325 Carlsbad Village Dr STE A2, Carlsbad, CA 92008 | (760) 453-0373

Trauma Therapy

for those who have

one or two terrible incidents

or a lifetime of shitty circumstances

Identifying the Different Kinds of Trauma

Single Event Trauma (PTSD)

When we hear of someone experiencing trauma, we often think of Big T traumatic events such as school shooting, car accidents, sexual assault, and I'm not going to list any more, none of our nervous systems need additional things to be scared of happening to us. These types of events are crisis events if we have the right resources available to us immediately during and following the event. However, as time passes, we may experience flashbacks, become hypervigilant, constantly watching our environment, and may even become avoidant of anything, any place, or anyone that reminds us of the event. It might appear like your personality has faded, like the world is a scarier place, and you don't know how to trust that you'll be alright.

Ongoing Traumatic Stress (C-PTSD)

Sometimes there is a feeling of "Will this ever end? Will I ever catch my breath?" It can be incredibly difficult to interpret life situations as they come one at a time. Instead, there can become this pattern of "if it was this way then, it will be this way now and will always be this way." A sort of black and white negativity bias that assumes the worst case scenario, and many times there is a sense of unfortunate validation, "See, I told you I wouldn't get the job, why did you let me hope for this?"

It can be difficult to tell the timeline of your life, where everything is blurred and there are lots of gaps in memories because so many things feel similar and the version of the experience from 10 years ago feels the same as the experience 2 years ago and the one that happened last week and what you expect to happen in the next few months again. It all gets tangled up and the details get blurred. Sometimes, this can come with a lot of chronic pain as well.

Childhood or Developmental Trauma (C-PTSD)

Growing up with unpredictable parents/caregivers, or, with predictably scary caregivers can create a foundation for distrust as we grow up. Individuals with Avoidant tendencies learn that they are only as valuable as their successes and that being emotional is not acceptable. Anxiously Attached children grow up to be Preoccupied adults confused about their lovability since it feels like there is a constant threat of rejection and abandonment and they are so eager for validation and connection. Disorganized Attachment happens when something about your basic needs is predictably dangerous, regularly. This can happen with a drunk parent or a violent, nonverbal sibling, where there is a consistent uneasy feeling when it is time to go home. Many of these experiences convince us to shove our emotions and our needs deep down, to brush off anything that hurts us, and to show up the best we can in ways that won't make the situation worse. We learn to adapt a protective Role Self, almost forgetting who we really are and what we really like and dislike in the process. We can lose hope for a thriving life and focus on surviving. Sometimes people find relief by escaping in fantasy worlds through movies, gaming, or books, and sometimes those fantasies make the grief of what isn't real too painful.

Many individuals with painful growing up experiences have chronic pain from all of the entrapment of not being able to escape the ugly, not having a safe place to rest and digest after the day, and not having a person to really hash out the drama moments that just didn't make sense in a kid's brain.

We were all in need of adults to help protect us and teach us about the world, and, not all of us had emotionally mature adults to support and guide us.

Without inner child work, where we allow ourselves to feel the compassionate permission to feel the full range of emotion, where we get to play and be creative again, and have human needs, and be shown love regardless of ______, these wounds keep us from truly feeling connected and safe in adult relationships. We may even feel like a kid or teen at times, acting as if we were in a childhood home being yelled at by a parent, not having a civilized conversation with our partner in the present.

I'm curious how you filled in the blank there. That may be a lead into what your inner child is craving most to throw out the old rulebook about and experience freedom in that precise way without judgment.

Trauma can feel like "I can never catch my breath"

When we have traumatic histories, the unpredictability of life leaves us feeling out of control in an overwhelming and anxiety-provoking way. When we have healed our traumas, we can reflect on those experiences as part of a chapter in our lives, and we can look to the future with greater ease and flexibility, embracing the surprises that life brings.

A Resilience-Oriented Trauma Therapist Can Support You Through the Scary to Expand Moments of Relief and Ease as You Come Back to Life as Your Genuine Self

At Upward Roots: Relational Therapy, I can be with you when you're flat and low, when your tears are flowing, when you can't stop yawning or burping, when you have a roar or something to yell, and when there is an invitation to dance and sing. Whatever your nervous system and/or attachment system needs, we'll find a way to honor you in the moment, together.

Get Started

Get Started With a Free Consult Call

What to expect in Trauma Therapy Sessions

We'll share leadership in setting our goals and in identifying the direction of our work in each session. I like to say, "I'll always have a Plan B for our sessions, but if you have a different Plan A, then we'll honor your more urgent need." My Plan B is to prepare you for and support you in the discovery and healing of painful roots of unhelpful patterns of relating to yourself and others in your present relationships.

We'll use Window of Tolerance and Polyvagal Theory to track your nervous system and choose the most effective regulation strategy for the specific moments. And, we'll be creative and bring in the imagined idea of who you needed there to have experienced back then differently, giving you the ability to say or do whatever was appropriate for the time.

Each session will begin and end with something that helps bridge what is working well in sessions, increasing confidence and restfulness in and out of therapy.

Treatment Approaches for Trauma Therapy

EMDR (Eye movement desensitization reprocessing)

EMDR helps by braiding our left brain's word memories with our right brain's emotional and image memories, allowing us to work through how it shows up in our thoughts, mood, and physical sensations, similar to how our dreams in REM sleep help us make sense of our day, sorting through the information and choosing if it is something important for long-term storage, short-term storage, or can be thrown away. EMDR can take turn capslock off and remove the exclamation marks from a story in fewer sessions. EMDR does not require you to be able to remember exactly what happened to you. We can work with something as vague as "I have a really strong reaction to the smell of oranges," or "I have had a constant stomach ache since I can remember and no doctor can tell me why."

DARe (Dynamic Attachment repattern experiencing)

DARe is a gentle way of working that can almost seem playful, the way we get to be when we feel we can melt into the nurturing protection of someone who understands our needs and is able to meet them. We'll start with an understanding of your primary attachment strategies and some history, and in each session, bring in the idea of the right type of support from the right people/persons/thing/animal working with just the right amount of pain.

PARts Work

I pull from Inner Relational Focusing, The Adult Chair, Ego State, DNMS, Inner Child Work, Reparenting, and IFS (Internal Family Systems.

We'll use your names for each Part within you, identify their function, their fear if they were to stop performing their role, and see how we might meet their needs to truly reach and take care of your Wounded Inner Child so that you can live more of your adult life from your True Self.

Somatic Experiencing

Somatic Psychotherapy helps us track what is going on, identify why it might be happening (if it needs us to know), and find the just right way for that fight-flight-freeze energy to move through and out of you so that your body no longer is holding onto the physiological memory of a specific or ongoing event/experience.

Let Us Help You

My job is not to erase what has happened to you. Instead, we will honor how your parts have kept you alive all these years, and we will provide them with the ability to finally take a nap, and experience trusting that you will be okay, that other parts are watching and nurturing and ensuring you are good, you are safe, you are loved. We will be updating how your brain remembers your past, because as you move forward in life, your brain will choose the most adaptive information. Our brain wants to know that we're safe. It actually checks and verifies about 4 times per second. In our work, we'll use a wide range of imagery, movement, body scanning, posture adjustment, talking, and so much more to meet your exact needs as closely as we can to help your brain move in the direction of primed for safety and connection, as Daniel Siegel calls "earned secure attachment."

You May Still Have Questions About Trauma Therapy...

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How long will it take for me to feel better?

It depends. Now that I've moved into offering Intensive Weekends for Trauma Recovery, I know it's possible for huge life shifts to happen in hours to a few days time. And, in the weekly 50-minute rhythm of therapy, my hope is that multiple times in each session there is a breath or stretch or thought that pops up that feels a little better than when you came in. For single event trauma, we might work intentionally and with a narrow focus for several weeks or a few months. For a lifetime of small-t traumas, we might work for 6 months to multiple years to a point where while it feels weird for us to stop working together because I've seen so much of your life at that point, when you do leave therapy, your life is one that you could not have imagined possible when we first began. You're confident, assertive, setting boundaries, connecting deeply with friends, and you understand how to navigate your family relationships without feeling like you're a kid every time you go home. You're sleeping well, exercising, and balancing a social life, work, and solo time as well. Whatever your dream is for after therapy, a version of it is possible, and we will find it together as we listen and attune to what arises in our work.

What if I don't feel comfortable telling you what happened or I don't remember?

That is 100% okay. I have heard this said many ways in different trainings. Some experts say we don't need to know anything about what we're working on, just that there is change happening. I ask for a snippet, and whatever that means for you that feels safe and perhaps even good to share, to have someone listen with care and interest, I'm all heart ears open. And whatever stays quiet inside, that's okay too.

As someone who freezes and loses my voice on occasion, I might check in if you're trying to share and if there's another part that is scared of what might happen if you say the thing, like if that would make it seem real again in the present. My checking in doesn't mean you have to share, I just want to get to know what/who is deciding what and what not to share.

Can Therapy provide relief for my physical pain too?

Yes, mostly. When you have a diagnosed physical ailment with a structural explanation for the pain, we cannot make a broken bone or a clogged artery heal themselves through therapy, and we cannot cure an Autoimmune Disease. However, we can work to reduce the physical pain that is caused by the anxiety and frustration towards the primary pain.

And, if there is no known reason for your physiological pain, then perhaps it is stuck fight-flight-freeze energy, in which there may be a major reduction in symptoms such as less bloating, milder to no headaches, reduced insomnia, return of appetite, weight loss if the gain was a protective strategy.

We'll be open and curious, and when something becomes clear, we'll gently work with whatever shows up as it is willing and able.

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