Evidence-based methods, adapted to your nervous system.
No single therapy model works for every person. Your therapist will help identify an approach that fits your history, symptoms, pace, and goals.
Evidence-based trauma therapy methods. Integrated, paced, and matched to the client.
Our Approach
There is no single right way to treat trauma. What works depends on the kind of trauma you are carrying, the structure of the nervous system holding it, the developmental layer where it was laid down, and the pacing your body can tolerate. The modalities below are the ones we use, alone and in combination, because no single approach addresses the full territory of recovery.
Each of our clinicians is trained in multiple modalities and integrates them based on what is clinically indicated for the specific client, rather than running a protocol and asking the client to fit the method. The method follows the client, not the other way around.
All modalities are practiced in trauma-specialized telehealth format and adapted for the realities of remote clinical work. Modality matching happens during the consultation and is revisited as the work unfolds.
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing)
EMDR is one of the most well-researched and clinically validated treatments for trauma and PTSD. Developed by Francine Shapiro in the late 1980s and refined over decades of research, EMDR uses bilateral stimulation, most commonly through guided eye movements, alternating tones, or tactile pulses, to help the brain reprocess traumatic memories at the level it actually stores them: somatic, sensory, fragmented. The memory does not have to be told in full to be reprocessed.
EMDR is particularly effective for single-incident trauma, complex trauma, attachment wounds, and the trauma layers that have not responded to talk therapy. All of our clinicians are EMDR-trained, and several hold advanced EMDR certification.
Brainspotting
Brainspotting was developed by David Grand in 2003 as an outgrowth of EMDR. It uses sustained eye position to access and process material held in the subcortical brain, the part that stores trauma in the body before language can reach it. Brainspotting tends to feel more open-ended and intuitive than EMDR while reaching similar depth. It is particularly useful for clients who have hit walls in talk therapy, who do not respond as well to EMDR's structured protocol, or who carry trauma that is hard to put into words.
Several of our clinicians are trained in Brainspotting and use it alongside or in place of EMDR depending on what the client's nervous system responds to.
Somatic Therapies
Somatic therapies treat the body as part of the clinical conversation rather than just the container that delivers the client to the session. Trauma is not stored only in narrative memory. It is stored in nervous-system patterns, in postural and breath patterns, in chronic muscular holding, in dissociative tendencies. Somatic approaches, including elements of Somatic Experiencing, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, and polyvagal-informed work, help the body process and release what has been stored there.
We use somatic work alone and in combination with EMDR, Brainspotting, and parts work, especially with clients whose trauma sits below cognitive access or whose hyperarousal or shutdown patterns have not responded to talk-based approaches.
Internal Family Systems (IFC)
Internal Family Systems, developed by Richard Schwartz, treats the psyche as composed of distinct parts: the protectors that developed to keep you safe, the wounded younger parts they are protecting, and the core Self that has the capacity to lead. Rather than fighting symptoms or labeling parts of yourself as dysfunctional, IFS works with each part as a coherent voice that developed for a reason and can be invited into a different relationship with you.
IFS is particularly powerful for childhood trauma, attachment wounds, codependency, internal conflict, the parts of you that sabotage what the rest of you is trying to do, and the chronic shame or self-criticism that talk therapy cannot reach by reasoning.
Attachment-Based Therapy
Attachment-based therapy works directly with the relational template installed in your nervous system by your earliest relationships. If those relationships taught you that closeness was dangerous, unreliable, intrusive, or contingent on managing someone else, your attachment system organized around that, and it continues to organize how you approach intimacy, conflict, dependence, and trust in adult relationships. Attachment-based therapy uses the clinical relationship itself as one of the corrective experiences, helping the nervous system update its expectations through felt experience rather than only through insight.
We use this approach alongside trauma processing work for clients whose presenting issues involve childhood trauma, complex relational dynamics, codependency, or repeating patterns in adult relationships that talk therapy alone has not been able to shift.
Psychodynamic Therapy
Psychodynamic therapy works with the patterns that operate below conscious awareness: the ways early relationships and unprocessed experiences continue to shape how you feel, choose, react, and relate in the present. It is depth-oriented rather than symptom-focused, which makes it well-suited for clients who already understand their lives intellectually but cannot account for why the patterns keep repeating.
We integrate psychodynamic framing with trauma-specialized modalities, because depth alone often cannot reach the implicit memory and somatic dimensions where trauma is actually stored. The combination is what makes the work both deep and concrete.
Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT)
TF-CBT is a structured, evidence-based approach to trauma treatment that combines cognitive-behavioral techniques with trauma-specific interventions: psychoeducation, regulation skills, cognitive restructuring of trauma-related beliefs, gradual exposure, and the construction of a coherent trauma narrative. It has been studied extensively and has a strong outcome literature.
We use TF-CBT when a structured protocol is clinically indicated, often in combination with EMDR, Brainspotting, or somatic work to reach the layers that cognitive intervention alone does not address.
Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT)
Emotionally Focused Therapy, developed by Sue Johnson, is the most well-researched approach to couples therapy and is built on attachment theory. EFT helps couples identify the negative cycles they are caught in (often called the dance), reach the emotions underneath the surface conflict, and reorganize their relationship around secure connection rather than defensive cycles. It is particularly effective for couples in chronic conflict, couples whose intimacy has gone flat, and couples recovering from betrayal.
We use EFT in our couples and relational work alongside trauma-informed framing for when trauma in one or both partners is part of what is driving the cycle.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
ACT is a third-wave cognitive-behavioral approach that focuses less on changing the content of difficult thoughts and feelings and more on changing your relationship to them. It works through six core processes (acceptance, defusion, contact with the present moment, self-as-context, values clarification, and committed action) to build psychological flexibility.
ACT is useful for clients who have done significant trauma work and are now organizing the life on the other side, for clients whose suffering is driven as much by avoidance of inner experience as by the original wound, and for clients clarifying what they want their life to be about now.
Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT)
Solution-Focused Brief Therapy concentrates on what is working, what is wanted, and the small concrete steps that move someone toward it, rather than on the analysis of what is broken. It is not the right approach for unprocessed trauma. It is a useful approach when a client has the underlying capacity in place and is ready to focus on specific goals: a workplace transition, a communication shift, a contained relational dynamic, a discrete decision.
We use SFBT selectively and in combination with our depth modalities, because trauma work and brief solution-focused work serve different phases of the same person's growth.