Trauma & PTSD — Nick Warner, LCSW
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Trauma &
PTSD

What happened to you doesn't have to define what comes next.

Trauma isn't always dramatic. Sometimes it's a single event that changed everything. Sometimes it's years of smaller things that accumulated quietly like chronic stress, emotional neglect, an environment that never felt safe. Sometimes it's something you did or witnessed that you can't find a way to reconcile with who you believe yourself to be.

Whatever the source, trauma has a way of living in the body and the mind long after the original experience has passed. You might find yourself reacting to the present as if you're still in the past being hypervigilant, shut down, or swinging between the two. Sleep is hard. Certain people or places or sounds set something off that's hard to explain. Relationships feel precarious. Trust doesn't come easy.

None of that is weakness. It's the nervous system doing exactly what it was designed to do: protect you. The work is in teaching it that it's safe to come down.

"Trauma lives in the body long after the original experience has passed."

PTSD Complex Trauma Moral Injury Childhood Hypervigilance Dissociation Grief Somatic

Trauma takes many
different shapes.

PTSD
Post-Traumatic
Stress

Flashbacks, nightmares, hypervigilance, emotional numbing. PTSD is the nervous system stuck in survival mode. It can follow a single traumatic event or develop gradually over time. It's treatable, and healing is possible.

Complex Trauma
Repeated &
Relational Wounds

When trauma is chronic like childhood abuse or neglect, domestic violence, prolonged exposure to danger it shapes identity, attachment, and how you relate to yourself and others. This is C-PTSD, and it requires special care.

Moral Injury
When Your
Values Were Violated

Moral injury isn't about fear, it's about guilt, shame, and the rupture that happens when you've done, witnessed, or failed to prevent something that violated your deepest sense of right and wrong. It's common in veterans, first responders, medical workers, and caregivers. And it's often missed.

Evidence-based care that
goes at your pace.

Trauma therapy is not about reliving the past for its own sake. The goal is to help your nervous system process what it never got to fully work through so the memories lose their charge and you can move through your life without constantly bracing for impact.

We draw from evidence-based approaches including somatic (body) work, trauma-focused CBT, EMDR-informed techniques, and Internal Family Systems but always tailored to you, always at a pace that feels workable rather than overwhelming.

And if psychedelic-assisted therapy is something you're curious about, particularly for treatment-resistant PTSD, that's a conversation we can have as well.

Somatic Approaches
Body-based work that addresses how trauma is stored in the nervous system and not just the mind.
Trauma-Focused CBT
Reshaping the beliefs and thought patterns trauma leaves behind at a pace you can manage.
Internal Family Systems
Understanding the different parts of yourself that formed in response to trauma and finding compassion for all of them.
Moral Injury Work
Addressing guilt, shame, and the rupture between who you are and what you experienced or did.

We go at
your pace.
Always.

Trauma therapy has a reputation for being overwhelming or retraumatizing. Done well, it shouldn't be. The foundation of this work is safety — making sure you have the internal resources and the trust in the process before we go anywhere difficult.

You are never pushed to go faster than you're ready to go. Some sessions stay close to the surface; others go deeper. We follow what you're ready for, and we build the capacity for more along the way.

If you've had a previous therapy experience that felt like too much too soon, that's worth knowing and worth talking about before we start.

You might recognize
yourself in some of this.

Trauma doesn't always announce itself. Sometimes you only recognize it by the way it's been shaping your life.

01
Flashbacks, intrusive memories, or nightmares you can't shake
02
Hypervigilance, always scanning, always braced for something to go wrong
03
Emotional numbness or disconnection from yourself and others
04
Deep shame or guilt around something you did, witnessed, or couldn't prevent
05
Relationships that feel unsafe or patterns that keep repeating
06
A sense of being stuck like part of you never left the experience behind

You don't need a diagnosis to reach out. If what you've been carrying is affecting how you live, that's enough reason to start.

Ready to start
putting it down?

We'll go at your pace. Reach out and let's have a conversation.

Let's Talk