AVAILABLE IN-PERSON AND ONLINE IN CALIFORNIA | EMDR & Brainspotting
Trauma Therapy in Redondo Beach
Move past what’s been holding you back and build a life that actually feels good.
YOU’RE PROBABLY WONDERING IF YOU SHOULD EVEN BE HERE
Most people who seek out therapy don't think of themselves as trauma survivors.
Maybe you’ve spent years telling yourself that what you went through wasn't serious enough to warrant this kind of attention. You’ve pushed through it, performed around it, and achieved in spite of it. And you’re good at all of that. What you haven't been able to do is shake the feeling that something still isn't right.
It may feel like...
The thought of disappointing your boss, setting a boundary, or asking for help is enough to send you into a spiral—because somewhere along the way you learned that your value is conditional and just saying “yes” is safer than expressing your own needs.
Your employee makes a minor mistake in a meeting and the anger that surfaces in you is completely out of proportion to what happened—and you're left wondering why a moment that small could produce a reaction that big.
You and your partner can go from a normal evening to a full-blown argument about the entire relationship without either of you seeing it coming—and you've started bracing for it so consistently that the tension between you has become the baseline.
You've built the career, the family, the life that was supposed to feel like you’ve made it—and instead of feeling safe, you feel more vigilant than ever, as if the other shoe is always about to drop.
Your teenager has become someone you walk on eggshells around, never knowing what mood you're going to get or what's going to trigger the next blow-up—and you miss the kid they used to be before all of this started.
You've gotten very good at making sure no one gets too close—not because you don't want connection, but because something about being truly known feels unsafe, even when there's no rational reason for it to.
“High-functioning” doesn't mean “unaffected by what life throws your way.”
It just means you got very good at working around the pain.
WHAT IS TRAUMA?
What happened is only part of the story.
Trauma is the response your mind, body, and nervous system had to an experience that was too much to process at the time.
That response gets stored, often in places you can't easily access or articulate, and it shapes the way you relate to other people and how you move through the world. This can happen without you ever fully connecting the dots between what happened then and how you feel now.
There are two different types of trauma:
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“BIG T” TRAUMA is often what people think of when they hear the word “trauma.” It’s used to describe experiences like combat and military service, serious accidents or medical emergencies, physical, sexual, or severe emotional abuse, natural disasters, violent crime, and sudden or traumatic loss. These experiences leave the body in a state of shock followed by ongoing tension, bracing for a threat that has already passed.
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Don’t let the name fool you. “little t” trauma shapes you just as profoundly as anything else. This trauma affects your sense of self, your relationships, and your belief that you are fundamentally worthy of love and safety.
It looks like the…
Childhood home where nothing was ever quite good enough
Parent whose approval felt perpetually out of reach
Relationship that ended in betrayal and took your sense of reality with it
Career that collapsed and affected your concept of your own identity
Move that severed every connection you had built
Financial crisis that made you question everything you thought you knew about security
How do you know if what you're experiencing is trauma?
Trauma isn't a memory. It's a response—and it shows up in ways that can be easy to miss if you don't know what you're looking for.
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Intrusive thoughts of unwanted memories that surface without warning
Difficulty concentrating or staying present
A tendency toward black-and-white thinking
Hypervigilance or rumination—constantly bracing for the worst or racing thoughts about a specific situation
A core belief about yourself or the world that no amount of logic seems to change
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Persistent worry or dread
Emotional numbness
Sudden swings in mood that feel out of proportion to the situation
Difficulty experiencing joy or genuine connection
A heightened sensitivity to perceived rejection or criticism
Intense feelings of anger, irritability, sadness, shame, guilt, confusion, etc.
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Chronic tension in the jaw, shoulders, back, or chest
Sleep disturbances or fatigue that rest doesn't fix
Being easy to startle or surprise
Digestive issues, stomach aches, nausea
Chronic pain or fibromyalgia
Sweaty, shaky, frozen, heavy
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Saying yes when you mean no
Avoiding situations or conversations that feel threatening, even when the threat isn't real
Perfectionism and people pleasing
Difficulty asking for help or letting others in
A fear of authority figures that feels disproportionate to the situation
Needing constant reassurance that you're doing okay and that people aren't upset with you
You can sense that something isn’t quite right, and you’ve been pushing through for far too long.
Now, let's actually deal with it.
I have experience treating trauma from...
Physical Abuse
Verbal Abuse
Mental Abuse
Emotional Abuse
Sexual Abuse
Loss of job
Miscarriage/Infertility
Death
Interpersonal Conflict
Infidelity & Betrayal
Going to war
Natural Disasters
Big Life Changes
Workplace Harassment
Financial Problems
Neglect
Divorce or Breakups
Legal Issues
Accidents
Abrupt or extended relocations
Giving birth
Medical experiences
Together, we'll help your brain process what you've been through and release it.
As a veteran, I've experienced the psychological toll of active duty firsthand, and I know what post-traumatic growth looks like from the inside. That experience, combined with over 25 years navigating high-pressure corporate environments, is what I bring into the room.
We don't dive straight into the deep end. Our process starts with the practical—understanding your full picture, identifying the specific ways your experiences have been showing up in your life.
Trauma work requires a foundation of trust and safety, and taking the time to build that foundation properly is what makes everything that follows actually work.
From there, we move into the reprocessing work that involves engaging the left and right hemispheres of the brain simultaneously. We use evidence-based techniques to help your mind and body work through what has been affecting you, rather than just talking around it.
By uncovering why you feel stuck and reprocessing difficult moments with the right support, you can leave those troubles behind and focus on a future where you feel more in control.
Methods We’ll Use in Trauma Therapy
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Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing (EMDR) uses bilateral stimulation to help the brain reprocess traumatic memories in a way that reduces their emotional charge without requiring you to talk through them in detail. It's one of the most extensively researched and effective trauma treatments available, and it works by engaging both hemispheres of the brain simultaneously to process what talk therapy alone can't reach.
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Brainspotting works by identifying specific eye positions that correspond to where trauma is being held in the brain and body—and using those positions to access and process the deeper neurological sources of distress. It's a powerful approach for trauma that feels difficult to articulate, and it often reaches places that other methods don't.
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Trauma lives in the body as much as the mind, and Body Sense Meditation works by developing your awareness of the physical sensations, tensions, and signals your body has been holding in response to what you've been through. By learning to tune into and work with those physical responses rather than override them, you build the kind of embodied safety that makes deeper healing possible.
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Power breathing is a structured breathwork technique that directly regulates the nervous system—slowing the physiological response that keeps the body stuck in fight, flight, or freeze. It's a tool you can use in the room and outside of it, giving you an immediate, practical way to bring yourself back to regulation when trauma responses are triggered in your daily life.
Healing from trauma doesn't mean forgetting what happened or pretending it didn't matter. It means getting to a place where it no longer has the same hold on you.
TRAUMA THERAPY CAN HELP YOU…
Finally make sense of why you react the way you do—so that the next time your body floods with anger in a meeting, or you shut down in the middle of a conversation with your partner, you understand what's happening and have the tools to do something different.
Stop reliving the past in the present—so that a difficult conversation with your boss stops triggering the same response as the parent who told you you'd never be good enough, and the people in your life today get a version of you that's actually responding to them.
Let go of the belief that you are fundamentally flawed, not safe, or undeserving of good things—in the way you feel when you wake up in the morning and move through your day.
Sleep through the night without your mind running through everything that could go wrong, walk into a high-stakes situation without your body bracing for impact, and come home at the end of the day without bringing the full weight of your nervous system with you.
Be present in the moments that have been passing you by—connected in your relationship, available to your kids—instead of physically present but mentally somewhere else.
Make decisions from a place of clarity rather than from the part of you that's still trying to prove something, avoid something, or protect yourself from a threat that no longer exists.
MOVING FORWARD STARTS HERE.
There is a path toward a brighter future—and you don’t have to walk it alone.
In-person in Redondo Beach and online in California.
Frequently Asked Questions
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If you find yourself stuck in patterns you can't explain, reacting with an intensity that doesn't match what's in front of you, holding beliefs about yourself that don't serve you, or living with a persistent sense of dread or disconnection, there's a good chance trauma is part of the picture. The best way to find out is to reach out and have a conversation.
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That's completely okay. You don't need a clear memory or a specific event to benefit from this work. Many people come in knowing something isn't right without knowing exactly what it is, and that's a perfectly valid place to start. We'll begin with what you do have access to, like your triggers, your symptoms, the physical sensations, the emotions, and the beliefs you hold about yourself, and work from there. EMDR & Brainspotting are particularly well-suited for this, because both approaches can access what the conscious mind can't easily reach.
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It absolutely can. What looks like anxiety, depression, or a specific phobia on the surface frequently has unresolved trauma underneath it, and treating the root cause is what makes lasting change possible rather than just managing the symptoms. EMDR & Brainspotting in particular have strong evidence behind them for a wide range of conditions beyond what most people associate with trauma therapy.
Trauma therapy can be effective for:
Generalized Anxiety Disorder
Panic Attacks
Social Anxiety
Performance Anxiety
Athletic Performance
Fear of flying
Fear of public speaking
Test Anxiety
Specific Phobias
Eating Disorders
Personality Disorders
Major Depressive Disorder
Grief & Loss
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
Chronic Pain
Relational Problems
Childhood wounds
Sexual Dysfunction
Perfectionism & Shame
Imposter Syndrome
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Trauma lives in the right brain and the body—in the nervous system, not the story. EMDR engages both hemispheres simultaneously, which allows the brain to process and integrate the traumatic memory in a way that changes how it's stored, rather than just building a more coherent narrative around it.
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That depends on the nature and complexity of what you're working through. Some clients experience significant relief in a focused engagement. Others are working through layered, long-standing trauma that takes more time to process fully. What I can tell you is that every session moves toward something concrete—and you'll feel the difference as we go.
Research on EMDR often finds significant improvement in about 3-12 sessions.
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Clinically, I'm trained in EMDR, Brainspotting, Body Sense Meditation, and breathwork—all evidence-based approaches designed to process trauma at the level where it lives, rather than just building a narrative around it. My Master of Clinical Social Work from USC, where I graduated with Department Honors, gave me the clinical foundation. My own life gave me the rest.
I'm a veteran who has processed the psychological weight of active duty from the inside out. I've been through big life changes, personal loss, and the kind of experiences that shape a person whether they recognize them as trauma or not. I'm not a therapist who learned about trauma from a textbook and then started treating it. I'm someone who has lived it, worked through it, and built a practice around helping other people do the same.
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If you've done talk therapy and feel like you understand your patterns but can't change them, that's one of the most common signs that the trauma hasn't been processed at the level where it lives. As someone who has done my own trauma work—as a veteran, as someone who has navigated major life transitions under real pressure—I can tell you from the inside that understanding your story and healing from it are two very different things. The approaches we use here work at a deeper level than talk therapy alone, which is often what makes the difference for people who have tried other things and stayed stuck.
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Yes—and it's personal. As a veteran myself, I understand the specific psychological toll that active duty takes, and the particular challenges that come with processing those experiences in a civilian context.
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Yes. I work collaboratively with other therapists, which means you can continue seeing your current talk therapist for your regular sessions and come to me specifically for EMDR & Brainspotting work. The two approaches complement each other well. If this is something you're considering, I'm happy to coordinate with your current therapist directly to make sure we're working in the same direction.