trauma therapy in Asheville, NC (and what it actually looks like)

You might be here because something happened to you. Or maybe nothing specific happened — but something in the way you relate to yourself or the world feels broken. You might have heard the word "trauma" and thought, that's not me, that's for people who've been through real things. I want to gently challenge that right away.

Trauma isn't a hierarchy. It's not about whether your experience "counts" by some external standard. It's about what happened to your nervous system — how your body learned to protect you, sometimes in ways that now feel like they're getting in your way.

trauma isn't always what you think it is

When people hear the word "trauma," they often picture a single, catastrophic event — a car accident, an assault, combat, a natural disaster. These are real traumas, absolutely. But they're not the only kind, and sometimes focusing on the "big T" traumas makes people dismiss their own experiences.

Small-t trauma is just as real. It's the chronic stress of living in a household where you never knew what mood someone would be in. It's the relational trauma of having your needs consistently ignored or punished. It's emotional neglect — being left to figure everything out alone, without support or guidance. It's the accumulated weight of feeling unsafe in spaces where you should have felt safe.

It's also the trauma of repeated losses, of being disappointed by people who mattered, of living in a body that doesn't feel like yours. Trauma can be one moment or a thousand moments. It can be something that was done to you, or something that wasn't done for you.

What all of these have in common is this: your nervous system registered a threat or an overwhelming experience, and your brain and body learned coping strategies to keep you alive. Those strategies made sense at the time. They still make sense in some ways. But now they might be showing up in places where you don't need them — and that can feel exhausting, confusing, or painful.

how trauma shows up (even years later)

Trauma doesn't always announce itself clearly. You might not have flashbacks or nightmares. You might not feel triggered in obvious ways. But you might notice other things — the kinds of things that make you wonder if something is actually wrong with you, or if you're just too sensitive, or broken somehow.

You might feel disconnected from your body. Like you're watching your life happen from the outside, or like you can't quite feel what you're supposed to feel. You might notice that your reactions sometimes feel disproportionate to what's actually happening — snapping at someone who didn't mean anything by it, freezing when something reminds you of the past, feeling a wave of panic that doesn't quite make sense.

You might struggle with trust. Trust in other people, or even trust in yourself — your gut feelings, your decisions, your ability to keep yourself safe. Hypervigilance can become your default state — staying alert for danger, scanning situations before you're even fully present in them, struggling to relax even when you're safe.

You might experience numbness that puzzles you. An inability to feel joy the way other people seem to, or to connect emotionally even when you want to. You might feel like the past is somehow still present — not as a memory, but as a present-tense threat. You might have trouble sleeping, or feel pain in your body that doctors can't quite explain.

You might notice patterns — the same kinds of relationships, the same kinds of situations, the same endings. Sometimes trauma shows up as people-pleasing or fawning — a learned way of keeping yourself safe by managing other people's emotions. Sometimes it shows up as relationship anxiety, the constant bracing for loss. You might feel stuck in ways you can't quite articulate. You might be successful on paper but feel fundamentally unsafe inside yourself.

None of these things mean you're broken. They mean your nervous system is working exactly the way it was designed to work — protecting you. The work of trauma therapy is helping that nervous system learn that you're safe now, and that it doesn't have to work so hard.

what trauma therapy actually involves

If you've ever heard about trauma therapy, you might imagine sitting in a chair while a therapist asks you to talk about the worst thing that ever happened to you, over and over, until it stops hurting. That's not what we do — and I want you to know that from the start.

Effective trauma therapy isn't about dredging up the past endlessly. It's about helping your nervous system process what it couldn't process at the time. It's about moving from a state of something is happening to something happened. That's a completely different thing.

When you experience something overwhelming — whether it's a single event or a long pattern — your brain sometimes gets stuck trying to make sense of it. The memory doesn't file away properly. It stays active, present-tense, threatening. Trauma therapy helps your brain finish the job it was trying to do.

One of the main approaches I use is EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing). EMDR sounds mysterious if you've never heard of it, but it's actually quite elegant. It involves focusing on a memory or a core belief while your eyes move back and forth in a specific way. This bilateral stimulation helps your brain process information more efficiently — the same way it does during REM sleep. You're not going to relive the trauma over and over. You're working with the memory in a different way.

I also use somatic approaches — meaning we work with your body directly. Trauma lives in your nervous system, not just your thoughts. Your body holds information, and sometimes the most healing work happens when we help your body understand that it's safe. This might involve noticing where you hold tension, what happens when you slow your breathing, how your body wants to move or express things.

Internal Family Systems (IFS) is another tool I use, especially when you have different parts of yourself that feel like they're in conflict. One part of you might want to be close to people, while another part is terrified of being hurt. One part knows what happened wasn't your fault, while another part still carries shame. These aren't problems — they're how you survived. IFS helps these different parts come into dialogue instead of fighting each other.

Here's what matters: we work at your pace. You are always in control. You're not going to be forced to relive anything. You don't have to know what to call what happened before we start. The goal isn't to forget — it's to integrate. It's to help your nervous system understand that the threat has passed, and that your survival strategies can soften.

my approach to trauma work

I've been doing trauma work for years, and every client who comes to me teaches me something new. What I've learned is that trauma-informed care isn't just a buzzword — it's a fundamental shift in how I show up with you.

Being trauma-informed means that your nervous system leads the pace, not a protocol. It means I'm paying attention to what's happening in your body right now, not just what you're telling me. It means I believe you — about what happened, about how it affected you, about what you need. It means I'm curious about your resilience, not just your pain.

I offer extended sessions for deeper processing. Sometimes seventy-five minutes or two hours makes a real difference when you're working with trauma. It allows us to go deeper, to track what's happening in your nervous system more carefully, to do the work without feeling rushed.

I work with complex trauma — the kind that often comes from relational patterns, childhood experiences, or long-term stress. I work with relational trauma — the ways that our closest relationships can wound us, and how healing in a safe relationship can help us mend. I have particular experience with high-functioning people who look fine on the outside but feel fragmented inside — people who are successful in their careers but struggle with intimacy, or who achieve their goals but can't seem to enjoy them.

Trauma often travels alongside anxiety and OCD. It's not unusual to work through trauma and watch anxiety shift. It's common for intrusive thoughts to soften as your nervous system feels more regulated. I have deep experience with these intersections.

who I work with

I work with clients throughout North Carolina, from the mountains to the coast — all virtual, all the time. I work with adults and teens age 16 and up.

I'm particularly drawn to working with people carrying complex or developmental trauma. I work with people in helping professions — therapists, teachers, social workers, nurses — who often put everyone else's needs first and struggle to access their own. I work with people who feel like they have everything on the outside and emptiness on the inside. I work with people who feel stuck in familiar patterns and can't quite break the cycle.

If any of this resonates with you, I'd like to meet you.

you don't have to be in crisis to start

Maybe you're here because something just happened, and it shook you more than you expected. Maybe you're here because you've been carrying something for years and finally decided you're tired of carrying it alone. Maybe you're here because a friend suggested it, or because you recognized something in yourself that you couldn't name before.

Whatever brought you here — that's enough. You don't have to have it all figured out. You don't have to know what to call what happened. You don't have to be in crisis or have a official diagnosis. You just have to know that something feels off, and you're willing to explore it.

A first session is just a conversation. It's a chance for you to talk, and for me to listen — really listen. To understand what you're carrying. To see if we feel like a good fit. There's no pressure, no judgment, no expectation that you'll commit to anything. It's just the beginning of something, if you want it to be.

You've been carrying this alone for long enough. Let me help you carry it for a while.