Trauma Therapy
When something you lived through is still running the day
You may have stopped thinking about it years ago. That does not always mean it stopped.
It turns up as a startle that is too big for what caused it. As going quiet in an argument and not being able to get back. As a body that reads a normal Tuesday as a threat. As numbness, which is the one people worry about most and mention least.
Trauma is not only the thing that happened. It is what your nervous system learned from it and never got the chance to unlearn.
The first conversation is free and it lasts 55 minutes.
Open seven days a week.
Does your insurance cover this? Probably, and here is the list
We are in network with Kaiser, PacificSource, Cigna, Aetna, and United Healthcare and Optum, and with Medicare, both Open Card and in-network Advantage plans.
Regence Blue Cross Blue Shield is expected from 1 October 2026 and Moda from 15 October 2026, both for associates as well as licensed clinicians. For the Oregon Health Plan we can bill Open Card, but not the coordinated care organizations, and most OHP members are enrolled with a CCO rather than Open Card.
If you carry one of the plans above, you pay a copay rather than our full rate. If you do not, sessions are $205 an hour with a licensed clinician and $180 with a supervised associate, and we can give you a superbill to claim back whatever your out-of-network benefit allows.
Signs it is still there
People rarely arrive saying the word trauma. They arrive with a list.
- Reacting more strongly than the situation warrants, and knowing it at the time, and not being able to do anything about it.
- Feeling numb. Watching your own life through glass. This is the most common thing people apologize for describing, and it is one of the most recognizable signs there is.
- Losing time in a conversation, or arriving somewhere with no memory of the drive.
- Avoiding a place, a person, a topic, a season. Often without connecting it to anything.
- Sleep that will not settle, or dreams that keep returning to the same room.
- Scanning. Sitting where you can see the door. Reading a room before you are in it. Knowing where everybody is.
- A body that keeps score before you do. Chest, gut, jaw, shoulders. Symptoms with no medical explanation, which is not the same as symptoms with no cause.
The kinds we work with
A crash, an assault, a fire, a night that split your life into before and after.
Repeated rather than singular. Long enough that it stopped feeling like events and started feeling like personality.
Including households where nothing happened that a stranger would call abuse, and something was still very wrong.
When the person who was meant to be safety was also the source of threat, which is the hardest kind to name because it comes with loyalty attached.
ICU, a diagnosis delivered badly, a procedure you were awake for, months of being a body other people worked on. Frequently missed, and it belongs here.
For either parent.
Discovering an affair produces genuine trauma symptoms, and treating it as only a relationship problem is why it often does not resolve. The same injury happens at work, when an employer or a manager does not follow through on what was promised, or takes a view of you that contradicts your own sense of your work and your values.
The damage from doing, or failing to prevent, something that violated what you believe. It is not the same as guilt and it does not respond to reassurance.
Is this PTSD?
Sometimes, and the label matters less than most people expect.
PTSD is a specific diagnosis with specific criteria, and plenty of people carrying real trauma symptoms do not meet all of them. That has never changed what helps. We treat what you actually have rather than what fits in a box, and if a formal diagnosis matters for a reason of your own, we will talk about that directly.
How the work is done
We do not start with the story. Making somebody recount the worst thing that happened to them in a first session is how people leave therapy worse than they arrived. The first work is stabilization: sleep, the body, and something reliable to do when it surges.
EMDR, which has the strongest evidence base for single-incident trauma and works on the memory rather than on how you talk about it. We are trained in it.
- Internal Family Systems, for the parts that protect you with strategies that made sense then and cost you now.
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, our associates’ main approach, for moving your life forward alongside the work rather than waiting until after it.
- Narrative Therapy, for the account of yourself that got written while it was happening.
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Dialectical Behavior Therapy skills, for the parts that respond to structure.
- Trauma-informed throughout, which in practice means you set the pace, nothing is required, and you can stop any line of conversation without explaining why.
Who you would see
EMDR is delivered by a licensed clinician and covers the trauma work that calls for it.
Our other clinicians work with trauma by other routes.
We say that plainly because EMDR is not the only answer and because a practice that pretends every clinician does everything is not one you should trust with this.
Our associates are credentialed with Aetna and Cigna. PacificSource stops taking associates on 1 October 2026. If you carry a different plan, our licensed clinicians are your in-network option.
Questions people ask
Do I have to talk about what happened?
No. Not in detail, not on a schedule, and not before you are ready. Some effective trauma work involves very little retelling.
What if I do not remember it clearly?
That is common and it is not a barrier. Memory does specific things under threat, and the gaps are information rather than an obstacle.
Is it too late?
It was thirty years ago. No. Some of the clearest work we see is with people decades out, usually because something recent has brought it up.
Will this make it worse before it gets better?
Handled properly, no. That reputation comes from work that skipped stabilization. We do not skip it, and if a session leaves you worse we want to hear about it that week rather than at the end.
Do I need EMDR?
Maybe. It is very good for some presentations and not the right first move for others. We will tell you honestly, including when the honest answer is that another clinician is a better fit than us.
How soon can I be seen?
Usually within days. We are open seven days a week, and inquiries are answered the same day.
Book a free 55 minute consultation
An hour, at no cost, with a clinician rather than an intake screener.
Book online · In person in Tigard, by video anywhere in Oregon