What Is Trauma-Informed Therapy?

Understanding Trauma-Focused Care and Why It Matters

"Trauma-informed therapy" is a phrase you may have seen in therapist bios or mental health content, but what does it actually mean?

It means that your therapist understands how trauma, whether from a single incident or years of chronic stress, can shape the way you think, feel, connect, and move through the world. And more importantly, it means your therapy will be rooted in safety, choice, and collaboration, not pressure, shame, or judgment.

Trauma Is More Than a Single Event

When we talk about trauma, many people think of war, abuse, or life-threatening events. While those certainly qualify, trauma can also stem from more subtle or cumulative experiences. These may include:

• Growing up in an unpredictable or emotionally neglectful household
• Living in a body that has been marginalized due to race, gender, sexuality, disability, or class
• Experiencing systemic oppression, intergenerational trauma, or historical violence
• Surviving emotionally or physically unsafe relationships
• Navigating chronic stress or medical trauma without adequate support
• Being gaslit, dismissed, or unseen in relationships or environments that should have been nurturing

Trauma isn’t defined solely by what happened. It’s about how your body and nervous system responded when what you needed was care, connection, or protection and it wasn’t available. It often leaves behind rippling effects like persistent anxiety, dissociation, hypervigilance, shutdown, shame, people-pleasing, or feeling disconnected from your body or emotions.

These responses are not weaknesses. They are brilliant survival adaptations that deserve respect.

What Trauma-Informed Therapy Looks Like

Trauma-informed therapy is not one specific technique. It is a commitment to creating an environment of care, collaboration, and empowerment. In a trauma-informed space:

• Safety is foundational. Emotional, physical, and cultural safety are not optional. They are built into every part of the process.
• Power dynamics are acknowledged. The therapist is not an expert on you. We collaborate. You lead your story.
• Trauma responses are honored, not pathologized. Whether you fawn, dissociate, get reactive, or shut down, we explore those responses with compassion.
• Your lived experience is central. Systems of oppression, including racism, ableism, queerphobia, fatphobia, and classism, are not side notes. They are understood as real and impactful forces in your mental health.

What It Means to Be Trauma-Focused

A trauma-focused therapist has not only been trained in understanding trauma but centers it as a core part of the therapeutic lens. In my practice, this includes deep engagement with:

• Attachment theory: understanding how early relationships and environments shaped your sense of safety, worth, and connection
• Nervous system regulation: exploring how trauma shows up in the body through hyperarousal, hypoarousal, or difficulty tolerating emotional states
• Trauma narratives: making space for your story to unfold in your time and your words without retraumatization
• Parts work: exploring internal conflicts or “parts” of self that may hold pain, protection, or beliefs that no longer serve you
• Cultural humility and antiracist practice: recognizing that trauma doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It happens in context. For many people, that includes navigating white supremacy, colonialism, displacement, transphobia, incarceration, or medical 

This work is about more than healing individual symptoms. It’s about restoring connection to yourself, to others, and to a sense of safety in your own body and identity.

How Do You Know If Trauma Therapy Is for You?

You might benefit from trauma-informed care if:

• You feel stuck in survival mode, always on edge, shut down, or overwhelmed by emotions
• You’ve experienced painful or unsafe relationships and notice repeating patterns
• You struggle with boundaries, self-trust, or self-worth
• You feel disconnected from your body, your memories, or your emotions
• You live with ongoing anxiety, panic, depression, or shame that doesn’t seem to respond to surface-level tools
• You carry stories or wounds that haven’t been given space to be heard without judgment

You don’t need a formal diagnosis to seek trauma-informed care. You don’t need to prove that what you went through was bad enough. If something feels unresolved, confusing, or heavy, your story matters.

A Space to Heal in Relationship

In trauma-focused therapy, healing happens not just through insight or coping skills but through relationship. When someone meets you with presence, attunement, and nonjudgment, your nervous system begins to relearn what safety feels like. That’s the heart of trauma healing. It’s not about fixing what’s broken. It’s about reconnecting with what was always worthy and whole inside you.

If you're looking for a therapist who holds space for all of this, who sees the ways systems, identities, and early relationships intersect with your present-day struggles, I’d be honored to meet you.

You don’t need to carry your story alone.

Ready to take the next step?

• Book a free 15-minute consultation
  
  

• Meet our therapists
   

• Learn more about our approach