6-Week Psychoeducational + Experiential Group
Complex PTSD Foundations
You can understand a great deal about why you respond the way you do and still find your body reacts before that understanding can help.
A 6-week psychoeducational and experiential group for adults who have Complex PTSD, wonder whether CPTSD may fit their experience, or recognize patterns associated with prolonged or repeated trauma. No diagnosis required. No detailed trauma disclosure required.
You don't have to already know whether CPTSD is the right name for what you've been experiencing.
Some people already know Complex PTSD is part of their story. Others have never been given that language and are simply wondering why certain patterns keep showing up.
Complex PTSD Foundations is a six-week group that makes room to learn about CPTSD and the survival adaptations that often come with it, without asking you to decide beforehand that CPTSD is definitely your diagnosis, and without requiring you to tell the details of what happened to you.
Understanding something intellectually matters. It just isn't always the whole job. This group exists for the gap between knowing and change, the place where your body, your emotions, your relationships, and your protective responses can react before your insight can catch up.
You don't have to already know whether CPTSD fits
This group may be appropriate for adults who have been diagnosed with or identify with Complex PTSD, who wonder whether CPTSD may help make sense of their experience, or who recognize patterns commonly associated with prolonged, repeated, relational, developmental, or difficult-to-escape experiences.
You don't have to arrive with a formal diagnosis, and you don't have to be certain CPTSD is the right name for what you've been living through. A brief clinical screening helps us figure out together whether this particular group is a reasonable fit for where you are right now.
Recognizing one or more of the patterns described on this page does not by itself mean you have CPTSD. This page can't diagnose you, and the group isn't a diagnostic evaluation.
Who this may be for
Some people with CPTSD recognize experiences like the ones below. These experiences can have many causes and do not by themselves mean you have CPTSD. You may recognize some, none, or many of them, and you don't need to recognize all of them for the group to be worth considering.
- Feeling chronically on guard even when nothing obvious is wrong
- Moving between activation, shutdown, numbness, or overwhelm
- Understanding patterns intellectually but still feeling pulled into them
- Difficulty knowing what you need
- Feeling responsible for other people's emotions
- Overfunctioning, or carrying more than your share so things stay steady
- Self-abandonment, or setting aside your own needs to keep the peace
- Difficulty receiving support, even when it's offered
- Shame that feels larger than the present situation seems to warrant
- Anger that feels frightening, inaccessible, or hard to understand
- Relationship patterns involving closeness, distance, protection, or fear
- Internal conflict between different needs or protective responses
- Body responses that seem to happen before conscious thought can intervene
If you see yourself in some of this, that's enough to start a conversation. If you're unsure, that's a reasonable place to begin, too.
What this group is
- Psychoeducational and experiential
- Structured and consent-centered
- A place to develop language for experiences and patterns
- An opportunity to practice noticing and regulation
- A place to learn alongside others without needing to tell the details of what happened
- A place to consider what kind of support, if any, may fit afterward
What this group is not
- A diagnostic evaluation or a substitute for individualized assessment
- Intensive trauma processing
- A requirement before trauma therapy or a prerequisite for an intensive
- A place where participants are expected to tell their trauma stories
- A promise that CPTSD will be resolved in six weeks
- Appropriate for every person or every level of care
What the six weeks are like
Complex PTSD Foundations is a closed cohort. Six weeks, ninety minutes each, a small group of adults working the same territory together. Each week builds on the last, so the group is designed to be attended in full rather than dropped into week to week.
Sessions draw on nervous-system regulation, parts-informed concepts, and reflective practice to help you build language and capacity for what you've been experiencing, without pathologizing any of it. This isn't a place to perform your history. It's a place to learn, notice, and practice alongside others who recognize parts of what you've been carrying.
- Six weeks, weekly 90-minute sessions
- Closed cohort, attended in full
- Small group, up to 8 participants
- Psychoeducational and experiential, not group trauma processing
- No required detailed trauma disclosure, no forced trauma narrative
- A brief clinical screening happens before enrollment
The six weeks
Each week has a focus. The aim is language, capacity, and room to notice, not a forced march through your history.
- Week 1 — Making Sense of What You've Been Experiencing: what Complex PTSD is, how it may develop, the difference between experiencing trauma and having CPTSD, common survival adaptations, and why understanding something intellectually doesn't always immediately change an automatic response.
- Week 2 — Regulation Without Performing Calm: activation, shutdown, orientation, grounding, capacity, and pacing. Regulation as increasing flexibility and capacity, not forcing yourself to appear calm.
- Week 3 — Internal Conflict & Protective Responses: competing needs, internal conflict, and protective responses, with parts-informed and ego-state-informed concepts when useful. Curiosity toward protective responses rather than fighting them. This is not formal IFS treatment.
- Week 4 — Attachment, Needs & Relationships: connection, boundaries, difficulty recognizing or expressing needs, overfunctioning, self-abandonment, receiving support, and closeness/distance patterns. How protective responses may show up in relationships, without blaming family members or partners.
- Week 5 — Shame, Anger & the Body: shame, anger, and protective emotions as information rather than evidence that something is wrong with you. Body responses, noticing sensations and cues, and making room for emotions without forcing disclosure. No detailed trauma narrative is required.
- Week 6 — What Kind of Support Fits Next?: integration, what you noticed, what was useful, and what you may want to keep practicing. Recognizing when additional support may or may not be useful, with individualized options and no prescribed next step.
No further treatment is a valid outcome.
After the group: what fits next
Week 6 includes a group conversation about integration and possible next steps. The goal is to help you think clearly about what, if anything, was useful and what might fit next. Nothing here is a required progression.
- No further treatment right now
- Another appropriate group or workshop
- Ongoing individual therapy, when longitudinal support is appropriate
- An Individual Therapy Intensive, when focused individualized work is clinically appropriate
- The women's therapy retreat, when appropriate and eligibility fits
- Outside referral
These options aren't a ladder, and they aren't ranked. Some people find the group is enough for now. Others continue in a different way. Both are real outcomes.
Group safety and consent
You control what you share. Detailed trauma disclosure is not required, and listening is participation. You're allowed to pass, to slow down, and to ask for clarification. Exercises are invitational unless participation is necessary for the basic functioning of the group, and when that's true, it's explained during screening so you can decide before enrolling.
Group confidentiality is discussed and expected. Participants are asked to respect one another's privacy and not share other members' personal information outside the group. At the same time, I can't guarantee another participant will maintain confidentiality in the same way I am legally and ethically required to as your therapist. I want you to understand that distinction before deciding what you want to share.
How screening and fit work
Before enrollment, we'll have a brief one-on-one clinical screening. It's a conversation about whether this particular group is a reasonable fit for where you are right now, not an application you pass or fail.
Screening may consider your current needs, group readiness, appropriate level of care, whether you can participate without detailed trauma disclosure, whether more individualized assessment or support may be needed, and whether another service or an outside referral would better fit what you're navigating.
If something more individual, more acute, or simply different is a better fit, we'll talk about that honestly. The screening exists to protect you and the group, not to gatekeep.
Location and cohort model
Complex PTSD Foundations may rotate between in-person cohorts in San Antonio, Texas and New Braunfels, Texas. There is one page for this group, and the currently scheduled cohort's location will be shown here when dates are confirmed.
- Group size: up to 8 participants
- In-person locations: San Antonio, Texas and New Braunfels, Texas
- Interest list → brief clinical screening → fit review → enrollment
Next cohort: Dates and location to be announced.
Investment and logistics
$525 total for the complete six-week cohort. This is a flat cohort fee, not a per-session charge.
- Six weekly 90-minute sessions
- Closed cohort, attended in full
- Up to 8 participants
- Brief clinical screening before enrollment
- No existing CPTSD diagnosis required
- No required detailed trauma disclosure
- Enrollment: Interest List → brief screening → fit review → enrollment and payment
Full fee details are on our Fees & Policies page.
Frequently Asked Questions
You can understand more about what you've been carrying without having to relive it out loud.
Join the interest list, and I'll reach out personally for a brief screening conversation before the next cohort opens.