Trauma Therapy in Atlanta
Body-based, unhurried, and you are never required to tell the whole story
Trauma is not only what happened. It is what your nervous system had to become in order to survive it, and what it is still doing years later when the danger has gone and the response has not.
That is why insight alone so often falls short. People arrive able to explain their history clearly and accurately and still find their body reacting as though none of that understanding registered. Understanding and safety live in different systems.
The work here is body-first and paced deliberately slowly. You will not be pushed into reliving anything to prove it is being addressed, and you do not have to narrate the worst of it for this to work.
This May Sound Familiar
- You react to something small and the size of the reaction surprises you afterwards
- You are either braced and scanning or numb and far away, with not much in between
- You can describe what happened calmly and your body clearly disagrees
- Sleep, startle or appetite have never fully settled
- You have been told what happened to you was not that bad, sometimes by yourself
- Something is running underneath the anxiety or the burnout that talk therapy has not reached
There is no threshold your experience has to clear before it counts. What matters is the effect it is still having.
What We Work On
Stabilising first
Before anything else, enough regulation and enough resource that the work does not overwhelm you. Rushing this is the most common way trauma therapy goes wrong.
Somatic Experiencing
Working with the survival response still held in the body, in small deliberate pieces, so the nervous system can finish what it never got to complete. Slow is not a limitation here, it is the mechanism.
Parts and protectors
Internal Family Systems gives us a way to meet the parts that formed to keep you safe — the vigilant one, the numb one, the one that gets there first — without declaring war on any of them.
Developmental and relational trauma
When it was not one event but a long climate. Often harder to name precisely because there is no single incident to point to, and no less real for that.
Trauma and neurodivergence together
Many neurodivergent adults carry trauma from years of being misread, corrected and made to mask. These get tangled, and separating what is trauma from what is wiring is a real and useful part of the work.
Getting your range back
The aim is not only fewer symptoms. It is a wider band you can live inside, where feeling something does not immediately mean losing your footing.
How I Work
Somatic Experiencing and Internal Family Systems are the core, supported by experiential and person-centered work. The common thread is that we follow your system rather than a protocol, and we stop well before you are overwhelmed rather than after.
You are in charge of the pace and you can stop at any point without justifying it. Sessions are unhurried by design. The room has fidgets, adjustable lighting, and no expectation that you arrive composed.
Common Questions
- Will I have to talk about what happened in detail?
- No. Somatic work does not require a full retelling, and detailed narration is not what makes trauma therapy effective. Much of the work happens through what your body is doing now. You choose what you say and when.
- Do you offer EMDR?
- I work primarily with Somatic Experiencing and Internal Family Systems rather than EMDR. Both address trauma held in the body rather than treating it as purely a thinking problem. If EMDR is specifically what you want, I am glad to refer you.
- What if I do not think it was bad enough to count?
- That thought is one of the most common things said in a first session, and it is not a reliable measure of anything. Trauma is defined by the effect on your nervous system, not by comparison with someone else. If it is still shaping how you live, it is worth attention.
- Is this safe if I am already stretched thin?
- That is exactly why the stabilising phase comes first. We do not open anything before there is enough resource to hold it, and if a given week is not the week for it, we say so and work with what is in front of us instead.
- Do you diagnose PTSD, or prescribe?
- No. I am an Associate Professional Counselor, so I do not conduct formal psychological assessment or testing, and I do not prescribe medication. Trauma therapy does not require a diagnosis to be useful, and I am glad to work alongside a prescriber or refer you to one if that would help.
- Do you offer sessions online?
- Most sessions are in person at my Atlanta office, which tends to build the strongest working relationship. I also offer online sessions across Georgia when that fits your life better.
- How do we start?
- With a free 15-minute consultation. It is a short, low-pressure conversation about what is going on and whether working together makes sense. Nothing is committed to on that call.
Start With a Free Consultation
Fifteen minutes, no cost, no pressure. We talk about what is going on and whether working together makes sense.