— Clinical specialty
Trauma & PTSD therapy
Are there certain specific memories (an image, a smell, a sound) of a previously terrifying or distressing experience that keeps popping up out of the blue in your mind? Maybe each time you're triggered, it takes you a while to feel yourself again. Do you hold strong negative beliefs about yourself, the world, or other people as a result of your experiences?
If that resonates, trauma and PTSD are core specialties of mine. As a licensed clinical psychologist, I treat them with evidence-based approaches — including EMDR — and we move at a pace that stays in your control.
My approach to trauma & PTSD
Trauma and Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) are not the same thing. Their differences, and which better describes your struggles, are critical to provide targeted, effective, and lasting treatments.
- Through a thorough and collaborative assessment, we will first refine the diagnosis: is it trauma-related, PTSD (acute or chronic), complex PTSD, or something else entirely. These aren't just labels, they are guidelines to better understand your experiences and which treatment approaches will be the best fit for you. We will move at your pace, and you will never be expected to discuss or share anything until you are ready to.
- Understand other areas of your life that trauma and PTSD are impacting. This includes interpersonal relationships, like friendships, romantic partnerships, dating, and family life. Trust, relationship anxiety, communication, anger, and conflict resolution are common areas impacted by trauma.
- Gain shared understanding of what trauma is. This step may seem silly. Trauma = trauma, and you know what you've experienced, right? Unfortunately, there is a lot of incorrect and partially-correct mental health information on the internet, social media, and society at large. I want to help you better understand your experiences from an evidence-based clinical perspective to be able to identify resources and information that are most helpful for you.
- Together, come up with a treatment plan that will reduce or manage your trauma or PTSD symptoms. Possible modalities may include:
- Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR)
- Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT)
- Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET)
- Prolonged Exposure Therapy (PE)
- Trauma-informed Guilt Reduction Therapy (TriGR)*
*TriGR is an evidence-based therapy specifically to decrease guilt, self-blame, shame, and moral injury as a result of an adverse or traumatic experience. If what you're experiencing doesn't sound like typically-described PTSD (or related symptoms) but you experience one or more of the above over a long period of time, you may be a candidate for this therapy.
- Childhood trauma is integrated throughout all my approaches. Childhood trauma includes a singular discrete instance, repeated traumatic instances, poverty and other difficulties, parent-child conflicts, immigration, and numerous other experiences. Your childhood is the foundation of who you are as a person, and we treat it with the level of importance it deserves.
Expertise & training
Trauma and PTSD are core specialties of mine. As a clinical psychologist with a unique background in assessments, one of my expertise involves “differential diagnoses” - that is, figuring out what's what and differentiating one mental health diagnosis from another. I have worked across a variety of settings, including:
- Large hospital systems like Johns Hopkins
- Small community clinics
- Inpatient units
- Outpatient clinics
- Veterans Affairs hospitals
- Specialty clinics/programs like the Moores Cancer Center in San Diego
These settings allowed me to work with individuals across the age spectrum with complex presentations. Taken together, I will bring my expertise and experiences to collaborate with you in not only identifying the underlying causes and issues, but to address them in a methodical, compassionate, and effective manner.
Every person has the right to happiness and fulfillment
Sometimes, we just need a little support, encouragement, empowerment, and accountability to reach our goals.
Take the first step
- There are evidence-based treatments for what you're experiencing.
- There is support to help you work towards the future you envision.
- There is hope and things can change.