Trauma Therapy
in St. Petersburg, FL
Your trauma is unique to you and your experiences, and is valid no matter what the circumstances or severity.
Experiencing trauma can leave your nervous system locked in chronic fight or flight response. Your brain is working hard to protect you from trauma by releasing adrenaline and cortisol. Even after the danger passes, sometimes the body doesn't get the message, and everyday life begins to feel like an emergency. Existing for too long in this heightened state can lead to a nervous system shutdown, which leads to depression and burnout.
Trauma can come from the subtle messages you absorbed in childhood, bullying, abuse, sexual assault, or it can be from global events like COVID-19 that completely alter the way you view yourself and the world around you. You could have attachment trauma from childhood, generational trauma, family of origin trauma, or PTSD.
Experiencing Trauma
Individual counseling using somatic therapy and/or EMDR can help you cope with these symptoms, giving you the tools you need to start healing your nervous system. Trauma gets stored in the part of the brain that can't process verbally. Our therapists can help you learn to live a happy, healthy, and fulfilling life despite the trauma you have been through by helping you build a map for your nervous system so you can manage daily triggers and go from being reactive to responsive. We want you to know that there is hope and that you can learn to shed light on and face those uncomfortable feelings, living the life you deserve.
Begin Trauma Therapy
- Intense mood swings
- Irritability
- Being easily startled
- Numbness
- Traumatic flashbacks
- Avoidance of places or people
- Trouble sleeping
- Difficulty focusing
Symptoms of Trauma:
Our Approach
Somatic Therapy
EMDR
IFS
Trauma can show up not only in what someone remembers or believes, but also in physiological patterns. Somatic Therapy interventions may help you notice and tolerate bodily sensations without becoming overwhelmed, develop greater awareness of nervous-system states, and practice moving between activation and regulation You may cognitively understand “I am safe now” while your body continues responding as though danger is present. Rather than trying to reason the reaction away, therapy can help you become curious about it:.The goal isn't necessarily to make the sensation disappear. but to increase your capacity to experience bodily activation while maintaining enough connection to the present moment.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a trauma therapy approach designed to help your brain process traumatic experiences so they no longer carry the same emotional intensity. During EMDR, your therapist may ask you to briefly focus on aspects of a difficult memory while engaging in bilateral stimulation, such as guided eye movements or alternating tapping. You aren't expected to recount every detail of what happened. Instead, EMDR creates space for your brain to make new connections between the past and the safety and resources available to you in the present. The goal isn't to erase what happened or make you forget. Instead, EMDR can help the past begin to feel like something you remember rather than something your mind and body continue to experience as if it is happening now.
Trauma can sometimes leave you feeling as though different parts of you are pulling in different directions. One part of you may want connection while another wants to withdraw. You may know that you are safe while another part remains on guard, expecting something to go wrong.
IFS-informed therapy approaches these reactions with curiosity rather than judgment. Instead of viewing behaviors such as avoidance, people-pleasing, perfectionism, shutting down, or hypervigilance as something that is “wrong” with you, we can explore how these patterns may have developed as ways of protecting you. Even when these responses are no longer serving you, they may have once helped you cope with difficult or overwhelming experiences.
