Complex Trauma (CPTSD) Therapy in Vancouver, WA and throughout Washington State
Therapy for CPTSD, Relational Trauma, and Dissociation
Note that it can be activating to read about trauma. If it is, feel free to navigate to another page. Therapy doesn’t have to start with a focus on what happened to you or how it feels on the inside.
Complex trauma is different from a single difficult event. It develops over time, through repeated experiences, often in relationships that were supposed to be safe. Childhood neglect, emotional abuse, growing up in an unpredictable or chaotic household, living with a parent who was frightening or unavailable. These experiences shape the nervous system in ways that don’t just resolve on their own.
Some people come in knowing exactly what they’re carrying. Others just know that something has never quite felt right. That they work harder than most people to feel okay, that relationships feel complicated, that they react in ways they can’t always explain.
Both are welcome here.
What complex trauma can look like:
A persistent sense that something is wrong with you, not just your circumstances
Difficulty trusting people, even those who have given you no reason not to
Feeling disconnected from yourself or your body
Periods of emotional flooding followed by numbness or shutdown
Dissociation: spacing out, losing time, feeling unreal or like you’re watching yourself from outside
Shame that feels bone-deep and hard to shake
Hypervigilance, always scanning for what might go wrong
Relationships that follow the same painful patterns no matter how much you understand them
High functioning on the outside with significant struggle underneath
What makes complex trauma different
Single-incident trauma has a clear before and after. Complex trauma is woven into the fabric of how you developed. How you learned to relate to yourself, to other people, and to the world. That’s what makes it resistant to approaches that focus only on symptoms or coping. The work has to go to where it actually lives.
Dissociation is worth naming specifically because it’s one of the most common and least understood responses to complex trauma. It’s not a character flaw or a sign that something is permanently broken. It’s what the nervous system learned to do to survive. Working with it rather than around it is part of how things actually shift.
How IFS and EMDR help
IFS works well with complex trauma because it doesn’t ask you to override the parts of you that learned to protect, hide, perform, or shut down. It gets curious about them instead. That shift, from fighting yourself to understanding yourself, is often where real movement begins.
EMDR helps the brain process the specific memories and experiences that are still stuck and activated. With complex trauma this takes a careful, paced approach. The goal is processing, not retraumatization, and never pushing through faster than your system is ready for.
Together they address complex trauma at its source rather than managing it at the surface.
Ready to get started or learn more?
If any of this resonates, I'd encourage you to reach out. You don't have to have it figured out to take the first step. I offer a free 15-minute consultation so we can get a sense of fit before committing to anything. Click here to fill out the Client Inquiry Form or email, call, or text my office.