In-Person & Online Trauma Therapy in Colorado

Trauma Therapy

Support for overwhelming experiences, healing, and moving through grief

Understand the patterns that helped you survive, process what still feels unresolved, and build a greater sense of safety within yourself and your relationships.

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Trauma does not always look the way people expect.

Some people know exactly which experience brought them to therapy. Others struggle to identify a single event but recognize that they have spent years feeling unsafe, disconnected, emotionally overwhelmed, or unable to fully relax around other people.

Trauma may show up emotionally as:

  • Anxiety or a persistent sense of danger

  • Shame, guilt, or harsh self-criticism

  • Emotional numbness

  • Irritability or anger

  • Feeling easily overwhelmed

  • Difficulty identifying or expressing emotions

  • Depression or hopelessness

  • Feeling detached from yourself

Trauma may show up relationally as:

  • Difficulty trusting people

  • Fear of abandonment or rejection

  • Pulling away when relationships become vulnerable

  • People-pleasing or difficulty setting boundaries

  • Repeated conflict cycles

  • Feeling responsible for other people’s emotions

  • Struggling to feel close even in important relationships

  • Expecting criticism, betrayal, or disconnection

These responses are not signs that you are broken. They often began as ways of managing experiences that felt overwhelming, unsafe, unpredictable, or emotionally painful.

Trauma can come from what happened, and from what was repeatedly missing

Trauma may develop after a clearly identifiable experience, but it can also grow through repeated relational experiences over time. A person may be deeply affected not only by overt harm, but also by chronic emotional neglect, instability, disconnection, humiliation, or the absence of consistent safety and care.

Single-event trauma

Accidents, assault, sudden loss, medical experiences, frightening events, or other moments that overwhelmed your ability to cope.

Family and attachment wounds

Family conflict, estrangement, unpredictable caregiving, parentification, criticism, emotional cutoff, or relationships in which closeness did not feel safe.

Relational trauma

Experiences of betrayal, abuse, manipulation, rejection, abandonment, or repeated emotional harm within important relationships.

Chronic stress and repeated exposure

Long periods of instability, caregiving strain, bullying, discrimination, high-conflict environments, or repeated experiences of helplessness.

Developmental trauma

Growing up without consistent emotional safety, attunement, protection, stability, or permission to develop a secure sense of self.

How trauma can continue affecting relationships

Trauma often changes the way people interpret closeness, conflict, vulnerability, and safety. A person may deeply want connection while another part of them expects that connection to lead to disappointment, control, rejection, or loss.

Therapy can help you understand these patterns without reducing you to them. The goal is not to remove every protective response, but to help you develop more choice about when those responses are needed and when they are keeping you from the life or relationships you want.

Moving toward others

You may become highly focused on maintaining closeness, preventing conflict, anticipating other people’s reactions, or proving that you are worthy of care.

Moving away from others

You may withdraw, become emotionally unavailable, avoid depending on people, or feel trapped when others want greater intimacy.

Becoming overwhelmed during conflict

Disagreement may activate fear, anger, shutdown, panic, defensiveness, or an urge to escape that feels much larger than the immediate situation.

Losing connection with yourself

You may become so attuned to other people’s emotions and expectations that it becomes difficult to know what you feel, need, value, or want.

What trauma therapy can help with

Trauma therapy is not only about talking repeatedly through what happened. It may also involve increasing your capacity to stay present, understand your nervous system and protective responses, process specific memories, strengthen boundaries, and develop new ways of relating to yourself and others.

  • Distressing memories or reminders

  • Emotional dysregulation

  • Shame and negative beliefs about yourself

  • Dissociation or emotional numbness

  • Avoidance

  • Hypervigilance

  • Difficulty sleeping or relaxing

  • Fear of vulnerability

  • Attachment wounds

  • Boundary difficulties

  • Relationship conflict

  • Grief and unresolved loss

  • Family estrangement

  • Disconnection from your body

  • Difficulty experiencing pleasure, meaning, or connection

Trauma work should move at a pace that respects both your goals and the protective parts of you that may not yet feel ready to revisit painful experiences. I do not believe healing requires forcing disclosure, reliving every detail, or moving faster than your nervous system can tolerate.

My approach to trauma therapy

Building safety and stability

We may begin by understanding your current symptoms, triggers, coping strategies, relationships, and sources of support. We can work on emotional regulation and grounding so that trauma processing does not leave you feeling repeatedly overwhelmed.

Processing unresolved experiences

When appropriate, I may incorporate EMDR and other trauma-focused approaches to help the brain and body process experiences that continue to feel present, emotionally charged, or unresolved.

Understanding Protective Patterns

We may begin by understanding your current symptoms, triggers, coping strategies, relationships, and sources of support. We can work on emotional regulation and grounding so that trauma processing does not leave you feeling repeatedly overwhelmed.

Rebuilding Connection

Trauma recovery also involves developing a more secure relationship with yourself, strengthening your ability to communicate needs and boundaries, and increasing your capacity for closeness, pleasure, meaning, and connection.

My work may draw from EMDR, IFS and parts work, attachment theory, emotion-focused therapy, somatic awareness, existential therapy, and character analysis.

What can I expect from trauma therapy?

  1. Clarifying your goals

  2. Understanding symptoms and relational patterns

  3. Developing stability and emotional regulation

  4. Identifying experiences or beliefs that remain unresolved

  5. Processing trauma when you are adequately prepared

  6. Practicing new ways of responding in everyday life

  7. Reviewing progress and adjusting the work

Early sessions typically focus on understanding what brings you in, how your concerns affect your current life, and what you want to change. We will also explore the strengths and coping strategies that have helped you get this far.

Trauma therapy is not always linear. At times, the work may focus more directly on the past. At other times, we may focus on a current relationship, boundary, transition, or experience that is activating older patterns.

Frequently Asked Questions

  • No. Some people meet the criteria for PTSD, while others experience long-term effects from relational wounds, neglect, chronic stress, or painful experiences without having a formal trauma diagnosis. We can explore what is happening without assuming a diagnosis in advance.

  • No. You have control over what you share and when you share it. Some trauma approaches require relatively little detailed verbal description. We will discuss the purpose of any intervention and move at a pace that supports safety and meaningful progress.

  • Yes. I may use EMDR when it is clinically appropriate and when we have adequately prepared for trauma processing. EMDR is one part of my approach rather than the only way I work with trauma.

  • You do not need a complete narrative of your past to begin therapy. We can work with current emotions, body responses, beliefs, relationship patterns, and the memories you do have without pressuring you to recover or construct memories.

  • Yes. Trauma frequently affects trust, communication, vulnerability, boundaries, conflict, sexuality, and emotional closeness. Individual trauma work can help you understand and change these patterns, and couples or family therapy may also be appropriate in some situations.

  • Trauma and estrangement often overlap, although one does not automatically explain the other. Therapy can help you process experiences connected to the relationship, clarify boundaries, evaluate possible contact, and understand how the estrangement continues to affect your emotions and other relationships.

  • I offer [online therapy throughout Colorado and in-person appointments in your stated locations]. We can discuss whether online or in-person therapy is the better fit for your needs.

You don’t have to carry this alone.

Trauma therapy can help you make sense of what happened, understand the patterns that followed, and build a life that is shaped by more than survival. We can begin with a consultation to discuss what you are experiencing and whether my approach feels like a good fit.