When trauma isn't one event — it's a thousand small ones
I didn't understand C-PTSD from a textbook first. I understood it from the inside — and I built my practice around the kind of therapy that actually moved it for me.
Complex PTSD (C-PTSD) develops from prolonged or repeated trauma — often starting in childhood — rather than one isolated event. Alongside typical trauma symptoms, it often includes a harsh inner critic, chronic shame, emotional flooding or shutdown, and difficulty trusting others.
I spent years in talk therapy circling my own C-PTSD — analyzing it, explaining it, understanding it perfectly in my head — and still felt stuck. That's the piece I want you to know going in: insight alone rarely heals this. I had to find therapy that got me out of my head and into my body before real change started. That's the therapist I've built this practice to be for you.
Quiet signs of C-PTSD
A harsh inner critic that's louder than any voice from your past.
Hypervigilance — always scanning for what could go wrong.
Swinging between emotional flooding and going completely numb.
Trusting people feels risky, even when they've earned it.
Chronic shame — a sense that something is wrong with you, not what happened.
Relationships feel like a push-pull between wanting closeness and fearing it.
If several of these sound familiar, you're not broken — you adapted to survive something ongoing. I know, because I lived most of this list myself.
How is C-PTSD different from PTSD?
PTSD is typically linked to a single traumatic incident — an accident, an assault, a disaster. C-PTSD comes from trauma that repeats over time, often during childhood: chronic neglect, an unpredictable or unsafe home, ongoing emotional or physical harm.
Because it happened over and over, C-PTSD doesn't just leave behind fear responses — it shapes how you see yourself and how safe relationships feel. That's why healing isn't just about the memories; it's about rebuilding a relationship with yourself that trauma never let you have.
One thing I notice constantly, both in myself and in clients: your window of tolerance — the zone where you can feel something without shutting down or flooding — gets narrow when you're carrying C-PTSD. Widening that window, gradually and gently, is most of the actual work. It's slower than insight. It's also what makes insight finally stick.
What is your "window of tolerance"?
The zone where you can feel something — stress, fear, sadness — without shutting down or flooding. C-PTSD narrows that zone.
Small stressors push you out of the window fast — into flooding on one side, or shutdown on the other.
What C-PTSD is — and isn't
"It wasn't bad enough to count as trauma."
C-PTSD often comes from chronic, lower-grade experiences — not just dramatic events. Repetition and duration matter more than any one incident's severity.
"I should just be able to move on by now."
C-PTSD lives in the nervous system, not just memory. Insight alone rarely resolves it — the body needs its own kind of processing, which is why we use EMDR and somatic work.
"Therapy means reliving everything that happened."
We build safety and internal resources first. Processing specific memories happens later, gradually, and always at a pace your system can handle.
"My inner critic is just 'how I motivate myself.'"
A harsh inner critic is often a part of you that took on the job of protecting you from further harm. In IFS, we get curious about it instead of fighting it — I still remember the first time I related to my own inner critic this way instead of arguing with it.
"Coping skills mean I'm healing."
Coping skills help you function — they rarely resolve C-PTSD on their own. Deep, trauma-informed modalities that work with the nervous system and your relationship to yourself go further than any skill list.
A pace your nervous system can trust
Healing C-PTSD isn't a straight line, and it isn't just talk. I use the same kind of experiential work that changed things for me: parts work and body-based reprocessing, so change happens at the level trauma actually lives at — not just the level we can talk about.
Stabilize & connect
We slow down and build a felt sense of safety, using Internal Family Systems (IFS) to get to know the parts of you that are protecting, criticizing, or shutting down — widening your window of tolerance along the way.
Reprocess with EMDR
When you're ready, we use EMDR — one foot in the memory, one in the present — to help specific memories and the beliefs attached to them lose their charge.
Integrate & live differently
Old beliefs loosen their grip, and you build new capacity for trust, rest, and connection — checked in on at every step, never rushed.
Let's start with a conversation.
A free 15-minute consultation is a gentle, no-pressure way to see if IFS feels like the right fit for you.
Schedule a free consultationA warm, judgment-free space is waiting whenever you are.