Developmental Trauma & CPTSD Therapy in Santa Monica
Somatic therapy for adults carrying experiences their minds have learned to explain away. In person in Santa Monica and online across California.
When There's No Story to Tell
You might not call it trauma. There was no single incident, no moment you can point to and say "that's when everything changed."
What you have instead are reactions. A tightness in your chest when nothing is objectively wrong. The sense of bracing for impact that never comes. The flatness where vitality should be. Patterns you can't quite name but feel in your body every day.
You might have tried therapy before. Maybe it helped you understand your childhood, connect the dots between past and present. But understanding hasn't changed the reactions.
That's because developmental trauma doesn't live in the story. It lives in the body, in patterns that formed before you had language for them. Insight alone can't reach what's held there.
A Different Approach to Trauma Therapy
This work is slower and quieter than what you may be used to. We're not excavating memories or processing incidents. We're working with what your body learned about safety, about worth, about what happens when you let yourself be seen.
I'm trained in Somatic Experiencing, a nervous system-based approach developed by Peter Levine over four decades of clinical research. I completed the full three-year certificate program and continue to study with Dr. Levine. That depth of training matters when we're working with patterns this deeply wired.
In session, we talk. We also pay attention to what's happening beneath the words: the tightness you're holding, the moment you brace, the instant something shifts. With practice, you learn to notice these patterns as they're happening and work with them before they take over.
Why Somatic Therapy for Trauma?
Trauma doesn't always come with a clear narrative. Sometimes it's not what happened but what didn't. The attunement that wasn't there. The comfort that never came. The feeling of being alone with experiences that were too much for a child to process.
The British psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas described this as "the unthought known." These are things we know at the deepest level but cannot think about or talk about because they formed before words were available to us, or because allowing them into awareness felt too dangerous.
Your brain stores memory in two ways. Explicit memory is verbal, sequential, contextual. This is what you access when you tell your therapist what happened. Implicit memory is wordless, timeless, visceral. It's the tightness in your throat when someone raises their voice, the way your shoulders hunch without you noticing, the sudden exhaustion that descends without warning.
Developmental trauma lives primarily in implicit memory. Your nervous system encoded threat at a level below conscious awareness, below words. This is why you can understand your childhood intellectually and still find yourself bracing in ways that make no sense.
Talk therapy can help you understand these patterns. Somatic therapy helps your body release them. We work directly with the nervous system itself, building your capacity to notice when you're moving toward overwhelm and work with it before the old patterns take over.
Where Developmental Trauma Comes From
Developmental trauma often has roots in early relationships. Maybe your parents were unpredictable or emotionally volatile. Maybe feelings were inconvenient or unwelcome. Maybe you learned early to handle things on your own because asking for help felt dangerous or futile.
You might have been the kid who learned to read the room, manage the emotions, make sure things held together.
These experiences may not meet anyone's definition of "trauma" with a capital T. But they shaped your nervous system just as surely as single traumatic events do. This is sometimes called complex trauma or C-PTSD: not a single incident, but the cumulative impact of ongoing stress or unsafe dynamics, often beginning in childhood. The patterns are harder to name because they're woven into the fabric of how you grew up.
Your system adapted brilliantly to what was asked of it. The hypervigilance helped you navigate an unpredictable household. The dissociation let you endure what felt unendurable. The self-reliance kept you safe when depending on others felt risky.
Those adaptations are still running now. The body doesn't know the danger has passed. It keeps protecting you from threats that may no longer exist but that once felt absolute.
What Changes
This work doesn't happen quickly. The patterns are deeply wired. But shifts often start within weeks or months. This isn't about waiting years to feel different.
Clients often describe it as finally being able to exhale. You might notice it first in small ways. A difficult conversation doesn't leave you depleted for days. You can be present with your partner without monitoring for threat. Sleep comes easier. The chronic tension in your shoulders starts to ease.
There's more spaciousness. Room to breathe without bracing.
Over time, you build capacity to notice when you're moving toward collapse or overwhelm and have tools to work with it. The triggers start to lose their charge. Relationships become less exhausting. The flatness lifts, and you find yourself able to feel without being overwhelmed by it.
This isn't about erasing what happened. The past moves into the past. Not forgotten, but no longer running the show. You develop the ability to be present in your body without being hijacked by it. To notice intensity without needing to brace or flee or disappear.
What Makes This Work Different
This isn't exposure therapy. We're not flooding your system or asking you to relive anything. We're working at the level where trauma lives: in the nervous system, in the patterns of bracing and collapse that persist long after the threat has passed.
The work is precise and gradual. We track what happens when activation starts to build. We notice the moment before the pattern kicks in. And we practice something different right there, building your capacity to stay present instead of launching into protection mode.
We're not trying to override your protective responses. We're creating the conditions for your system to discover that it's safe enough now to try something different. To complete the defensive movements that got interrupted. To discharge activation that's been held for years. To restore connection and vitality that trauma suppressed.
Who This Work Helps
This work tends to resonate with adults who've built impressive lives while carrying patterns they're maybe only starting to name. They often describe feeling flat or numb, or perpetually braced for impact. They've tried therapy before and gained insight, but something fundamental hasn't shifted.
Sometimes a specific moment brings them in: a relationship reaching a breaking point, a health issue that won't resolve, professional success that feels hollow. Sometimes it's just the quiet recognition that they've been managing for a very long time and they're ready to try something else.
What Makes Change Possible
Here's what the research shows: your early experiences shaped you, but they don't have to define you. People with difficult histories can develop what researchers call "earned security." New relationships can update old patterns.
Therapy, at its best, is one of those relationships. Not because of techniques or insights, but because of what happens between two people when one of them is truly paying attention. Your nervous system learns safety through contact with another regulated system. Over time, that becomes something you can access on your own.
The patterns that formed in relationship can shift in relationship. What we build together becomes available to you elsewhere.
Questions You Might Have
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No. With developmental trauma, memories are often fragmentary or absent entirely. What you have instead are patterns, sensations, and reactions. That's enough to work with.
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Developmental trauma doesn't require overt abuse or neglect. Sometimes it's emotional unavailability, unpredictability, or a parent who loved you but couldn't meet your needs. If your body learned to brace, shut down, or stay vigilant, that's what we work with.
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EMDR uses bilateral stimulation to process specific traumatic memories. It was originally developed for single-incident trauma like accidents or assaults.
Somatic Experiencing works with nervous system regulation and attachment patterns. With developmental trauma, there often aren't discrete memories to target. The experiences were encoded implicitly, before you could name them, or happened so repeatedly they became baseline. We're addressing the patterns themselves rather than processing specific events.
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You don't have to. We work with what's present in your body now. If family dynamics become relevant, we can address them. But the work doesn't require excavating your childhood in detail.
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That concern makes sense. Sessions are paced so your system can stay regulated. We use pauses, choice points, and simple settling practices throughout. You set the pace, and we adjust as needed.
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It varies based on what you're working with and your goals. Most clients work with me for one to three years. Developmental trauma took time to form, and unwinding it doesn't happen quickly. But shifts often start happening within weeks to months. This isn't about waiting years to feel different.
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Yes. Somatic Experiencing and attachment-repair therapy translate well to video sessions. I work with clients across California via secure telehealth.
Location & Access
In person in Santa Monica and online for California residents.
Contact
Phone: (310) 377-8798
Ready to Begin?
If something here resonates, I'd be glad to hear from you.