Complex Trauma and CPTSD Therapy — Somatic, Arts-Based, Online
Complex trauma comes from repeated harm
It builds inside a relationship you could not leave, over years, where safety kept getting withdrawn and then offered again — a parent who was warm on Tuesday and unreachable on Wednesday, a house where tracking an adult's mood was a daily habit. CPTSD is one name for what that leaves behind.
Most people who find this page have already done the reading. You have a word now, and the word fits, and it has not yet told you what to do on a Thursday afternoon when something small undoes you.
I work with adults carrying that kind of history, over secure video, in California, Illinois, Texas, Washington, D.C., Virginia, and Maryland.
What is complex trauma?
Complex trauma develops from prolonged, repeated harm inside relationships where a person had no realistic exit — childhood neglect, ongoing emotional or physical abuse, a caregiver whose moods governed the household. It differs from a single-incident trauma in duration and in what it shapes. Single events disrupt a life. Repeated harm shapes the person living it.
So the aftermath shows up less as a memory and more as a personality. Hypervigilance that reads as competence. Shame that feels like an accurate assessment. A nervous system that treats closeness as a risk worth monitoring.
Clinicians also use the term relational trauma, and for most of what I see that name is more honest. The injury happened in relationship, which is why it gets renegotiated in one.
Do I have CPTSD?
CPTSD is not in the DSM, so no American clinician can formally diagnose it. The World Health Organization recognizes it in the ICD-11, and the construct comes largely from Judith Herman's work in the early 90s. I say that plainly because people arrive worried that the term is pop psychology and they are about to be humored.
The three clusters usually described alongside standard post-traumatic symptoms: trouble regulating emotion, a persistently negative sense of self, and recurring difficulty in relationships. Read against a childhood that required you to manage an adult, those stop looking like flaws of character.
What matters clinically is that the label changes very little about how the work proceeds. I do not need you to qualify for a category to take seriously that you flinch at a tone of voice.
How I work with complex trauma, and how it runs over video
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I work somatically and through expressive arts, drawing on Brainspotting, somatic parts-work, guided imagery, and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. The sequence matters more than the modality.
Getting resourced first. We do not go looking for the worst of it in week two. Early sessions build capacity — orienting, noticing where your attention goes, finding out whether your body has any experience of settled it can locate on request. For many people with complex trauma this phase is the novel part, and it can take a while.
Working at the edge. Then we approach the material at a pace your system can metabolize, which is slower than your ambition will like. Brainspotting lets us stay with a felt sense without narrating it into the ground. Expressive arts give the material somewhere to go when words arrive too late or too neatly.
Letting relationships change. The last stretch is usually about other people. New boundaries, grief about old ones, the strange disorientation of being treated well and not knowing where to put it.
Over video, a few things turn out to be advantages. You are in your own space, which means we can work with regulation using what is actually around you. I can see your face closely and steadily, often more closely than across a consulting room. For Brainspotting, I guide eye position on screen and it holds up well. For art-making, you keep whatever you make, which matters more than clients expect.
Some sessions we do with the camera off, because being watched while dissociating is its own problem. I would rather adjust the format than ask you to perform presence.
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I hold Accredited Brainspotting Phase 1 training, completed in January 2026, with prior Level 1 and 2 under Georgiana Mora, LCSW. My somatic parts-work training is Levels 1 and 2 through The Embody Lab, drawing on both Internal Family Systems and Somatic Experiencing. My expressive arts training runs through the K Module at The Expressive Arts Institute San Diego, and I completed the qualifying phase of a PhD in Expressive Arts Leadership at The European Graduate School. I teach graduate students at Bastyr University in the Masters of Psychology and Naturopathic Doctor programs, including coursework on the mind-body connection.
Earlier in my career I worked at a Child Advocacy Center as a therapist and family advocate. That work taught me something about complex trauma I would not have learned in a graduate seminar — how early the adaptations start, and how competent they look from the outside.
One thing I notice often enough to name it: the people who describe their childhoods most calmly are frequently the ones whose shoulders come down an inch somewhere around month four, and who then say they had not known they were holding them.
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No. We can work effectively with far less narrative detail than people assume, and in somatic and arts-based work the specifics often stay private to you. I need enough to orient. I do not need a full account.
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Insight and regulation live in different systems. You can know exactly why you brace and still brace. Body-based approaches work on the second one, which is usually what is left after good talk therapy has done its part.
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I hold clinical licenses in California, Illinois, Texas, Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C., and I see clients over secure video in all six. If you live somewhere else, my helpful resources page can point you toward finding a good-fit therapist of your own.
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I am out-of-network by design, with equitable three-tier pricing: $160, $200, or $250 per session. You choose the tier that is sustainable for you. I provide superbills, partner with Thrizer to make reimbursement easier, and the first consultation is free.