About Trauma Therapy
Trauma therapy helps you understand how past experiences are affecting your life today and develop the skills to change what's keeping you stuck.
My Approach to Trauma Therapy
You don't have to walk into your first appointment knowing exactly what's wrong or how to fix it. Maybe you know certain experiences are still affecting you. Maybe you've noticed that you get angry faster than you'd like, have trouble trusting people, or spend a lot of time thinking about things you wish you could forget. Or maybe you just know that something isn't working, and you're tired of trying to figure it out on your own.
We'll start by getting a better understanding of what's been happening and how it's affecting your life. From there, we'll talk about which treatment makes the most sense for you and what you can expect from the process.
Trauma therapy is active. Depending on the treatment, we might examine beliefs you've developed about yourself, work on approaching situations you've been avoiding, or look at how different experiences have shaped the way you understand your life. You'll be learning skills and practicing ways of responding differently, both during our appointments and between them.
And throughout the process, we'll talk about what we're doing, why we're doing it, and how it's designed to help. I don't expect you to blindly follow a treatment plan or just take my word for it. I want you to understand how the work we're doing connects to the problems you came in wanting to address.
I Work with Men Who:
Have memories that disrupt daily life.
Struggle with intimacy or feeling disconnected in relationships.
Use work, alcohol, or distractions to avoid dealing with the past.
Feel like they should have "gotten over it" by now.
Have tried therapy before but didn’t feel like they got real results.
Want practical tools and strategies, not just talking about feelings.
Are ready to do the work, even if they’re not sure where to start.
Feel like they have to keep everything together on the outside while struggling internally.
Avoid their emotions until they come out as anger, numbness, or exhaustion.
Overthink past mistakes and constantly second-guess themselves.
Struggle with guilt, shame, or self-blame about things they can’t change.
Feel stuck in patterns of avoidance that aren’t actually helping.
What Actually Happens in Trauma Therapy?
One of the biggest misconceptions about trauma therapy is that you're going to spend every appointment talking about the worst things that have happened to you. That's not necessarily how it works. Depending on the treatment, we might spend time looking at the conclusions you've drawn about yourself because of what happened, approaching memories or situations you've been avoiding, or making sense of experiences that have been difficult to put into perspective. Some treatments involve talking about what happened in detail, while others don't require that at all. What they have in common is that we're doing something intentional with the information, not just talking about it. You'll know what we're working on, why we're doing it, and how it's supposed to help.
Cognitive Processing Therapy
(CPT)
When what happened has changed how you see yourself.
Sometimes the hardest part of what happened isn't the memory itself. It's what you've come to believe it says about you as a person. Maybe you've decided you're weak, that you should have done something differently, or that you can't trust your own judgment. CPT helps you take a closer look at those conclusions and consider whether they're actually telling you the whole story.
Prolonged Exposure
(PE)
When avoiding what happened has made your world smaller.
Maybe you've stopped going places, doing things, or putting yourself in situations that remind you of what happened. Over time, the list of things you avoid keeps growing. PE helps you systematically approach trauma-related memories and situations you've been avoiding so they no longer have the same control over your life.
Narrative Exposure Therapy
(NET)
When it feels like difficult experiences have followed you through every stage of life.
NET helps you look at your life as a whole, including the good experiences alongside the painful ones. You'll work through your story chronologically, exploring the experiences and recurring themes that have shaped how you see yourself and the world. The goal isn't to find something positive about what happened. It's to put those experiences into context and develop a fuller understanding of your story, including what you want to carry forward.
How long will it take?
Probably not as long as you think.
Unlike traditional talk therapy, which can continue for years, treatments like Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) and Prolonged Exposure (PE) are designed to be completed within a relatively short period of time, often around 8–15 sessions.
That doesn't mean everyone finishes in exactly the same number of appointments. How long treatment takes depends on what you're working through, which treatment we're using, and how things are progressing.
We'll talk about what to expect from the beginning and regularly check whether you're making progress toward the things you came to therapy wanting to change.
Once you've accomplished those goals, you might decide you're ready to wrap things up. Or you might want to continue therapy to explore other areas of your life. Both are perfectly reasonable.
The point is that continuing therapy should be a choice, not something you feel like you have to do indefinitely.
Will This Actually Help Me?
That's a fair question, especially if you've tried therapy before and walked away wondering what you actually got out of it.
The treatments I use have been studied extensively and are among the approaches most strongly recommended for PTSD because they've been shown to help people make meaningful and lasting changes.
That doesn't mean you'll suddenly stop having difficult memories or that things will never remind you of what happened. We can't prevent every reminder of trauma, and that's not really the goal. The goal is to change what happens when you're reminded. Instead of a memory, conversation, or unexpected situation throwing off your entire day, you'll have a better understanding of what's happening and the skills to respond differently.
We'll pay attention to whether things are actually changing for you. Are you spending less time beating yourself up over what happened? Are you doing things you've been avoiding? When something reminds you of what happened, are you able to recognize it, respond to it, and get back to your day without it taking over?
Those are the kinds of changes we're working toward.
Not sure where to begin?
Let’s connect, and together we will determine your best next step.