TRAUMA-FOCUSED THERAPY · CALIFORNIA
A simple path to beginning
trauma-focused care.
Getting started is often the hardest part. We offer a clear intake process for adults and couples across California who are seeking trauma treatment through EMDR, Brainspotting, somatic therapy, IFS, and attachment-based care.
Getting Started
Trauma-informed therapy in California, explained from the first call to the first session.
Heal The Hurt is a trauma-specialized therapy practice serving adults, teens, and couples across California via secure telehealth. Trauma is our clinical depth, but it is not our only territory. Many of the clients who come to us are not arriving with a defined trauma history. They are working on personal growth, relationship patterns, anxiety, identity, life transitions, perfectionism, grief, or the quieter forms of hurt that do not always come with a name. The work of trauma therapy demands a particular set of skills, including clear-eyed attention, nervous system literacy, and close attunement to what the body is communicating. Those same skills make for stronger therapy in any context.
Choosing a therapist is its own kind of work, and you should not have to do it in the dark. Before you commit to a first session, you deserve clear answers to the practical questions: what it will cost, whether your insurance covers it, what to expect on the first call, how online therapy actually works. Below is the information that often gets buried elsewhere or implied rather than stated. We have written it plainly so the logistics never become the thing that keeps you from beginning.
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The first step is a free 15-minute phone consultation. You will not be put through a sales process or a screening questionnaire. You will speak with a member of our intake team who is trained to listen for what you are actually telling us, ask the practical questions on your behalf, and help you understand whether our practice is the right shape for what you need. You can share as much or as little as feels right. You can ask anything you want to know: about EMDR, about telehealth, about whether your insurance will cover this work, about the clinicians we are considering matching you with. There is no commitment at the end of the call. If we are not the right practice for what you are working on, we will tell you, and where we can, we will point you toward where to look next.
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You can request a consultation by submitting our online contact form or calling (818) 570-0721. Our intake team will ask a few simple things about what is prompting you to seek care, which insurance you carry, and when you are typically available, then book your consultation call at a time that fits your schedule. Most consultations are scheduled within one to three business days of inquiry. After the call, if the fit feels right, we will schedule your first full session and walk you through everything you need to know before it begins.
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We are in-network with sixteen insurance providers across California. For most clients who reach out to us, therapy at Heal The Hurt is covered by insurance:
Aetna
Cigna
First Health
HealthNet
HMC HealthWorks
Magellan
MHN
Molina
Optum
Oscar Health
TriWest CCN
TriCare
UMR
United Behavioral Health
UnitedHealthcare
Uprise Health
If your plan is not listed above, we can provide a superbill, which is an itemized statement of services that you can submit to your insurance provider for potential partial out-of-network reimbursement. Coverage levels, copays, and deductibles vary widely from plan to plan and from clinician to clinician, so we verify your specific benefits before your first session. You will know what your sessions cost before you walk into the work.
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Sessions are 50 minutes.
Individual Therapy $175 per session
Couples Therapy $225 per session
Every clinician on our team is a master's-level mental health professional, credentialed through the California Board of Behavioral Sciences, specialized in trauma-focused care, and supported by a structured clinical team that includes senior staff supervisors. We operate as a team-based practice. Your care is shaped not only by your therapist's clinical perspective, but by the consultation, supervision, and ongoing development that runs through the entire practice. This is how we hold the quality of the work consistent across the team.
Sliding-scale fees are available based on financial need. We hold a small number of reduced-fee slots open across the practice to keep specialized care accessible to clients for whom full-fee therapy is not workable. Sliding-scale availability varies by clinician, so ask about it during your consultation call.
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Payments are processed securely through Ivy Pay, a HIPAA-compliant payment platform built specifically for therapy practices. Major credit cards, debit cards, and HSA/FSA cards are accepted. Insurance copays are charged automatically following each session, and private-pay and sliding-scale clients are billed the same way. No paper invoices, no manual follow-up, no awkward billing conversations at the start of the work.
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Online therapy is the foundation of our practice. All sessions are conducted via SimplePractice, a secure, HIPAA-compliant telehealth platform. You will need a private space, a stable internet connection, and to be physically located in California at the time of your session. (California law requires that the therapist be licensed or registered in the state where the client is physically present.)
Telehealth has been the exclusive modality of our practice since 2020. It is not a workaround. It is the format our clinical work is built around, and every clinician on our team is specifically trained to deliver therapy, including specialized modalities like EMDR and Brainspotting, in this setting. For clients in Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, the Bay Area, Sacramento, Orange County, the Central Valley, the Inland Empire, the North Coast, the Eastern Sierra, and everywhere in between, virtual therapy makes specialized care available regardless of distance from a metropolitan center. For many clients, being in their own resourced environment is also a clinical advantage: less activation, fewer logistical barriers, more consistent attendance, and the option to return to their own grounded space the moment a session ends.
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The first four sessions are a structured assessment period. During this window, we gather detailed clinical information about your history, current symptoms, and goals; we collaboratively build a personalized treatment plan; and we honestly evaluate whether our practice is the right setting for the work you are doing.
This window exists as a clinical commitment to honesty. It gives us time to determine whether telehealth is the appropriate modality for your situation, whether the practice is the right fit for what you are working on, and whether a different level of care, such as intensive outpatient, residential, or psychiatric consultation, may be a better starting point. It is also where you get a meaningful look at whether your matched clinician feels right to you. If after the first few sessions the connection is not working, you can request a rematch within the practice without explanation. The work is too important to spend it in a pairing that is not serving you.
What we are committed to is helping the people who come to us, not gaining clients. When the assessment period reveals that the support you need is better offered somewhere else, we will tell you, and we will help you find a trusted clinician or program in our professional network that more closely matches what you are working on. The goal has always been your wellbeing, whether that wellbeing is best served inside this practice or somewhere else.
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We ask for at least 24 hours' notice if you need to cancel or reschedule a session. Cancellations made with less than 24 hours' notice are billed a $135 fee to the card on file.
Life is unpredictable, and we know it. If you are facing a genuine emergency, contact your clinician or the intake team and we will do our best to accommodate the situation. The policy is in place not to punish missed sessions but to keep the schedule honest for the entire practice and to make sure other clients can access the appointment times they need.
Frequently Asked Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
Before You Start
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No. While trauma is the clinical area in which our team has the deepest training, it is not a prerequisite for working with us. Many of our clients come for support that is not labeled as trauma: relationship patterns, anxiety, life transitions, identity work, grief, perfectionism, burnout, family-of-origin material, and the quieter forms of pain that do not have a clear story behind them.
What makes trauma-specialized care valuable for clients without a defined trauma history is the same thing that makes it valuable for clients who do. The skills the work requires (nervous system literacy, attunement to the body, attention to what the language is and is not saying) translate into stronger therapy for almost any presenting concern. You do not need a diagnosis. You do not need a story. You just need to be ready to begin.
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A meaningful number of our clients come to us after years of previous therapy. Often that work was important and laid groundwork that makes the next layer of work possible. And sometimes the work stalled because the methods being used could only reach so far.
Trauma-specialized therapy is built to address what general talk therapy cannot, which is why it tends to feel different even to clients with significant therapy experience. You are not starting over. You are continuing the work at a different layer.
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The honest answer is that it depends. The variables include your history, your goals, your nervous system's pace of integration, and the type of work you are doing.
Some clients see meaningful change in three to six months. Others stay in care for a year or more, particularly when the work involves complex or developmental material that benefits from paced, sustained attention. Whatever the timeframe, your therapist will discuss it openly with you at the start, and the conversation will continue throughout treatment. We are not a practice that pads sessions. We are also not a practice that promises six-week breakthroughs. We will be honest with you about what your situation is likely to take.
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Our approach is trauma-informed and integrative. Most clinicians on our team work with a combination of evidence-based modalities, including EMDR, Brainspotting, somatic therapy, attachment-based therapy, and parts work, choosing the one that fits the moment and the client. We are not method-loyal. We are outcome-loyal. The right method is the one that opens the work.
We also believe in pacing. Trauma material, and material that has been carried for a long time even when it does not call itself trauma, needs to be approached with the right sequence. Stabilization first. Processing when the system is ready. Integration after. Trying to skip steps is the single most common reason therapy fails to land.
How the Work Happens
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Not in the give-you-the-answer sense. Our role is not to make your decisions for you. It is to help you build the internal capacity to find your own answers and trust them.
That said, we are not silent. We share clinical insight, frameworks, observations, and direct feedback when it serves the work. We will name what we see. We will tell you when something you are doing is moving you away from your stated goals. We will not tell you whether to leave your relationship, change your career, or cut off a family member. Those decisions are yours, and the work is to recover your own knowing about them.
What makes trauma-specialized care valuable for clients without a defined trauma history is the same thing that makes it valuable for clients who do. The skills the work requires (nervous system literacy, attunement to the body, attention to what the language is and is not saying) translate into stronger therapy for almost any presenting concern. You do not need a diagnosis. You do not need a story. You just need to be ready to begin.
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No. This is one of the most common reasons people delay starting trauma therapy, and it is based on an outdated understanding of how the work happens.
EMDR and Brainspotting in particular do not require detailed verbal retelling. The brain processes the material at the level it was stored, which is largely sensory and somatic. You will need to identify the target with your therapist, meaning the memory, feeling, or pattern we are working with, but the specifics can stay inside you. Many clients are surprised to find that meaningful processing occurred during sessions in which they spoke very little.
If verbal processing is what helps you, that is also welcome here. The work is paced and shaped to fit what your system can actually use, not to a one-size protocol.
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Because real therapy unpacks. When you bring material to the surface that has been managed, contained, or avoided for a long time, the system experiences a period of activation as it sorts what it has been carrying. This is not a sign that therapy is failing. It is a sign that the protective structures that have been holding the material in place are loosening.
A good trauma-informed therapist anticipates this and paces the work accordingly. The goal is not to make you feel worse. The goal is to keep what surfaces inside a window your nervous system can actually metabolize, rather than letting it overwhelm you. Your therapist will check in with you regularly about how the work is landing between sessions, and the pace will be adjusted as needed.
If at any point the work feels like too much, your therapist wants to know, immediately. Pacing is not optional in trauma-informed care. It is the work.
Fit and Care
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It happens, and it is not a failure. Fit matters more than almost any other variable in therapy outcomes, and sometimes the only way to find the right fit is to first identify what is not.
If after the first few sessions you feel the connection is not working, tell us. You can request a rematch with another clinician on our team without explanation. The intake team will handle it directly. The work is too important to spend in a pairing that is not serving you.
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Yes. Our clinical team is intentionally diverse in identity, background, and lived experience. Across the practice, we offer affirming care for LGBTQ+ clients (including questioning, non-binary, transgender, and asexual identities), neurodivergent clients, religious and non-religious clients, and clients across racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds.
Identity-affirming care is not a checkbox. It means that your therapist does not require you to explain your identity, your community, or your context in order to be understood. It means that the therapeutic frame can hold the full reality of who you are, including the parts of your life that exist outside dominant assumptions about identity, relationship, family, or healing. If you have specific affirming-care needs, the consultation call is the right place to talk about them, and we will match you with a clinician well-positioned to meet you there.
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Heal The Hurt is for adults, teens, and couples in California who are working through trauma, navigating change, processing relationships, or seeking deeper understanding of how their nervous system, history, and patterns shape their present lives.
Many of our clients carry a defined trauma history. Many do not. Some are returning to therapy after years of previous work. Some are starting for the first time. What our clients have in common is not a particular diagnosis or experience. It is a willingness to do the actual work, supported by a clinician with the training to hold it well.
We work with adults across the life span, with teens, and with couples seeking trauma-informed relational work. All services are delivered via secure telehealth across California.
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Yes. Trauma-specialty telehealth is the right container for many people and the wrong container for others, and we say so directly because being honest about scope is the first piece of good care. Many of our clients have one of the conditions below alongside their trauma, and we work with them well. The list describes the cases where the condition itself is the primary clinical focus, and where in-person care, a higher level of care, or a different specialty will serve someone better than we can.
We refer out when the primary presenting concern is:
Children and adolescents. Heal The Hurt is an adult practice. Therapy with minors requires developmental specialization, family-system integration, and in-person modalities that our clinicians are not set up to provide.
Active suicidality and self-harming behaviors. Outpatient telehealth is not the appropriate primary container for active crisis. These presentations need in-person clinical support and often a higher level of care, such as intensive outpatient, partial hospitalization, or inpatient treatment. Once stabilization is in place, trauma processing can begin in the appropriate setting.
Psychosis. Active psychotic presentations need psychiatric stabilization, often medication, and typically a higher level of care than outpatient therapy can offer.
Bipolar I and II disorders. Bipolar mood disorders need psychiatric medication management and mood stabilization as the foundation. Trauma processing layered on top of unstable mood states can be destabilizing. We refer out for primary bipolar treatment and can be a fit downstream once stability is established and trauma is also part of the picture.
Borderline Personality Disorder. BPD treatment typically requires DBT-trained clinicians and the crisis infrastructure that outpatient telehealth is not set up to provide. We refer to DBT-specialty practices.
Dissociative Identity Disorder. DID requires advanced specialized training and a clinical container our practice is not currently set up to hold safely. We refer to clinicians with ISSTD-aligned training.
OCD. OCD responds best to Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), a specific clinical protocol our clinicians are not trained in. We refer to OCD-specialty providers.
ADHD. ADHD primary treatment involves neuropsychological assessment, psychiatric medication management, and ADHD-specific therapy or coaching. We refer out for primary ADHD care and can work alongside an ADHD provider when trauma is also part of the clinical picture.
When we refer out, we make our best effort to recommend trusted clinicians and programs in our professional network. A referral is not a failure on anyone's part. It is what good care looks like.
Telehealth and the Practice
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Yes. The research on telehealth-delivered therapy, including EMDR and Brainspotting, has consistently shown outcomes comparable to in-person treatment. For many clients, telehealth is actually a clinical advantage. It removes the activation of being in a clinical space. It allows you to be in your own resourced environment. It eliminates the dysregulation of travel. It makes consistent weekly attendance possible.
Telehealth has been our practice's exclusive modality since 2020. Our clinicians are specifically trained to do this work in a virtual setting. It is not a workaround. It is the format the practice's clinical care is built around.
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We are a trauma-specialized practice operating as a true clinical team, not a generalist practice with one or two clinicians who happen to have additional training.
Every clinician on our team is selected, trained, and continuously developed in trauma-focused modalities. Our staff supervisors are senior trauma specialists who consult on cases across the practice, which means the work you do with your therapist is informed by the broader clinical intelligence of the entire team. This is not how most therapy practices operate. It is how good trauma-informed care should operate.
The other thing that makes the practice different is the directness of the work. We do not pad sessions. We do not promise breakthroughs we cannot deliver. We tell you what we are seeing in the room rather than working around it. We pace the work to your nervous system, but we do not pace it to your comfort. The intent is for you to leave therapy not just feeling better, but living differently.