Therapy For Complex Trauma
Some wounds don’t come from what happened once. They come from what kept happening, quietly, over years.
You may not think of yourself as someone with “trauma” because nothing happened just once or all at once. Instead, you adapted to years of walking on eggshells, being dismissed, over-functioning, staying hyperaware of other people’s moods, or learning that your needs were too much.
Complex trauma often forms this way: through repeated experiences that teach your body and mind that closeness, safety, and self-trust are not simple.
Address the root of your trauma so you can move from surviving to thriving.
What complex trauma can look like
Complex trauma is trauma woven into daily life. It can grow out of chronic relational pain, family roles, intergenerational wounds, racism, immigration stress, religious harm, intimate partner violence, or long stretches of instability where your system had to stay braced to survive.
You may relate if you:
- Keep reading the room before you can feel yourself.
- Struggle to trust your needs, feelings, or limits.
- Swing between over-functioning and shutdown.
- Feel shame, self-doubt, dissociation, or people-pleasing.
- Expect closeness to cost you something.
Why it repeats
Maybe you were the one who kept going, kept taking care of everyone else, or kept trying to be less needy, less sensitive, less visible. Complex trauma can leave you highly adaptive on the outside while, underneath, you carry hypervigilance, shutdown, or a deep expectation that relationships are unsafe, unpredictable, or emotionally expensive.
These responses are not character flaws. They are survival strategies that made sense in the environments you had to navigate.
As Featured In
My Approach to Treating Complex Trauma
Therapy for complex trauma is not only about understanding the past. It is also about noticing how the past still lives in your body, relationships, and sense of self—and slowly creating more room for safety, choice, and self-trust. My work integrates relational therapy, somatic awareness, parts-informed work, and Brainspotting to help process trauma held in the mind, body, and attachment system.
Together, we pay attention to how survival patterns show up in your life now: in your relationships, your internal dialogue, your nervous system, and the ways you protect yourself. We do not force disclosure or move faster than your system can handle. Instead, we work with steadiness and respect for your pace, because healing from complex trauma is not about overriding survival responses; it is about helping them soften when they no longer have to run the show.
In our work together, therapy may help you:
Understand your survival patterns with less shame.
Recognize how trauma shows up in relationships.
Reconnect with your body, emotions, and boundaries.
Build trust in your internal signals.
Loosen patterns that no longer protect you.
Schedule a free 15 minute phone consult here
Prioritize your mental health and self-care from the comfort of your home.
Testimonials
Frequently Asked Questions
about trauma treatment
What is complex trauma?
Complex trauma develops from repeated, prolonged experiences — often in relationships or environments where you had little control or safety. Unlike a single-incident trauma, it builds gradually: through chronic emotional neglect, family dysfunction, relational harm, systemic oppression, immigration stress, religious harm, or years of instability. What accumulates is not just fear, but shame, self-doubt, hypervigilance, and patterns that persist long after the circumstances have changed.
How is complex trauma different from PTSD?
PTSD is typically associated with a specific traumatic event. Complex trauma — sometimes called C-PTSD — develops from ongoing, repeated experiences, often beginning in childhood. It tends to affect your sense of self, your relationships, and your nervous system in deeper, more pervasive ways. You may not have flashbacks in the classic sense, but you might notice chronic shutdown, emotional flooding, difficulty trusting, or a persistent feeling that something is wrong with you — rather than that something happened to you.
Do I have to have had an "obvious" trauma to benefit from this work?
No. Many people who carry complex trauma don’t identify with the word at all. If nothing felt catastrophic — just chronic, just relational, just the water you swam in — that still counts. Dismissal, emotional unavailability, having to over-function, being the family peacekeeper, learning your needs were inconvenient: these experiences shape your nervous system and your sense of self in real ways.
How long will therapy last?
Therapy can last any time between a year to many more, as long as you are still progressing from our work. The length of therapy depends on what you want and need, and what you want/need can be fluid and dynamic.
Healing and personal growth is not strict or predictable. You can start off by wanting to address something very specific (e.g. “I want to feel less anxious”), but through our work together could realize a deeper meaning to these anxious symptoms (e.g. “I feel anxious because I am terrified of intimacy” to “I’ve had very familiar experiences of being emotionally suffocated when I was close to people”). Realizing these deeper long-standing issues may then shape the focus and length of treatment.
Regardless of why you are seeking therapy and how long you hope to be in treatment, it is important to remember that your thoughts and input are invaluable to me, and the pace and length of treatment will always be a collaborative discussion.
How often are therapy sessions?
Meeting consistently and stably on a weekly basis will help build safety and trust, which is essential for the work to progress on a deeper level. Biweekly sessions impact the effectiveness of therapy.
Often, meeting less frequently results in a ‘catch up’ type of session and does not allow for the time, space, and emotional capacity needed to address what goes on beneath the surface.
Depending on the level of our work, there are also times when meeting two or more times a week is appropriate, and that will always come from us talking and making that decision together.
Are therapy sessions covered by my insurance?
If you have out-of-network benefits, your insurance may be able to reimburse you for approximately 50%-80% of each session after the out-of-network deductible is met.
Out-of-network psychotherapy coverage varies by carrier and policy. It can be confusing, but we’re here to help! If you aren’t sure whether or not you have out-of-network benefits, we can check for you. Just email your insurance card and date of birth to info@imagineemotionalwellness.com
How do I get started?
Here are 3 simple steps.