Trauma Therapy in Oakland, CA

Most of this happens at once, but it breaks down roughly like this.

Safety comes first, then depth. If your body learned that the world isn't safe, diving straight into the worst thing that ever happened to you doesn't heal it. It just proves the point. So we start by building capacity: your ability to feel what's going on inside without getting swamped or shutting down. This is the nervous system work, and it's where my training as a yoga therapist comes in. Breath, movement, noticing where you're holding, small practices you can actually use at 2 a.m. or before a hard conversation. We go at the pace your body can hold. Going slowly isn't the same as going nowhere.

You don't have to tell me everything. A lot of people put off trauma therapy because they think they'll have to relive every detail out loud. You won't. Body-based work doesn't depend on telling the whole story. We can work with what's happening in you right now, and the story can come at its own pace, or not at all.

I look under the words. The body is honest in ways a story isn't always. I'll notice when you say "it was fine" and your jaw tightens. If you're good at intellectualizing (explaining it all, analyzing everyone, being the most insightful person in the room about your own childhood), I'll cut through that. Not to call you out, but because understanding something and feeling it are different, and the second one is where things start to move.

Your patterns are intelligent. People-pleasing, caretaking, never needing anyone, holding it all together, going numb: none of these are character flaws. Each one kept you safe somewhere that wasn't safe. The problem is they keep running long after they're needed, and they cost you your energy, your relationships, and your sense of who you are underneath them. We figure out what each pattern was protecting, give it credit, and then build other options. I want the shame out and your choices back.

What happens between us is part of the work. A lot of trauma happens in relationships, so a lot of healing does too. The patterns you bring to every other relationship will show up with me: bracing for disappointment, managing my feelings, waiting for me to let you down. That's useful. It means we can work with them live instead of just talking about them, and you get to practice something different with someone who's honest with you and stays.

Energy is practical, not woo. Trauma and feeling deeply tend to travel together. If you're scanning every room, absorbing everyone's moods, and getting wrecked by noise, crowds, or conflict, you've spent a day's worth of energy before you've done anything. So we track it: what drains you, who drains you, what fills you back up. Small changes here can give you real room, sometimes faster than any amount of insight.

The world is in the room too. Not all trauma happens in a family. Racism, class, sexism, religion, and the trauma passed down through generations shape what your body expects and what you believe about yourself. They also shape your actual life: what you have access to, power dynamics you navigate daily, what's safe to say at work. I'm not going to tell you to think your way past oppression. Therapy doesn't fix the world. What we can do is name what's real, sort out what's yours from what was handed to you, and decide how you want to move through it.

And it's not all heavy. This work is serious, but it isn't grim. We'll laugh. Coming back to your body also means coming back to the good parts: playfulness, joy, pleasure, rest that actually rests, being present with people you love.