PTSD Treatment

Intrusive memories or images that arrive unbidden. Nightmares. Physical reactions to reminders — heart rate, breath, a sudden drop in the stomach. Avoiding places, people, conversations.

Feeling constantly scanning, unable to settle. Emotional numbness, or a sense of watching your own life from slightly outside it. Sleep that doesn't restore. Anger with a short fuse and a long shadow.

You don't need a diagnosis to come in. But if that list reads like your week, there's a name for it and there's treatment for it.

EMDR is among the most studied treatments for post-traumatic stress and is recommended by major clinical bodies internationally. It works on the premise that these memories are stored unprocessed — still carrying their original charge — and that with bilateral stimulation the brain can finish the processing it couldn't complete at the time. EFT and the Flash Technique are also supported by significant international research as highly effective treatments for trauma.

The change people describe isn't forgetting. It's that the memory becomes something that happened, rather than something that's still happening.

If approaching the memory directly feels impossible, there are methods that process without conscious engagement. If the trauma is layered over years rather than a single event, we work more slowly and draw on approaches built for that. The method follows you.

Single-incident post-traumatic stress often responds relatively quickly. Trauma running through a whole childhood takes longer, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.

On the consult I'll give you my honest read on which of those you're closer to, based on 27 years in practice and licensure in California (LMFT #40713) and Texas (LMFT #205480).