Not all trauma leaves a visible scar.

When most people hear "trauma therapy," they think of PTSD. A single terrible event. Flashbacks. Nightmares. A treatment protocol designed to process the memory and reduce the symptoms.

That is one kind of trauma, and there are excellent therapies for it. EMDR, CPT, prolonged exposure. They work well for what they are designed for.

But there is another kind of trauma that those approaches were not built to reach. It is the trauma that happened not in a single moment but across years, inside the relationships that were supposed to be safe. The parent who was unpredictably available. The family where feelings were dangerous. The childhood where nothing terrible happened and nothing good enough happened either. The slow erosion of self that occurs when a child learns, day by day, that who they are is not welcome.

This is relational trauma. Developmental trauma. What some clinicians call complex PTSD. And it requires a different kind of therapy.

Why relational trauma needs relational healing

If the wound happened in relationship, the healing must also happen in relationship. This is the core premise of my work. You cannot process relational trauma alone, through insight, through worksheets, through understanding what happened. You process it by having a different experience of relationship, one where your needs are met consistently, where your feelings are welcomed, where ruptures are repaired, where you are not required to perform in order to stay connected.

That is what the therapeutic relationship provides. Not a simulation of a healthy relationship, but a real one, with all its imperfection, that gradually teaches the nervous system something it could not learn in the family of origin.

How relational trauma shows up

• Anxious attachment: the grip, the scanning, the terror of abandonment
• Avoidant attachment: the withdrawal, the self-reliance, the inability to let anyone in
• People-pleasing and fawning: the compulsive caretaking that keeps you safe by keeping others comfortable
• Emotional numbness or dissociation: the shutting down that protected you as a child and now prevents you from feeling alive
• Perfectionism: the performance that substitutes for genuine connection
• Chronic shame: the deep, wordless sense that something about you is fundamentally wrong
• Difficulty trusting, even when the person in front of you has earned it

What this therapy is not

I do not practice EMDR, prolonged exposure, or cognitive processing therapy. Those are valuable approaches for single-incident PTSD and I will refer you to a specialist if that is what you need. What I offer is depth psychotherapy for the kind of trauma that did not happen in one moment but accumulated over years inside the relationships that mattered most.

This work is slow. It is relational. It asks you to stay present with feelings your nervous system has been avoiding for decades. It is also, in my experience, the only work that reaches the roots of relational trauma rather than managing its symptoms.

The wound happened in relationship. The healing happens in relationship too.

I also work with the mother wound, childhood emotional neglect, and grief that has no funeral. Sessions are $150, Fridays, 8 AM to 4 PM. In-person in Seattle and telehealth throughout Washington State.