trauma & attachment wound therapy
When Your Past Still Shapes the Present
For adults who are tired of overthinking, holding everything together, and feeling like their past keeps catching up with them.
MAYBE:
There's No Clear "Before and After"
Instead, it was:
The feeling that love was conditional — earned through achievement, caretaking, or staying small
Learning early to read the room, manage others' emotions, or be the responsible one
A family that looked fine from the outside but taught you to hide your needs, stay hypervigilant, or never ask for help
Relationships where you absorbed blame, apologized for things that weren't your fault, or felt like you had to earn your place
You might not call it "trauma" — but your nervous system remembers.
That’s Complex Trauma
Complex trauma can come from what happened repeatedly, what didn’t happen when you needed it, or what you had to become in order to feel safe, loved, or accepted.
Emotional neglect, conditional love, parentification, unpredictability, criticism, or simply not having enough room for your feelings and needs can shape how you see yourself and relate to other people long after it’s over.
And now, you notice:
You keep having the same problems in relationships — overgiving, choosing unavailable people, struggling to trust, or worrying that you’re too much.
You’re hard on yourself even when you’re doing well — there’s always something you should have done better, handled differently, or gotten right.
You can’t fully relax — you’re reading the room, noticing shifts in tone or mood, and bracing for criticism or disappointment.
You say yes when you want to say no — then feel resentful, overwhelmed, or guilty for wanting anything for yourself.
You’re successful, but still afraid of failing — accomplishments don’t seem to quiet the feeling that you could mess everything up.
You understand a lot about yourself already — but knowing why you do something hasn’t necessarily made it easier to stop.
You may have talked about it, read about it, or spent years trying to understand yourself. Sometimes knowing why something happens still doesn’t change what happens in the moment.
What it’s like to work with me
Therapy gives you a place to understand why the past can still hit hard, and then actually address what happens when it does.
We might work on:
Feeling less responsible for everyone else’s emotions
Setting boundaries without spending the rest of the day feeling guilty
Not immediately assuming criticism, distance, or conflict means you’ve done something wrong
Feeling safer being honest about what you need
Catching yourself before you automatically shut down, overfunction, overthink, or pull away
Processing experiences that still feel emotionally present, even when you know they’re over
Trusting yourself more in relationships and decisions
I draw from IFS, Attachment-Focused EMDR, somatic work, and attachment-focused therapy depending on what we’re working with. IFS helps us understand the ways you learned to protect yourself, EMDR can help process experiences that still carry emotional weight, and somatic work helps us include what’s happening in your body instead of relying on insight alone.
What Healing Looks Like
You feel more present instead of numb, detached, or somewhere else.
You're not constantly bracing for the next criticism or disappointment
You can feel anger, fear, or sadness without immediately becoming overwhelmed by it.
You can go places, have conversations, or do things you’ve been avoiding.
You recover faster after being triggered.
SINGLE INCIDENT TRAUMA
What If I Do Have One Clear Event?
Not all trauma develops over time. Sometimes there is one experience you can clearly point to — an assault, accident, medical trauma, sudden loss, or another event that still affects you.
I work with that too.
EMDR can be especially useful when there is a specific memory that continues to bring up flashbacks, nightmares, avoidance, fear, or strong physical and emotional reactions.
Single-event trauma can be addressed through more focused work.
For some clients, an EMDR intensive is a good fit because longer sessions allow us to stay with the work without stopping just as things are getting moving.
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faqs
Complex Trauma & Attachment Therapy
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If you're asking this question, there's probably something worth exploring. Complex trauma isn't about whether your childhood was "bad enough" — it's about how early experiences shaped your nervous system, beliefs about yourself, and ways of relating to others. You don't need to prove your pain to work on healing it.
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That's common with complex trauma. Emotional neglect, chronic stress, or growing up in an unpredictable environment affect you even without discrete "events." We work with what your body and nervous system remember — the patterns, sensations, and beliefs that are still active today.
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No. EMDR and IFS allow you to process trauma without needing to recount every detail out loud. You share what feels important to share. Your system leads the pace.
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It depends on what we're working with.
Complex trauma and attachment wounds aren't single events to process — they're patterns woven into how you see yourself, relate to others, and move through the world.
There are usually multiple wounds, multiple protectors, and layers of defenses that developed over years. Healing doesn't happen by rushing through it. It happens by working at the pace your system can actually integrate.
Most people need at least 6 months to a year to see meaningful, lasting change. Some stay longer because once the crisis symptoms settle, there's deeper work they want to do — and that's where the real transformation happens.
This isn't about keeping you in therapy forever. It's about doing the work thoroughly enough that it sticks.
Single-incident trauma (a car accident, an assault, a one-time event) can sometimes resolve in a handful of sessions — especially if your system doesn't have a lot of protective interference.
Either way we'll check in regularly about whether you're actually moving, whether the work still feels right, and whether we need to adjust our approach. If you're stuck and I can't help you get unstuck, I'll tell you.
The goal is healing at the root — not just symptom management that falls apart when life gets hard again.
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Yes. Healing doesn't require cutting people off (though sometimes that's the right choice). The work is about changing how the past affects you now — so you can show up in relationships from a grounded, boundaried place rather than reacting from old wounds.
A Note From Tana
I come back to this work again and again because I know what it’s like to be capable and feel exhausted by all you’re holding.
Many of the people I work with are responsible, thoughtful, and used to keeping things moving. They’re also tired of taking on too much, asking too little of other people, or feeling like they have to get everything right.
Sometimes they tell me, “Nothing terrible happened. I don’t know why I’m like this.”
You don’t have to prove your pain was bad enough to deserve help.
I get why that’s confusing. Sometimes it’s not about what happened, but what was missing: enough safety, attunement, consistency, or room to have needs without feeling like they were a problem.
If you learned to stay safe or connected by being perfect, easy, responsible, or putting other people’s needs ahead of your own, that matters.
I’m interested in understanding how the ways you learned to stay connected, avoid conflict, earn approval, or protect yourself are still shaping your relationships now.
You didn’t get to choose what you had to adapt to. But you do get to choose what happens next.
— Tana
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