The danger may be over. Something in you hasn’t gotten that message yet.
You may know you’re safe and still feel yourself brace.
I’m less interested in asking, “Why are you like this?” than understanding what your mind and body learned they had to do to get you here.
Something happened, and you haven’t felt the same since.
Maybe it was an accident, an assault, a medical experience, something you witnessed, or something that happened while you were doing your job.
You may know exactly what happened and still find yourself back there. A sound, a place, a smell, or an ordinary moment brings it close again. Maybe you avoid reminders, wake from nightmares, or notice that your body stays ready for something that is no longer happening.
It wasn’t one thing. It was what you lived through.
Maybe there isn’t one event that explains it. There were repeated experiences, relationships where you couldn’t feel safe, or years of figuring out how to get through.
You may notice it in how quickly shame arrives, how hard it is to trust, what happens during conflict or closeness, or how far away you feel from yourself.
You don’t need to know whether to call it trauma, PTSD, or complex PTSD before we meet. We can begin with what keeps happening now.
Survival doesn’t always look like fear.
Sometimes it looks like being incredibly capable.
A look, a tone of voice, conflict, closeness, silence, making a mistake, disappointing someone, or sometimes nothing you can clearly identify, can bring up a reaction that feels much bigger than the moment you’re actually in.
You might fight it, judge it, explain it, shut it down, or wonder why you can’t just move on.
How this can show up
Vigilance + anticipation
- Always scanning the room.
- Knowing someone's mood changed before they've said a word.
- Needing control because uncertainty feels unbearable.
Conflict + activation
- Going blank during conflict.
- Getting angry before you realize you're hurt.
Connection + need
- Pulling away when you desperately want connection.
- Feeling ashamed after needing anything from someone.
Role + capacity
- Feeling responsible for keeping everyone okay.
- Functioning beautifully during a crisis, and falling apart when it's finally over.
Some people feel constantly activated. Others feel numb, disconnected, or far away. Some move between both.
These experiences can have many causes. When trauma is part of the picture, I’m interested in understanding what your responses learned to protect, and whether they’re still needed in the same way now.
Some experiences began before you had words.
You may not have a clear memory or a story that explains the response. We can pay attention to what happens now without searching for forgotten memories or inventing an explanation.
I also work with early and preverbal trauma. You can read more about that work here.
Early + Preverbal TraumaYour body reacts before you can make sense of it.
Maybe you know you’re safe, but your body is already bracing. Your stomach drops. You freeze, go blank, or feel a rush of emotion that seems much bigger than what just happened.
Knowing why doesn’t always change it. That can be especially frustrating when you’ve already spent years trying to understand yourself.
Deep Brain Reorienting is one approach I use to work with the effects of shock and the sequence of responses that can happen before you can think them through. We slow down and pay attention to what happens in your body, rather than requiring you to explain everything first or push through overwhelming emotion.
My understanding of this work is also informed by Jaak Panksepp’s research into the brain’s basic emotional systems, sometimes called affect circuits. These systems are involved in experiences such as fear, anger, distress when connection is lost, care, and play.
For you, the question may be simpler: Why does this keep happening, and can it change?
That’s something we can work with. The aim is for these responses to become less overwhelming, so you have more room to feel, stay present, and respond differently.
Anger, Rage & Reactivity
You know you don’t want to react this way. Then it happens again.
Maybe anger arrives fast. Maybe you swallow it until you explode. Or the moment ends, but you stay furious—replaying it, arguing in your head, unable to settle.
Early trauma and repeated experiences of being hurt, trapped, dismissed or unable to protect yourself can shape how anger shows up now. We can explore that without assuming your history explains every reaction.
I’m not automatically trying to make you less angry. Sometimes being able to feel anger is important. I want to understand what sets it in motion, what happens in your body, and what experiences still carry enough charge to pull you back there.
We’ll work with what drives the reaction as well as what you do when it arrives. Understanding it doesn’t erase its impact on you or other people. The aim is more choice: room to feel anger, speak plainly and respond without it taking over.
Dissociation
Sometimes getting through something meant not being fully there for it.
Dissociation can look very different from person to person. It may include experiences such as:
Presence + reality
- going blank
- losing track of what you were saying
- feeling far away from your body
- feeling unreal or as though the world isn't quite real
Feeling + age
- having difficulty accessing emotions
- suddenly feeling much younger
Parts + time
- noticing different parts of you seem to want completely different things
- losing pieces of time or having difficulty remembering what happened
Dissociation isn’t something I try to bulldoze through so we can “get to the trauma.”
For some clients, much of the early work is simply building enough communication, orientation, stability, and trust within themselves that deeper work becomes possible, if that’s even what they choose.
If your mind learned how to disconnect for a reason, I’m interested in respecting that reason before asking it to do something different.
What Religious Trauma Can Look Like
For some people, the environment that caused this kind of harm was religious, a church, a community, or a family structure built around faith that used control, fear, shame, or punishment in place of genuine care. That is trauma, held with just as much tenderness here, whatever your relationship to faith looks like now, whether you've left, whether you've stayed, whether you're somewhere in between, or whether you're still figuring that out.
This includes being harmed because of who you are or who you love. If you're LGBTQIA2S+ and have experienced faith-based rejection or conversion efforts, you're welcome here.
You might recognize it as:
Fear + shame
- A persistent fear of punishment or judgment that doesn't fully go away, even years later
- Guilt or shame that shows up faster than you can reason your way out of it
Identity + trust
- Confusion about your own beliefs, worth, or identity, after being told exactly what to think and feel
- Difficulty trusting authority, community, or even your own inner voice
Grief + belonging
- Grief over a loss of community or belonging, even alongside relief at having left something harmful
This work makes room for all of it, without any agenda about what you should believe or where you should land. Your relationship with faith, or the absence of one, belongs entirely to you, never something I'll try to steer, shape, or judge.
Trauma therapy shouldn’t feel like something being done to you.
I don’t believe the goal is to get you talking about the worst thing that ever happened as quickly as possible.
For complex PTSD, especially when significant dissociation is part of the picture, going too fast can do more harm than good. Deeper trauma work needs to be carefully paced around what your nervous system can actually hold, so the work supports healing rather than leaving you overwhelmed or destabilized.
We may spend meaningful time building ways for you to stay connected to the present and understand your responses before we ever focus directly on a specific memory.
When deeper processing is appropriate, I may draw from specialized approaches for complex PTSD and dissociation.
The goal isn’t to see how much pain you can tolerate.
It’s to help enough of you remain here, connected and able to choose, while we work with what no longer needs to keep happening in the same way.
GROUP OPTION
Related Group Options
Complex PTSD Foundations
A six-week, in-person San Antonio group offering practical education, resourcing, and experiential support for adults living with complex trauma patterns. The group does not require participants to tell a detailed trauma story or move into deeper processing before they are ready.
Explore Complex PTSD FoundationsThe After
A virtual group for veterans, law-enforcement officers, first responders, and others navigating identity after leaving a service-based career.
Explore The AfterThe After: San Antonio
A four-week in-person transition group for veterans, former law enforcement, and first responders finding their footing after the role changes. Meets in San Antonio, TX.
Explore The After: San AntonioA PTSD diagnosis is not required for either The After offering, which focuses on identity and transition after service rather than assuming that every participant has trauma symptoms.
If something in you says “no,” I want to know why.
What sometimes gets called resistance makes a lot more sense to me as information.
Maybe something in you doesn’t trust me yet.
Maybe we’re moving too quickly.
Maybe what we’re approaching once felt unbearable.
Maybe saying no is new, and incredibly important.
I’m not interested in winning an argument against the part of you that wants to stop. I want to understand what it’s protecting.
Sometimes “No, Sasha. Not right now.” is progress.
We can slow down without abandoning the work.
The goal isn’t to erase what happened.
It’s for what happened to have less authority over what happens next.
That might look like:
Regulation + reaction
- noticing a reaction without immediately becoming consumed by it
- experiencing anger without being afraid of it
- recognizing what you need sooner
Limits + self-respect
- setting a limit and remaining connected to yourself afterward
- taking responsibility without collapsing into shame
- experiencing more compassion toward the ways you learned to survive
Presence + connection
- staying present during closeness or conflict
- having more choice when an old response appears
- building relationships where connection does not require abandoning yourself
Sometimes change is dramatic. Often it’s quieter.
You sleep differently. Your body doesn’t brace quite as quickly. You realize you said no without rehearsing it for three days. You notice you’re angry and stay in the room. Someone you love tells you that you seem more present.
Those aren’t guarantees. They’re examples of the kinds of changes we may be working toward.
How This Works Over Telehealth
This same careful, paced approach translates fully to virtual sessions. Building safety, working with parts, and doing dissociation-informed work can all happen thoughtfully over telehealth.
Many clients across Texas, Oregon, Washington, and Colorado do this work entirely online, with the same attention to pacing and safety you'd get in person.
Who This Is For
- Adults living with Complex PTSD, dissociative symptoms, or a dissociative disorder
- Survivors of prolonged, repeated, or organized trauma or abuse
- Anyone carrying religious trauma or harm from a faith community
- Anyone who's felt dismissed, rushed, or misunderstood by previous treatment
- People who sense they have "parts of self" and want to understand that experience with care, not alarm
Complex PTSD requires careful work.
Complex PTSD, early trauma, and dissociation aren’t areas where I believe good intentions are enough. This work requires specialized training, thoughtful pacing, ongoing consultation, and the willingness to change direction when what we’re doing isn’t helping.
You don't have to know exactly where this started.
We can begin with what's happening now. A consultation gives us time to talk about what you're experiencing, what you've already tried, and whether the way I work feels like a fit.