Complex trauma isn’t the same as one bad thing that happened once. It usually builds slowly, from things that repeated — often in relationships, often starting young — until your whole nervous system rearranged itself around staying safe. That’s not damage. That’s a very smart system doing exactly what it was built to do. It’s just still doing it now, long after it needed to.
Your nervous system decides whether it’s safe to be present before you’ve had a single conscious thought about it.
That’s the polyvagal system at work — the part of you scanning the room before you’ve even sat down. We work with that directly. We’re not here to make you relive the past for the sake of it. We’re here to update what your body learned, so it can finally finish what it never got to finish the first time.
What this actually looks like: talking, yes — but your body’s in the room too, not waiting outside while your brain does all the work. Some DBT skills where they’re useful. And a pace that’s set by what you can actually take in that day, not a script.
You do not need a diagnosis to walk in the door. cPTSD isn’t officially in the DSM yet, though it is in the ICD-11 and it’s absolutely how a lot of people describe their own experience. If you read the description above and thought “oh — that’s me,” that’s more than enough to start with.
This work also covers developmental trauma, dissociation, the kind of anxiety that never quite switches off, LGBTQ+-affirming care, and trauma tied to long-term disability or a workplace injury.
This is psychotherapy, not a magic wand — but it’s an approach that genuinely helps a lot of people feel less at war with their own nervous system over time.