Online Therapy for Trauma in California and Texas
You know what happened. Now you are ready to understand how it is still affecting you.
You may notice that certain situations still bring up strong emotions, that trust feels difficult, or that you keep falling into patterns you thought you had already moved past. Knowing what happened does not always mean your mind and body have stopped responding to it.
You understand the past, but parts of you may still respond as though it is happening now.
You may have spent years trying to make sense of what happened. Maybe you have created distance from the people who hurt you, ended a painful relationship, or built a life that looks very different from the one you grew up in.
And yet something can happen now and bring back a response that feels much bigger than the moment.
A change in someone’s tone can make you feel unsafe. Conflict can leave you wanting to shut down, explain yourself, or fix everything immediately. You may find yourself questioning whether you can trust someone, even when they have not given you a reason not to.
Past experiences can also show up in the way you treat yourself. You may blame yourself for things that were done to you, punish yourself when you make a mistake, or expect yourself to always know better and do better.
You might understand logically that the past is over and still wonder:
Why am I still reacting like this?
Why does this keep coming back?
Why can’t I just move on?
Healing does not mean forgetting what happened. It can mean understanding what developed because of it and learning that you have more choices now.
We can understand what helped you survive and what may no longer be helping you now.
My work with trauma is not about forcing you to revisit everything that happened or asking you to tell your entire story before you are ready.
We begin with what is affecting you now.
Together, we can look at how your experiences may have shaped the way you see yourself, what you expect from relationships, how your body responds when something feels familiar, and the ways you learned to protect yourself.
Some of those responses may have made sense at the time. Staying quiet may have protected you from conflict. Paying close attention to someone else’s mood may have helped you know what was coming. Taking responsibility for everything may have helped you feel some sense of control.
The question becomes whether those same responses are still serving you today.
As we understand those patterns, we can work on helping you notice when the past is influencing the present, regulate when you feel activated, respond to yourself with more compassion, and make choices based on what is happening now rather than what you once had to do to protect yourself.
Family and culture are part of the conversation too.
For women of color and Haitian women, making sense of trauma can also mean making sense of the family and cultural messages surrounding what happened.
You may have learned that family matters stay private, that respecting an elder means not questioning them, or that acknowledging something painful means you are being ungrateful for everything your family did for you.
There can be room for more than one truth. You can understand where someone came from, recognize what they sacrificed, or value parts of your culture while also acknowledging what hurt you.
Therapy with me is not about telling you what you should believe about your family or your culture. We can put your experiences into context, understand how they affected you, and decide what you want to carry forward.
As a Haitian therapist, I can also help place some of these experiences within Haitian cultural context. Therapy is available in English and Haitian Creole for clients in California and Texas.
The approaches I may use
Trauma informed CBT
DBT skills for emotion regulation and distress tolerance
Mindfulness and grounding
Psychoeducation about anxiety, trauma responses, and the nervous system
Values exploration
Inner child and parts informed reflection
The tools we use will depend on what you are experiencing and what makes sense for you.
What getting started looks like
1. Start with a 15 minute consultation
We will briefly talk about what you are looking for support with, answer questions about working together, and determine whether my practice may be a good fit for your needs.
2. We begin with what is affecting you now
Your first sessions give us time to understand what has been showing up in your life, what feels difficult, and what you want to change.
3. We begin connecting the past and the present
As we continue meeting weekly, we can begin noticing how past experiences may be connected to your current thoughts, emotions, relationships, beliefs, and protective responses.
From there, we work on helping you respond differently, build greater self trust, and create more room for the life and relationships you want now.
Questions about therapy for Trauma
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No. You do not have to tell your entire story at once or share details you are not ready to discuss. We can begin with what is affecting you now and move at a pace that allows you to stay engaged in the work without feeling pressured to disclose more than you are ready for.
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Yes. Past experiences can influence what feels safe, how easily you trust, how you respond to conflict, and what you expect from other people. Sometimes something happening in a current relationship can activate emotions or protective responses connected to an earlier experience. Part of therapy can be learning to recognize that connection without assuming every reaction is only about the past.
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Insight is important, but understanding something intellectually does not automatically change an emotional or nervous system response. Our work can include both understanding why the response developed and practicing different ways of responding when it shows up now.
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Self blame can sometimes develop as a way of trying to make sense of an experience or regain a sense of control. In therapy, we can look at where that blame comes from, what responsibility actually belongs to you, and how to begin relating to yourself with more self compassion.
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There is no predetermined timeline. The length of therapy depends on what you experienced, how it is affecting you now, what you want to work through, and how the work develops over time. We will continue talking about your progress and what you need as therapy moves forward.