Trauma Therapist in Los Angeles
Helping you heal the pain that is holding you back with specialized EMDR therapy for trauma.
Understanding Trauma and Its Impact
Traumas can come in both big and small experiences. It can be a one-time event like a car accident or ongoing abuse throughout childhood. These traumatic experiences often get stuck in our minds and profoundly affect how we view ourselves, others, and the world around us. If you're dealing with these challenges, seeking trauma therapy in Los Angeles can help you begin the healing process.
Are you reacting to your boss as if they were your critical parent?
Are you constantly expecting the worst and finding it difficult to cope?
Does life feel overwhelming, pushing you to numb your emotions just to get through it?
Have you locked away your feelings, putting on a smile you can no longer maintain?
You don’t have to stay stuck in your feelings and PTSD symptoms or struggles.
Through our work together with EMDR therapy, your feelings of fear, anxiety, chaos, or pain can be transformed into feelings of confidence and calmness. You’ll be able to re-engage (or engage for the first time) in healthy relationships. I want to help you no longer feel like you’re reliving the past over and over again. I want to help you through critical thoughts about yourself, others, and the world around you so that you can see things as they are now, and not filtered by the past.
What EMDR Therapy Can Do For You:
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Eases Intense Emotions
EMDR helps your brain process and calm down those painful memories, so they don’t feel as overwhelming. You’ll start to feel more in control of your emotions and less triggered by past experiences.
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Shifts Negative Beliefs
Trauma can leave you believing things about yourself that just aren’t true, like feeling unworthy or to blame. EMDR works to replace those harmful thoughts with more positive ones, helping you feel better about yourself.
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Strengthens Relationships
By healing your trauma, EMDR makes it easier to trust and connect with others. You’ll find it less scary to open up and build stronger, healthier relationships.
What Is EMDR Therapy?
EMDR therapy uses bilateral (side-to-side) eye movements to help your brain re-wire where and how traumatic memories are stored. Traumas are processed in an old part of the brain that’s responsible for your emotions and your fight-flight-freeze response. When traumas are stuck there, your nervous system often gets stuck in overdrive, leaving you feeling anxious, angry, depressed, numb, or constantly looking around for the next horrible thing that’s about to happen.
Using EMDR therapy, I will help you re-wire your brain and those traumatic experiences so that the intense emotions attached to those memories fade, and you’ll be able to reprocess those experiences. Imagine what it would feel like, to feel a sense of freedom for your past trauma.
EMDR Therapy can help you
Decrease intense emotions connected to specific memories
Get rid of hurtful, unhelpful limiting beliefs about yourself
Reframe the blame so that you’re not the cause of all the bad things that have happened to you
Identify and set healthy boundaries
Learn healthy coping skills
Is Trauma Holding You Back?
Maybe you’ve experienced what everyone recognizes as trauma.
You were sexually assaulted or molested as a child, making it difficult to have satisfying, fulfilling relationships because you don’t trust others.
Or perhaps you grew up in a house with a parent who struggled with addiction and never felt safe or secure. And now, even though you know that your partner or friend is a good person, you struggle to trust them or yourself.
Maybe you were in a car accident, and now you’re so anxious you can’t drive or even have a hard time being a passenger.
But maybe your experiences of trauma go unrecognized by you or others.
Maybe you’ve had a lifetime of hurtful experiences that have worn down your self-image. It’s left you feeling unworthy of the love and happiness that you want and see others getting in their lives.
Perhaps you grew up with a sibling who took all of your parent’s time and attention because of their illness or behaviors, leaving you feeling unseen, unheard, and believing that your needs didn’t matter.
Did you grow up with a parent who criticized you or compared you to others, and never in a good way? And maybe you were left feeling like you were never good enough or could never do things well enough.
“The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong at the broken places. ”
But It’s Not Just EMDR, and It’s Not Just Traditional Psychotherapy…
Perhaps you’ve tried EMDR Therapy, and it wasn’t enough. Or Perhaps you’ve tried a few different types of traditional talk therapy like CBT or Client-Centered therapy, and it wasn’t enough. It didn’t get deep into the core of the issue. It didn’t leave you with lasting change. In our work together, we’ll use both EMDR therapy as well as Psychodynamic therapy to get to a deep, insightful understanding of what’s holding you back.
EMDR therapy will help your mind and body reprocess the trauma, and Psychodynamic therapy will help you gain insights into yourself, others, and your relationships. We’ll work towards having that “ah-ha” moment when things click into place and make sense in a new way. We’ll also work towards calming your nervous system so that it resets and is no longer stuck in overdrive. Together, the impact will be significant, meaningful, and lasting.
What It’s Like To Work With Me
Many clients describe our work as a chance to finally feel "freedom from being stuck." One person said he’s "realizing who I can be" and feels like he’s "under construction." That’s what I aim for, helping you break free from the things that have held you back and guiding you as you start to rebuild. In our sessions, we’ll work together to help you understand yourself better, clear out the old hurt, and start moving toward the life you want. I am here to help you make real change, one step at a time.
Imagine If You…
Understood your reactions. Where they were coming from, and why they were happening.
Traumatic experiences leave us with what’s called a Trauma Response. Your mind and body react to current events based on the traumas you’ve experienced in the past. EMDR Therapy will help you reprocess those past events so that you’re not reacting to the present from a trauma-based past.
Traumas often leave us with beliefs that limit us. For example, people who have experienced a sexual assault might unconsciously believe that they aren’t worthy of being treated well, that their voice doesn’t matter, or that they’re not worthy of love. EMDR Therapy will help you challenge those limiting beliefs. As a result, you’ll feel confident, know your worth, and be able to set boundaries that support you.
Believed in your worth and felt confident and capable.
Felt connected in relationships and to the world around you.
Sometimes trauma overwhelms you so much that you may feel like the only way to get through life is to shut down, stay numb, or paste a smile on your face that you don’t feel inside. EMDR Therapy will help you process your feelings, so they are no longer overwhelming. As a result, you’ll be able to engage in relationships and interact with the world however you want.
I want you to know:
Change is possible.
Let’s work together to move past your past and live a healthy, happy, fulfilling life.
Frequently Asked Questions about EMDR therapy.
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Yes! I’ve been very successful in doing EMDR online with many clients.
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Trauma is your body and brain’s reactions to experiences. Trauma is traditionally thought of as an event that you’ve experienced or witnessed where you felt in danger. We’ve also come to understand that there are events we experience when we’re young called developmental traumas. These are situations that happen when the people caring for us can’t meet our emotional needs. They can result in us not feeling cared for, feeling unsafe, unseen, or unheard. This can also lead to your mind and body responding as if to a trauma.
You might be experiencing feelings of depression, anxiety, or unease. You might have nightmares or flashbacks. You might avoid people, places, or situations. You might have a really strong emotional reaction to a person, noise, or event and not understand why.
Trauma looks different in different people.
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Like with any therapy, the length of time for EMDR Therapy varies from person to person. This isn’t a “ 6 sessions and you’re cured” type of therapy, but my experience is that it works faster than traditional talk therapy to help you reprocess your trauma. Someone with a one-time car accident will need less time than someone with a long history of abuse.