to belong to you but lives in you. Learning that what happened has a name — complex PTSD, developmental trauma — can feel like both a relief and a grief. Both are welcome here.

Prolonged exposure is adapted for complex/developmental trauma presentations.

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Before You Call

The questions
you haven't asked yet.

Every person who reaches this page has at least one question they haven't said out loud. We've answered the ones we hear most often.

The intake assessment is confidential. No information is shared with employers, insurers, or family members without your explicit written consent.

No. EMDR and somatic experiencing work without requiring a verbal narrative of what happened. You hold the memory in mind — you do not have to speak it aloud. Prolonged exposure, introduced later if appropriate, involves more direct engagement with the memory, but always at a pace you set and can slow at any time.

Most clients notice something shifting between sessions three and five — not resolution, but a loosening. The memory is still there. The body's response to it begins to change. Significant reduction in PTSD symptoms is typically measurable at the eight-week mark. Full integration takes longer, and longer is not failure.

Talk therapy and trauma therapy are different disciplines. If you've spent years in therapy discussing your history without it changing how your body responds to triggers, that's not a failure of yours — it's a mismatch of method. Trauma lives in the nervous system before it lives in language. We work where it lives.

For EMDR and prolonged exposure, the research supports telehealth as equivalent in outcome. For somatic experiencing, in-person is preferred but not required. We will discuss your specific situation during the intake assessment and recommend the format that fits your presentation.

Eight questions. Trauma type and timeline. Previous therapy experience. Current symptom severity (sleep, hypervigilance, avoidance, intrusions). Format preference. Nothing you answer disqualifies you. The assessment helps us understand where you are so we can explain what the path forward might look like for you specifically.

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The Next Step

The forest has done
its work.

You've read what happens in the room. You know the timeline. You know what progress actually looks like. The unknown has been mapped.

The confidential self-assessment takes eight minutes. It asks about trauma type, previous therapy experience, and your preferred format. Nothing you answer disqualifies you.

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Confidential · 8 minutes · No commitment required