Psychotherapy for Complex Truma and PTSD

You are not broken. You are protecting something sacred.

If you’ve lived through trauma—whether it happened once or unfolded over many years—you may feel like your nervous system never truly rests. You might feel stuck in cycles of anxiety, disconnection, emotional overwhelm, or shame. Outwardly, you may seem composed. But inwardly, you’re holding so much.

I’m Sara, a depth psychotherapist in Oakland, CA. I offer trauma therapy rooted in psycho-spiritual and relational work.

My approach is warm, intuitive, and grounded in deep listening to the whole of you—not just your symptoms, but your story, your body, and your soul.

Trauma Lives in the Body—and the Unconscious

Trauma is not just something that happened. It’s what lives on in the body and psyche when there was no one there to help us make sense of the pain.

You might experience:

• Panic, irritability, or a sense of constant vigilance

• Chronic anxiety or shutdown

• Insomnia or intrusive thoughts

• Dissociation or a numb disconnection from your body

• A persistent belief that something is wrong with you

Depth psychotherapy understands trauma as more than just memory. It lives in the nervous system, in our relational patterns, in the unconscious. It shapes how we love, grieve, avoid, perform, or disappear. Healing means we don’t just talk about what happened—we listen for what got buried beneath the pain.

C-PTSD, Attachment Wounds & Early Trauma

So many trauma stories begin in childhood—often in quiet, invisible ways. You may not remember a single event, but the impact lingers: a sense of being unsafe, unseen, or emotionally abandoned. This is complex trauma. It grows in environments of neglect, emotional abuse, narcissistic parenting, or chronic instability.

You might struggle with:

• Shame and low self-worth

• Emotional flashbacks with no clear trigger

• Perfectionism, people-pleasing, or emotional withdrawal

• Difficulty trusting others or feeling truly close

• Exhaustion from holding it all together

These patterns aren’t personal flaws. They’re adaptations—ways your system learned to survive. And because they were learned, they can be unlearned. This is where therapy comes in.

Depth-Oriented Trauma Therapy: A Slow Return to Self

We’ll move at the pace of trust—never faster than your system is ready to go. Using depth psychotherapy, we’ll gently explore the unconscious beliefs and protective patterns that formed in response to trauma. Through deep attunement, we’ll tend to what has been fragmented, forgotten, or buried in shadow.

You’ll learn to:

• Work with your nervous system—not against it

• Identify survival responses like fight, flight, freeze, or fawn

• Release toxic shame and internalized beliefs of unworthiness

• Strengthen your ability to stay present and embodied

• Reclaim your story from trauma’s grip

Dissociation: When Your Psyche Steps Out to Keep You Safe

When experiences are too overwhelming, the psyche protects us by leaving—this is dissociation. It can feel like being numb, spaced out, or watching your life from far away. It may have helped you survive—but now it keeps you from truly living.

Trauma therapy can help you come back into your body, slowly and safely. Through compassionate exploration, we integrate these dissociated parts, allowing your full self to return home.

Grief, Shame & the Shadow

Healing from trauma often includes grief—not just for what happened, but for what was never allowed to be. And beneath grief is often shame: the whisper that it was your fault, you’re too much, you should have known better.

From a Jungian lens, shame lives in the shadow—the exiled parts of us we’ve been taught to hide. But what if shame was never proof of your brokenness—but a sign of your humanity? What if the part of you that blames yourself was just trying to make sense of something senseless?

Healing asks us to hold these parts—not to fix them, but to love them back into wholeness.

You Are Not Broken—You Are Becoming

The wounds of trauma do not define you. Beneath the layers of pain lies a self that is still intact, still worthy, and still capable of deep healing.

Healing trauma isn’t linear. It’s tender. Sacred. Often slow.

But you don’t have to do it alone.

If you’re looking for trauma therapy in Oakland or online throughout California, and want a space that honors the full complexity of your experience—reach out. I’d be honored to walk with you as you reclaim your story, your body, and your sense of wholeness.