Trauma Therapy in Los Angeles: Personalized Treatment and Care

Trauma can affect how you feel, think, relate to others, and move through everyday life long after a difficult experience has ended. As a licensed clinical psychologist and trauma specialist, I provide personalized, evidence-based trauma therapy in Los Angeles to help adults process difficult experiences and move forward. My approach recognizes that trauma is not one-size-fits-all, and neither is the healing process.

Below, you can learn more about my approach to trauma treatment, the concerns I can help with, and what to expect from working with me.

Looking for a Trauma Therapist in Los Angeles? Book a free consultation today.

Trauma Can Take Many Forms

When people hear the word trauma, they sometimes picture a single catastrophic or life-threatening event. But traumatic experiences can also be chronic, interpersonal, or difficult to recognize while they are happening. Trauma can result from a single traumatic event, repeated experiences, or circumstances that overwhelm your ability to cope and leave you feeling unsafe, powerless, or trapped.

Experiences that can have a lasting emotional impact include:

Childhood trauma, abuse, or neglect: Early trauma can affect your sense of safety, self-worth, relationships, and emotional development well into adulthood.
Sexual or physical assault: Experiences involving violations of physical or sexual safety can lead to lasting trauma symptoms, whether they occurred recently or many years ago.
Emotionally or verbally abusive relationships: Chronic manipulation, coercive control, intimidation, and unhealthy family dynamics can be deeply traumatic even when physical violence isn’t present.
Accidents or frightening events: Car accidents, natural disasters, violence, and other sudden or life-threatening events can overwhelm the nervous system.
Serious illness or medical experiences: Painful, frightening, invasive, or prolonged medical treatment can sometimes result in trauma.
Loss: Sudden or particularly distressing losses can leave lasting psychological effects.
Other overwhelming experiences: Trauma can include many circumstances that left you feeling helpless, unsafe, or unable to cope at the time.

What matters isn’t whether your experience fits somebody else’s definition of trauma. What matters is how it affected you.

How Trauma Can Affect Your Daily Life

One reason people seek trauma counseling long after an experience has ended is that the brain and body don’t necessarily recognize that the danger is over. Traumatic experiences can alter your perception of safety, leaving you reacting to the present as though something from the past could happen again.

For some people, this develops into post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or another mental health condition. Others experience significant trauma symptoms without meeting the criteria for PTSD. Common effects include:

Intrusive memories, nightmares, or triggers: Traumatic memories can surface unexpectedly through flashbacks, unwanted thoughts, nightmares, or strong reactions to reminders.
Feeling constantly on edge or unsafe: Hypervigilance can make it difficult to relax, even in situations you intellectually know are safe.
Anxiety or panic: Trauma can contribute to chronic anxiety, panic, fear, and other forms of emotional distress.
Emotional numbness or disconnection: Some people cope by shutting down emotionally or feeling detached from themselves, other people, or the world around them.
Shame or negative beliefs about yourself: Chronic shame and guilt are common after trauma, particularly when you blame yourself for something that happened to you.
Difficulty trusting others or maintaining relationships: Trauma can create attachment wounds and make closeness, vulnerability, and healthy relationships feel complicated or unsafe.
Avoiding reminders of what happened: Avoidance symptoms can include staying away from certain people, places, conversations, feelings, or situations. These avoidance behaviors can temporarily reduce distress while keeping the underlying fear intact.
Physical symptoms and sleep disturbances: The effects of traumatic stress can also show up through disrupted sleep, muscle tension, heightened startle responses, or other physical reactions.

You do not need a PTSD diagnosis to benefit from trauma therapy. In fact, many people seek treatment because they know their past experiences are affecting their present but don’t necessarily identify themselves as having post-traumatic stress disorder.

Trauma can also overlap with other mental health issues, substance abuse issues, and difficulties that develop as ways of coping. People who have experienced chronic or repeated trauma may find that the effects are better described as Complex Trauma & C-PTSD, while others may benefit from understanding Co-Occurring Disorders.

Whatever form it takes, treating trauma starts with understanding how your experiences have affected you.

My Approach to Trauma Treatment in Los Angeles

My goal as a trauma-informed therapist isn’t to make you unnecessarily relive the worst experiences of your life. Effective trauma-focused therapy prioritizes safety and empowerment while helping you develop the ability to approach difficult material without becoming overwhelmed by it.

The primary goals of trauma therapy generally include establishing a greater sense of safety, reducing distress, developing effective coping strategies, and eventually processing traumatic memories. I tailor treatment to each person rather than assuming that one method will work for everyone.

Depending on your history, current symptoms, goals, and preferences, individual therapy with me may incorporate several evidence-based and trauma-focused approaches.

EMDR Therapy

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a form of trauma-focused therapy designed to help the brain process distressing experiences that continue to feel emotionally “stuck.” EMDR can reduce the emotional distress associated with traumatic memories so that remembering what happened no longer produces the same intensity of reaction.

EMDR is among the treatments recommended in major clinical guidelines for PTSD, alongside Cognitive Processing Therapy and Prolonged Exposure. You can learn more about how I use it on my EMDR Therapy page.

Brainspotting

Brainspotting is a trauma-focused approach that can help clients access and process emotional and physiological responses connected to difficult experiences. Rather than relying exclusively on talking through what happened, Brainspotting can provide another way of working with the deeper emotional and physical responses associated with trauma.

Learn more about my approach to Brainspotting.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) helps you identify and challenge thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors that may have developed in response to traumatic experiences. For example, trauma can lead to beliefs such as “I’m not safe,” “I can’t trust anyone,” or “What happened was my fault.”

Related evidence-based treatment approaches include Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), which specifically focuses on identifying and changing upsetting or unhelpful thoughts related to a traumatic event, and Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT), which incorporates elements such as psychoeducation, coping skills, relaxation techniques, and trauma processing.

Other approaches to treating trauma include Prolonged Exposure (PE), which uses gradual and structured confrontation with trauma-related memories and reminders, and narrative therapy, which can help people develop a deeper understanding of their experiences and their personal story from a more empowered perspective.

Nervous System Regulation & Mindfulness

Trauma treatment isn’t only about what happened in the past. It is also about helping your brain and body recognize when you are safe in the present moment.

Grounding, mindfulness, emotional regulation, and other coping strategies can help you manage distress and build a greater sense of stability. This work may happen before deeper trauma processing and continue alongside it. Somatic therapy and other body-oriented approaches similarly recognize that trauma can involve physiological as well as psychological responses.

The goal isn’t to eliminate every difficult emotion. It’s to help you experience emotions without being controlled or overwhelmed by them.

Why People Throughout Los Angeles Choose My Practice

Finding the right therapist is an important part of trauma recovery. Trauma therapists can have very different backgrounds, specialized training, treatment philosophies, and ways of relating to their clients.

My Los Angeles private practice offers:

A doctorate in Clinical Psychology: I am a licensed clinical psychologist with extensive training in mental health assessment, diagnosis, and psychotherapy.
Nearly two decades of clinical experience: I’ve worked with clients facing a wide range of mental health issues, including trauma, anxiety, addiction, difficult relationships, and complex PTSD.
A specialization in trauma: Trauma treatment has been a major focus of my clinical work, including childhood trauma, sexual trauma, abusive relationships, dysfunctional families, cults, and coercive control.
Training in multiple treatment approaches: My work can incorporate EMDR, Brainspotting, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Internal Family Systems-informed work, mindfulness, and other approaches as appropriate.
Personalized treatment plans: I tailor treatment to the individual rather than attempting to fit every client into the same protocol.
Attention to regulation and safety: Trauma-informed care means paying attention to your capacity to tolerate difficult material rather than simply pushing ahead with trauma processing.
A warm, collaborative relationship: I see therapy as something we do together. Your feedback, boundaries, preferences, and goals matter throughout the healing journey.
LGBTQIA+-affirming and culturally responsive care: I strive to understand each client within the context of their identities, relationships, communities, experiences, and the effects that factors such as discrimination or systemic oppression may have had on their mental health.

I offer in-person trauma therapy in Los Angeles, CA, and virtual individual therapy for clients throughout California, Colorado, and Florida. My goal is to provide compassionate care that respects both where you’ve been and where you’d like to go.

What Trauma Recovery Can Look Like

Recovery doesn’t mean forgetting what happened, pretending it didn’t matter, or reaching a point where you experience only positive emotions. Instead, the healing process often involves reaching a place where the past no longer dominates the present.

For different clients, progress in trauma therapy might mean:

Feeling less controlled by triggers or memories: You can remember what happened without immediately feeling as though you’re back inside the experience.
Developing a greater sense of safety: Your nervous system becomes better able to distinguish between a reminder of danger and danger that is actually happening now.
Regulating difficult emotions: Anger, sadness, fear, and other feelings become more manageable rather than overwhelming or shutting you down.
Reducing anxiety and hypervigilance: You may find yourself spending less time scanning for threats or anticipating that something terrible is about to happen.
Rebuilding self-trust and self-worth: Healing can involve questioning the shame, self-blame, and negative beliefs that trauma left behind.
Developing healthier relationships: As trust and boundaries become easier to navigate, relationships can begin to feel safer and more fulfilling.
Feeling more present in everyday life: Less energy is consumed by surviving, avoiding, anticipating, or recovering from triggers.
Moving forward without the past controlling you: The memory still exists, but its emotional impact becomes less powerful.

Ultimately, trauma recovery is about helping memories lose some of their control over your emotions, choices, relationships, and behavior — not erasing your history.

How We’ll Work Together

Outpatient therapy for trauma doesn’t necessarily mean diving into your most painful memories during your first appointment. We’ll move through the process at a pace that makes sense for you.

Start with a consultation: We’ll talk briefly about what brings you to therapy, what you’re looking for, and whether I might be the right therapist for you.
Build safety and stability: Early work may focus on grounding, emotional regulation, coping skills, and developing resources that help you manage emotional distress.
Process trauma at your pace: When you’re ready, we may process trauma more directly using EMDR, Brainspotting, CBT, or other methods selected according to your needs and goals.
Move toward lasting change: As clients heal, therapy increasingly becomes about integration -— carrying what you’ve learned into your relationships, choices, self-understanding, and everyday life.

You remain an active participant throughout treatment. We can adjust our approach as your needs change rather than following a predetermined timeline.

Is Trauma Therapy Right for You?

You don’t have to be certain that you have PTSD — or even certain that what happened to you “counts” as trauma — to seek treatment. Many people know something from their past continues to affect them without having a name for exactly what they’re experiencing.

Trauma counseling may be worth considering if you:

Feel haunted by past experiences or find that things that happened years ago still carry significant emotional weight.
Experience intrusive memories, triggers, flashbacks, or nightmares connected to something you’ve experienced.
Frequently feel on edge or unsafe, even when there is no obvious danger.
Avoid reminders of difficult experiences because they create anxiety or emotional distress.
Struggle with trust or relationships and notice recurring patterns that may connect to earlier experiences.
Experience anxiety, shame, guilt, or emotional numbness that you have difficulty resolving on your own.
Understand intellectually what happened but still feel affected emotionally or physically. Knowing why you react a certain way doesn’t always change the reaction.
Want to understand how your past is influencing your present and develop new ways of responding.

Some people develop PTSD after a single traumatic event. Others experience complex trauma after prolonged or repeated experiences, including childhood neglect, abuse, dysfunctional relationships, or other circumstances. Intergenerational trauma can also influence families across generations through learned beliefs, relationship patterns, toxic coping patterns, and responses to adversity. Historical trauma — including the collective effects of violence, displacement, oppression, or other significant events — can contribute to these patterns across generations. Research also continues to examine the potential role of epigenetic mechanisms in how the biological effects of severe stress may influence subsequent generations.

Whatever your history, you don’t have to diagnose yourself before reaching out to a trauma specialist.

Schedule a Trauma Therapy Consultation Today

If traumatic experiences are still affecting how you feel, think, relate to others, or move through your daily life, trauma therapy can help you understand those patterns and begin changing them.

I provide trauma therapy in Los Angeles, CA, and online throughout California, Colorado, and Florida. You can learn more about my background and treatment philosophy on my About page.

When you’re ready, schedule a free consultation to tell me a little about what you’re looking for, ask questions, and determine whether working together feels like the right fit.