You Don't Have to Call It Trauma
Maybe nothing terrible happened. Other people had it worse. Your parents did the best they could. The relationship wasn't that bad. You survived it. You're successful. You're functioning.
So why are you still reacting to things that happened years ago?
Trauma isn't determined solely by how dramatic an experience looks from the outside. Sometimes what stays with us isn't one catastrophic event. It's what we learned through experiences that overwhelmed us, frightened us, left us alone with something we couldn't make sense of, or happened repeatedly enough that we adapted around them.
And sometimes you don't need to decide whether something “counts” as trauma at all.
If it's still affecting you, we can work with it.
Trauma-informed therapy for women who understand the past but still feel its effects.
Trauma Therapy
for Women
in Farmington, CT
in person in & online throughout Connecticut and New York
Sometimes Trauma Looks Surprisingly Functional
Trauma doesn't always look like flashbacks and nightmares. Sometimes it looks like being extremely competent.
You anticipate what everyone needs. You don't like relying on other people. You stay productive. You read the room before you've even realized you're doing it. You prepare for problems that haven't happened yet.
Maybe you're the dependable one. The successful one. The one everyone else calls when something goes wrong.
From the outside, these can look like personality traits. And they may be. But sometimes they're also adaptations that helped you feel safer, more accepted, more prepared, or more in control.
The question isn't “What's wrong with me?”
A more useful question might be: “What did I learn to do to stay safe and do I still need to do it?”
The Past Doesn't Always Feel Like the Past
You can know you're safe and still feel on edge. You can know your partner isn't your ex and still brace for rejection. You can know you're good at your job and feel devastated by one piece of criticism. You can understand that you're allowed to say no and still feel guilty when you do. You can know your childhood is over and still become very small around your parents.
That's part of what makes trauma and difficult past experiences so frustrating.
Insight doesn't automatically update the nervous system.
You may completely understand why you react the way you do and still have the reaction. That's often where our work begins.
What Can Leave a Lasting Impact?
Sometimes there's a clear event: abuse, assault, an accident, a frightening medical experience, sudden loss, violence, or another overwhelming experience.
But trauma therapy can also address experiences that are harder to name:
Growing up with an emotionally unavailable, unpredictable, critical, or controlling parent
Being expected to manage other people's emotions
Bullying, rejection, humiliation, or feeling chronically different
Betrayal, infidelity, abandonment, or emotionally harmful relationships
Medical experiences, illness, or caregiving
Loss and grief
Chronic stress or instability
Repeated experiences of feeling unsafe, unseen, powerless, or not good enough
Experiences you've minimized because “other people had it worse”
You don't need to prove that something was traumatic enough to deserve help with the impact it had on you.
Trauma Therapy Doesn't Mean Telling Me Every Detail
A lot of people worry that trauma therapy means sitting in a room and recounting the worst things that ever happened to them. It doesn't have to.
I'm interested in what happened, but I'm equally interested in what your system learned because of what happened.
Maybe it learned:
Don't need anyone. Keep everyone happy. Don't make mistakes. Stay alert. Don't be too much. Handle it yourself. Something bad is going to happen.
Those beliefs and protective strategies often made sense somewhere along the way.
Our work isn't about criticizing you for having them. It's about helping your system recognize when they're no longer necessary.
What If Part of Me Doesn't Want to Go There?
Then I'm interested in that part, too. Protective parts aren't obstacles to trauma therapy. If some part of you changes the subject, analyzes everything, goes blank, cracks a joke, tells you this is stupid, insists you're fine, or suddenly decides you don't want to talk about it anymore—that's information.
I'm not interested in bulldozing past the ways you've learned to protect yourself.
Sometimes understanding why you don't want to go there is the work before we ever go there.
And sometimes we don't go there at all.
Trauma Therapy Shouldn't Be Another Place You Have to Perform
You don't need to be the “good client.” You don't have to produce the right emotion, remember everything clearly, cry, forgive anyone, or have a breakthrough on schedule. Some sessions may feel profound. Some may feel ordinary.
Sometimes we'll do EMDR or Brainspotting. Sometimes we'll talk. Sometimes we'll notice that you've spent fifteen minutes explaining why you shouldn't be upset about something that clearly upset you. That's useful too.
Therapy isn't something you have to succeed at.
Trauma Therapy for
High-Achieving Women
in Farmington, CT
I'm Jenn Hoffman, LCSW, an EMDR Therapist with more than 20 years of experience.
I specialize in working with high-achieving women who may look capable and put-together on the outside while carrying anxiety, old relationship wounds, perfectionism, self-criticism, or patterns that no longer make sense for the life they have now.
I offer trauma therapy in person at The Bridge Healing Arts Center in Farmington, Connecticut, and online throughout Connecticut and New York.
Weekly therapy and longer customized sessions are available depending on what you're working on and how you'd like to work.
The Goal Isn't to Forget What Happened
It's to stop having to organize your present around it. You don't need to convince yourself that the past didn't matter. You also don't have to let it keep deciding what happens next.
Schedule a free consultation.