Trauma Therapy in Orange County, CA
In person in Anaheim Hills and online throughout California.
Some of it you can name. Some of it you've never said out loud to anyone. No matter what, you can bring it in here.
You are not too much.
I've heard a lot of versions of:
"I'm ashamed to admit..."
"I don't know if you can handle this one."
"My last therapist got really quiet when I brought it up."
One thing about me is that I'm not going to flinch.
I'm also not going to make you tell me before you're ready. We will work together to find the right pace towards the freest version of you.
Bring the messy
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Say it louder
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Bring the messy ☼ Say it louder ☼
Here’s what it might look like now.
Sleep is all over the place
Small things seem to set off big reactions
Your brain will not stop running
Relationships keep hitting the same walls
Nothing feels good enough
You put off the thing, then hate yourself for putting off the thing
You're carrying guilt that doesn't seem to belong to anything specific
You're going through the motions and you're tired of it
No matter what, you can bring it here.How I work
I start by actually looking
A lot of people land in my office after two or three rounds of therapy that didn't work out, or carrying a diagnosis that never quite fit. So before we go anywhere, I want to understand the whole picture: what happened, what you've already tried, what your brain and body are doing now.
We go at your pace, and I mean that literally.
If you want to dive straight into the hard thing, we can. If the idea of talking about it makes you want to cancel this appointment, we start somewhere else and build until it feels possible. Sometimes we go back to the beginning and rebuild from scratch.
I'm not going to promise you a shortcut.
I don't do six sessions and a worksheet. Most of my clients are with me six months or longer, some much longer, because processing trauma is not something you can rush. What I can promise is that you'll know what we're doing and why, the whole way through.
What we might do in therapy.
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EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, which is an unreasonable number of syllables for something that’s actually very useful.
Here's the idea. When something overwhelming happens, the memory can get stuck instead of filed away with everything else in your brain. That's why you can “know” something is in the past but still feel it in your chest, or find your body bracing when nothing is actually wrong.
EMDR using an approach called “bilateral stimulation” which is usually eye movements, tones, or gentle tapping, while we focus on the memory in small, manageable pieces. Basically, it helps your brain finish the processing it didn't get to finish at the time. The memory doesn't disappear. What changes is the grip it has on your nervous system.
I use EMDR to help clients in many ways. Usually to help with either single-incident or complex trauma, but certainly not limited to that. It's especially useful when you already understand your history intellectually and your body hasn't gotten the message. We’ll talk about it together and decide whether it’s right for you.
Currently, I only offer EMDR in person at my office in Anaheim Hills, and not online.
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Brainspotting (weird name, I know) works below the level of talking, which makes it a good fit when the thing you're experiencing has no words attached to it, or when talking about it out loud feels too overwhelming or confusing.
We find a point in your visual field where the feeling sits, and your brain does a lot of the work from there.
Like EMDR it works well in-person but then also unlike EMDR, brainspotting can be offered virtually and it can be paired with talk therapy more fluidly.
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Sometimes what you need is a person who gets it, asks different questions than your friends and family, and most importantly, doesn't need you to perform “being fine”. We’ll talk therapy throughout our work together, both on its own and alongside other approaches.
My Specializations
Complex Relationship Trauma
Maybe you grew up walking on eggshells. Maybe you were the one who kept everyone else steady. Maybe you learned to say "okay" just to keep the peace, or made yourself smaller so someone else could stay happy. Maybe nothing you said was ever quite the right thing. Or you heard you were "dramatic" for having a completely normal reaction.
Perhaps it was a parent. Or perhaps it was a partner, or someone who crossed a line you never agreed to.
If you spent years managing someone else's moods, that doesn't stop when you move out or the relationship ends. It shows up in who you date, how you handle conflict, how much you apologize, how hard it is to know what you actually want. You can talk about any of it here without judgment, and we can sort out where you want to go next.
Religious Trauma
If you grew up in it, you already know how hard this is to explain to someone who didn't. The guilt that arrives before you've done anything. The sense that your own instincts can't be trusted. Grieving a community, a family, and an entire framework for how the world works, without being allowed to say so out loud.
Maybe you left. Maybe you're still in it (or you’re unsure if you are or not). You don't have to sort that out before you get here. We'll look at it together and go from there.
"I know it's not that bad, but..."
I hear some version of this all the time. "I know this is kind of a nothing burger, but it still gets to me” or “you’re a trauma therapist, so this probably sounds like nothing to you.”
Somehow we've developed a ranking system for our pain, and it's left people feeling like theirs doesn't make the cut. That it's not "big" enough to matter.
I don't use that ranking system. There's no minimum threshold your experience has to clear. If it's affecting you, it matters, and I'll take it exactly as seriously as you experience it.
Bring the nothing burger. Bring anything you've got and we'll go from there.
Ready when you are
Get started with a free phone consult. We’ll talk about what’s been going on and whether I’m the right fit, then go from there.