Trauma & PTSD
Therapy for adults healing from trauma, PTSD, and the long aftermath of growing up in environments that weren't safe. Sessions are online across Idaho, with in-person sessions in Boise by request.
Most people picture trauma as a single moment. A car accident, an assault, a deployment, something with a clear before and after. That's one kind of trauma, and it's real. But it's not the only kind, and it's not the kind most of my clients walk in with.
The trauma I see most often is the kind that accumulated. Childhoods spent reading the room to figure out which version of you was needed today. Religious upbringings that taught you your instincts couldn't be trusted. Relationships where you learned to make yourself smaller. Identity-based wounds built across decades of small moments rather than one big one. The single-event model doesn't capture this well, which is part of why so many people who carry it have been told they don't really have it.
You can have trauma without having a story that fits the textbook.
What Brings People In
Trauma rarely walks in announced. It shows up as the symptoms it's been producing, often for years:
Hypervigilance, the sense of always being slightly on alert, even in safe environments
Flashbacks or intrusive memories that surface without warning
Numbness, dissociation, or the sense of watching your own life from a distance
Trouble sleeping, or sleep that doesn't actually rest you
Difficulty trusting people, including the people closest to you
A startle response that's bigger than the situation warrants
Anger or shutdown reactions that come out of nowhere
Anxiety or depression that haven't responded to the usual interventions
A sense that something is fundamentally wrong with you that no amount of evidence can disprove
Some of these come from a specific event. Many of them come from accumulated experience. Both are treatable, and the path through them looks more similar than people expect.
What I Work With
I work with adults healing from a wide range of trauma:
Complex or developmental trauma from childhood, including emotional, physical, or sexual abuse and chronic neglect
Religious trauma and spiritual harm
Identity-based trauma, including the long-term cost of hiding who you are, being rejected for who you are, or being raised in environments that treated your identity as a problem
Family-of-origin trauma and intergenerational patterns
Relational trauma from significant past relationships
PTSD from specific events, including accidents, assaults, medical trauma, and other discrete experiences
Many of my clients carry more than one of these at once. That's normal. The work doesn't require neat categories.
How We'll Work
My approach is person-centered and trauma-informed, which means two things in practice. First, you set the pace. We don't dig into anything before you're ready, and we don't push past your window of tolerance for the sake of progress. Trauma work that moves too fast doesn't heal; it re-traumatizes. Second, I treat you as the expert on your own life. I'll sometimes offer a different angle on what you're describing, especially if a frame you've been carrying isn't serving you anymore. But the meaning of your own experience is yours to make, not mine. My job is to ask better questions, sit with what comes up, and help you understand what happened and how it's still shaping the present.
Together, we'll trace the patterns back to where they started. Not to assign blame, and not to relive things gratuitously, but to understand them well enough that they stop running you from the background.
Healing from trauma isn't fast and it isn't tidy. It also isn't endless. Most clients reach a point where the things that used to control them lose their grip, the patterns become recognizable instead of automatic, and the present stops being haunted by the past the way it used to be. That's the work.
Getting Started
Sessions are 50 minutes, conducted via secure telehealth across Idaho, with in-person sessions in Boise available by request. I'm in-network with several Idaho insurance plans, and other payment options are available on request.
If any of this resonates, reach out for a free 15-minute consultation. We'll talk through what's going on, what you're looking for, and whether I'm the right fit.
