THERAPY FOR
Complex Trauma & PTSD
Do you feel like past trauma still lives in your body—showing up as flashbacks, shutdowns, or patterns you can’t escape?
Trauma is not “all in your head.” It’s a whole-body, nervous-system experience. When something overwhelming happens—whether it’s a single event or years of repeated stress—the body’s natural survival systems (fight, flight, freeze, fawn) can get stuck in overdrive or shut-down completely.
We also live in a world that often dismisses trauma or shames survivors. That lack of cultural and relational safety can make you feel isolated, broken, or like you’re “too much.” The truth? You are not broken—you adapted. Those adaptations might be painful now, but they are evidence of your resilience.
Everyone’s experience looks different, but common signs of trauma include:
- Flashbacks, nightmares, or intrusive memories
- Feeling on edge, hypervigilant, or easily startled
- Emotional numbness, disconnection, or shutdown
- Difficulty trusting others, or repeating toxic relational patterns
- Chronic shame, guilt, or feeling “damaged” or “broken”
- Avoidance of places, people, or experiences that trigger you
- Overwhelm or panic when reminded of the trauma
- Intense emotional swings—rage, fear, despair
- Struggles with identity, self-worth, or belonging
Why does trauma leave us feeling “stuck”?
Trauma isn’t only the “big” events we usually think of, like accidents or violence. It includes any and all experiences that overwhelm our unique coping capacities—moments of neglect, emotional abuse, betrayal, or ongoing stress that the nervous system never fully processed.
Trauma doesn’t just fade with time. When your body and brain don’t get the chance to integrate what happened, the memory stays “frozen” inside. That’s why triggers feel so immediate and intense—as if the past is happening right now.
Factors that keep trauma stuck can include:
- Early life experiences: neglect, abuse, inconsistent caregiving
- Chronic or repeated trauma: emotional abuse, domestic violence, racism, systemic oppression
- Single-incident trauma: accidents, assault, sudden loss
- Lack of support: being dismissed, not believed, or having no safe place to process
- Cultural shame: messages that you should “just get over it,” leaving you feeling alone with your pain
HOW THERAPY CAN HELP
You can’t erase the past—but you can transform your relationship with it.
Healing trauma is possible. It isn’t about forgetting the past, but about reshaping how you view it in the present—so you can feel grounded, safe, and whole again.
With the right support, trauma is highly treatable. Therapy helps calm the nervous system, integrate overwhelming memories, and release the shame and self-blame that keep you stuck. Over time, you can build new patterns of safety, resilience, and connection.
Therapy offers both immediate relief—tools for regulation, grounding, and coping in the moment—and deeper, long-term healing that changes how you carry your past within you.
Together, we’ll work to:
- Create a sense of safety—both in your nervous system and in relationships
- Process traumatic memories so they no longer hijack your present day
- Understand and gently update survival patterns (fight, flight, freeze, fawn)
- Rebuild trust with yourself and others
- Work through shame and self-blame, replacing them with compassion
- Reclaim parts of yourself that were silenced or lost in trauma
- Strengthen resilience and capacity for joy, intimacy, and meaning
HOW WE APPROACH COMPLEX TRAUMA & PTSD
Trauma isn’t just what happened—it’s how your nervous system had to adapt.
At Moongate Therapy and Wellness, we take a holistic, trauma-specialized approach that explores not only what happened, but how your nervous system adapted in order to survive. Trauma isn’t a flaw or disorder—it’s your body’s protective system doing its best in the face of overwhelm, whether that was a single event or the buildup of adverse experiences over time. Together, we’ll look at the full picture—your nervous system, relationships, identity, and environment—to understand what your trauma responses need in order to heal.
During our work together, we may use a range of modalities, keeping your therapeutic goals and preferences at the forefront. Depending on your unique needs and experiences, together, we’ll draw on methods such as: