Trauma and PTSD therapy across Wisconsin.

Trauma in the clinical sense is broader than the worst case. It includes single events that were genuinely terrible, and it includes the slower, sometimes invisible trauma of a childhood that was not safe to relax inside of. Both leave a print. Both respond to therapy, and both ask for a pace that respects how much the body is willing to revisit at one time.

Most of my trauma work is person-centered first, with trauma-focused techniques folded in as we go. We are not going to spend the first session walking through what happened. The first job is whether you feel safe enough in the room to do any of this work at all. If we get that right, the rest of it tends to follow.

How we work on it

I draw on trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy for clients who want a more structured approach, and on slower person-centered work for clients who need the relationship to be the work for a while before anything else can happen. Most of my trauma clients end up doing some of both.

Pacing is the part most people get wrong on their own. The instinct, often, is to push through and tell the whole story fast. That usually re-traumatizes more than it helps. We will go slower than that, and we will check in throughout.

Your body learned a lesson it has not been able to unlearn yet. That is not a flaw. It is what trauma is.

What this is not

I'm not trained in EMDR. If EMDR is what you specifically want, I can refer you to clinicians who specialize in it. And if you're in active crisis as you're reading this, 988 or an emergency department is the right first step; therapy work can pick up afterward.

What to do next

If trauma work is what brought you here, the next step is to schedule the consultation or intake session. You decide how much to say and how fast.

Schedule a free 15 minutes consult →