Therapy for Trauma and Codependency
Past experiences can stay with us.
Painful experiences can lead to deep-seated anxiety that casts a shadow over your everyday life. Even seemingly ordinary situations feel overwhelming and unsafe.
It becomes difficult to trust others and form meaningful connections, or even trust your own judgment at times.
You’re extraordinarily tuned in to people’s tone of voice and facial expressions. The hypervigilance takes so much energy and just getting through the day is draining.
You wish you could move past all of this for good, but even the simplest things can trigger sadness, anger, anxiety, or dread.
Then the guilt, self-blame, and shame set in. All you want to do is hide away and numb the pain.
Trauma comes in many shapes and sizes. Your experiences are real.
Many of our clients wonder if their experiences count as trauma.
Trauma is not just about a specific event, but about how those events affected us. For example, you and a sibling might have gone through the same experience, but each of you might have responded very differently.
Essentially, traumatic events threaten our sense of safety.
This includes specific traumas like being in an accident, being assaulted, or experiencing war.
Other traumatic experiences can be ongoing (or sometimes even more difficult to recognize), like emotional abuse and childhood emotional neglect.
It doesn’t matter when the events happened. Things that happened decades ago can feel like a fresh wound.
Healing is possible.
Trauma-informed therapy can help you build a sense of agency, rebalance your nervous system, and get your life back.
It’s time to take care of yourself.
Childhood trauma and emotional neglect can also result in patterns of codependency.
It feels like everyone turns to you when they need something. You’re the “nice” one, reliable, always ready to lend a helping hand.
People-pleasing comes naturally and your needs are put on the back burner. Much of the time you don’t know what your needs actually are.
It’s painful to say “no”…the thought of letting people down is terrifying. Your self-worth is tied up in comparison, external validation, and what others think.
Behind the scenes, you feel like a fraud. It feels like you haven’t lived up to your potential in life.
You know you need better boundaries but don’t know how…and you’re afraid that if you do start setting boundaries, your relationships will suffer.
The good news is that therapy works. It’s time to work on your relationship with yourself.
We can help.
Many of our clients aren’t sure if they’ve experienced trauma, emotional neglect, or codependency. That’s a good starting point for therapy.
We specialize in helping people with these issues, whether or not they are rooted in trauma.
Our trauma-informed approach includes tools from CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy), DBT (dialectical behavioral therapy), mindfulness, and psychodynamic therapy.
We’ll use practical tools to help you effectively set boundaries and regulate your nervous system, while digging deeper to explore the root causes of people-pleasing, codependent relationships, and the need for external validation.
Trauma therapy will be challenging and uncomfortable at times. We’ll work on your goals at your pace…and – with your permission and our support – we’ll gently nudge you past your comfort zone. That’s where the transformative work of therapy really happens.
We can also help you figure out if medications would be helpful, along with other things like nutrition, gut-health, supplements, and mind-body practices.
Take the next step toward healing.
Our clients tell us that they’re better able to handle triggers, experience deeper relationships, and feel more connected with their authentic selves.
Our practitioners are available to clients throughout California via our secure telemedicine platform.
All you have to do is reach out.
Set up a free 20-minute phone consultation with our team to see if our services are right for you.