Trauma Therapy

Trauma has a profound impact on our mind, body, and heart, and permeates all aspects of our lives, including our relationships.  Therapists at Watch Hill are uniquely trained and skilled at helping individuals bring resolution to painful past experiences through building a safe and genuine relationship with their therapist.

Watch Hill Therapy works with clients who have experienced ongoing complex trauma and who may have been diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Complex PTSD, Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), Dissociative Disorder Not Otherwise Specific (DDNOS), or other dissociative or related trauma disorders.

This might include having experiences such as :

  • Childhood Trauma

  • Sexual Abuse & Sexual Assault

  • Physical Abuse & Physical Assault

  • Psychological Abuse

  • Emotional & Physical Neglect

  • Witnessing Violence

  • Complicated Grief

  • Shame, Self-Blame, Self-Injury

  • Chronic Relationship Problems

  • Emotional Distress

  • Dissociation

Signs of emotional trauma in adults may include:

  • Sudden, intense, and enduring emotional experiences

  • Full or partial amnesia of childhood events

  • Feeling detached or outside of one’s body, as if dreaming or in a trance

  • Avoidance of certain people, places, or attributes

  • Nightmares and flashbacks

  • Intrusive thoughts or memories

  • Eating disorders, sleep disorders, cognitive, focus, or attention problems

  • Easily startled or intense startle response

  • Excessive feelings of guilt, shame, hopelessness, or worthlessness

  • Irritability and outbursts of anger

  • Difficulties with identity and sense of self

  • Trouble maintaining intimacy & relationships

  • Difficulties with employment

  • Sexual symptoms (hypersexuality, hyposexuality, fears or fixations around sexual activity)

  • Addictions

  • Difficulties with experiencing, expressing, or identifying emotions (Alexithymia)

Trauma is not an individual problem.

Being trauma-informed means that we acknowledge the reality that that people do horrible things to other people. There are dozens of types of trauma, and operating outside of the trauma in interpersonal dynamics are the larger social, societal, and systemic dynamics rooted in objectification, subjugation, oppression, and discrimination. We live in a society that is still so fiercely impacted by racism, sexism, classism, and just about every other “ism” there is. Complex trauma comes from long-term exposure to stressors and losses over which an individual has little to no control and little to no social support or resources, and there are so many societal influences on this that are entirely out of the individual’s control.

Racial Trauma

Religious Trauma

Societal Trauma

Intergenerational Trauma

Developmental Trauma

Cultural Trauma

Our Approach

We utilize a reflective, relational approach meaning that rather than doing therapy “to” or “at” you, we are engaging in relationship with you in a way that allows patterns and themes interjecting from the past to enact themselves in the room with us in the present.

Rather than only utilizing a “top down” approach where we analyze and engage cognitively, or only utilizing a “bottom up” approach where we would only pay attention to the somatic and emotional experience, we combine these in order to engage all parts of the person in front of us. We believe that this “wholeness” is the natural human state, and this is what trauma often takes from us by fragmenting and dissociating parts of our humanity from us.

Complex trauma survivors often do not have complete memories or verbal narratives to call from, but their traumatic experiences are still stored in their bodies and find ways to speak to them. But engaging fully in the somatic and experiential is not healing without being in connection with other parts of the self, the present moment, and in relationship with a trusted other. The people who we work with have often been harmed in relationship, so it is through relationship that we work towards healing.

There is not a single step-by-step process to this type of work, because every individual has different wounds and has different needs to be met in order to heal those wounds. We firmly believe that while we may be experts in how to hold space for our clients and track the process of their healing, our clients are the experts on themselves and their experience, and it’s crucial to reinforce their agency in the process of their healing.

Our approach is one of reflection, curiosity, engagement, patience, and pacing. We work to build a safe, secure, and consistent relationship to process things within and through, and this is something that takes time in order to do well. We value inquiry for the sake of inquiry, and hold self-reflection and narrative building as inherently healing.

We believe that human wellness is linked to human connection, not just environmental stress or biology.