Treatment for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Trauma-related concerns in Philadelphia and across the US
PTSD can leave you feeling stuck in the aftermath of a traumatic experience. It may affect your sense of safety, your relationships, and how you view yourself and the world around you.
Treatments such as Prolonged Exposure (PE) can help reduce avoidance, process difficult emotions, and create lasting change. Many people find that treatment helps them regain a greater sense of safety, confidence, and connection in their daily lives.
The Impact of Trauma
Experiencing a traumatic event can shake a person’s sense of safety, trust in themselves or others, views of the world, and cause significant emotional upset. It can impact a person’s daily life in many ways including a person’s relationships with important others in life. Psychotherapy can help you process difficult emotional experiences, recalibrate safety, and live the life you want.
What does PTSD feel like?
After a traumatic experience, it is normal to feel overwhelmed or emotionally unsettled. For many people, these reactions gradually improve over time. For others, the effects of trauma continue long after the event has ended and begin to interfere with daily life, relationships, work, or a sense of safety in the world.
PTSD can feel different for different people, but some common experiences include:
Feeling constantly on guard, alert, or unable to relax
Avoiding reminders of what happened
Experiencing intrusive memories, nightmares, or unwanted images
Feeling emotionally numb, disconnected, or detached from others
Becoming easily startled or irritable
Feeling overwhelmed by guilt, shame, or self-blame
Finding that certain situations, places, or sensations trigger intense emotional reactions
Experiencing changes in beliefs about safety or about oneself, others, and the world.
Many people describe PTSD as feeling as though they are still responding to danger, even when they know they are safe. Treatments including Prolonged Exposure (PE) can help reduce the impact of traumatic memories, decrease avoidance, and support you in reclaiming a sense of safety, connection, and confidence.
What is therapy for PTSD?
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Emotional processing is the idea that healing from trauma involves fully experiencing, making sense of, and integrating difficult emotions rather than avoiding them. After a traumatic event, many people understandably try to push away painful memories, feelings, or reminders of what happened. While avoidance can provide temporary relief, it can also prevent you from learning that the trauma is over and integrate new information about safety.
Through Prolonged Exposure therapy, individuals gradually approach trauma-related memories and situations in a safe and supportive way. This allows you to process the experience, reduce fear and distress, and develop a more balanced understanding of what happened. Over time, many people find that the memories become less overwhelming and take up less space in their daily lives, thus making room to move towards the life they want to live.
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Prolonged Exposure (PE) is an evidence-based treatment for PTSD. PTSD often leads people to avoid memories, feelings, places, situations, or conversations that remind them of a traumatic experience. While avoidance can provide short-term relief, it can also maintain PTSD symptoms and reactions in the long-term.
In PE, we work together to gradually approach trauma-related memories and situations that have become difficult to face. Through this process, many people find that the memories become less overwhelming, anxiety decreases, and they regain a greater sense of control over their lives.
PE involves revisiting trauma memories in order to digest what happened, not to relive it. It is a structured and collaborative approach that can help you learn that the traumatic event is in the past, that reminders of the trauma aren’t dangerous and can be tolerated, and to make sense of what happened.
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Although it can be challenging or upsetting to face trauma-related thoughts, memories, feelings or situations, people often find relief in finally being able to talk about the difficult things that have happened in life.
Over the course of treatment, people often experience:
Less distress when thinking about the traumatic event
Reduced avoidance of trauma-related people, places, or situations
Improved confidence in managing difficult emotions
Better sleep and concentration
A greater sense of self-confidence and connection in daily life
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My approach to Prolonged Exposure therapy is collaborative and tailored to your unique experiences and goals. While PE is a structured, evidence-based treatment, I believe that it is best done in a collaborative and trusting therapeutic relationship to support meaningful change. Together, we work to understand how trauma has affected your life, identify patterns of avoidance that may be keeping you stuck, and gradually approach difficult memories and situations. Throughout the process, my hope is to help you build confidence in your ability to face difficult experiences, reconnect with what matters most to you, and move towards your goals.
Trauma-Related Concerns
Not everyone who experiences a distressing or traumatic event develops PTSD. Sometimes people experience one or more difficult life events that continue to affect them, even if they do not meet criteria for PTSD. Others may find themselves struggling with anxiety, panic, intrusive thoughts, compulsive behaviors, relationship difficulties, or changes in how they view themselves and the world after a challenging experience.
My practice focuses both on treating PTSD and helping individuals navigate the overlap between trauma, anxiety, panic, OCD, grief, and adjustment to life after distressing events or relational experiences. This overlap between anxiety, OCD, and trauma is often present during pregnancy and postpartum and I offer specialty services in this area. Whether you are seeking to process a specific event, better understand your emotional responses, or move forward from experiences that continue to impact you, therapy can provide a space for reflection and growth.
Distressing experiences can influence the ways you cope, respond emotionally, engage in relationships, and experience safety and trust. My approach to trauma-related concerns is collaborative and personalized, drawing from emotional processing theory, evidence-based treatments for anxiety and trauma, and person-centered approaches. Together, we work to better understand your experiences, identify patterns that may no longer be serving you, and move toward positive changes that are aligned with your values and goals for yourself and your life.