In person Tampa/St. Petersburg • Telehealth Statewide
Trauma & Recovery Therapy in Florida
Trauma-informed therapy for PTSD, complex trauma & recovery from narcissistic abuse.
What is "trauma informed" therapy?
Trauma-informed therapy is talk therapy that treats safety and consent as the starting point, not the destination.
It works from the premise that what happened to you shaped how you cope — and that recovery happens at a pace you set, in a relationship where you don’t have to prove or relive the worst of it to be believed.
Many people show up to ur practice braced for one of two things: either a quick diagnosis and a prescription, or a walk back through the worst day of their life.
Some have never experienced building the trust where real understanding can take root and recovery can flower.
Trauma researchers have made the same point for decades: recovery begins with safety and stability, not with excavation.[1] So that’s the order we keep. You don’t have to relive what happened to get help. You don’t have to have it all in words before you start.
How we can help
EMDR. A structured, eight-phase therapy that helps a stuck memory settle so it stops running the present. It’s recommended for PTSD across the major international guidelines — and on its own page we’ll show you exactly where that evidence is strong and where it’s still debated.
Complex and relational trauma. The kind that builds up over years — a childhood, a marriage, a job you couldn’t leave — rather than landing in a single event. The work starts with safety and stability, not with reopening everything at once.
Recovery from coercive control. This is the pattern many people are naming when they say “narcissistic abuse” — the intimidation, isolation, and slow rewriting of what you trust about yourself. We work on your recovery from it; we don’t diagnose the person who did it.
Body-based and movement approaches. For when the trauma lives somewhere words haven’t reached — the tight chest, the startle, the shutdown that arrives before the thought.
Some of these therapies are newer and less settled than EMDR. Some have deep research behind them and some are still emerging. We’ll explain which is which, and why you might consider each.
And you'll never have to explain who you are, or how you love, to do this work. The same practice that does serious trauma care is affirming and sex-positive and won’t flinch — so you’re not spending your first three sessions educating your therapist.
If you’re in crisis
Don’t wait for an appointment. Call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline) right away.
Client Reviews
Sources
- [1] Herman, J.L. (1992). Trauma and Recovery. Basic Books — safety and stabilization precede trauma processing (three-stage model). ↩