Therapy for Trauma in NYC
You Don’t Have to Keep Carrying This.
Trauma doesn’t just live in our memories—it lives in our bodies, our reactions, our relationships, and the way we move through the world. It’s the unexplained tension in your chest, the hyper-awareness when nothing is technically wrong, the way you flinch at something that shouldn’t be scary.
Maybe you downplay what happened because “it wasn’t that bad.” Maybe you’ve spent years trying to outrun your past, only to find it catching up in ways you never expected—panic attacks, trust issues, emotional numbness, self-sabotage.
You don’t have to keep living like this.
At LightLine Therapy, we help you process what happened, understand its impact, and—most importantly—reclaim your life from it.
How It Shows Up in Everyday Life
Trauma isn’t just a memory. It’s a response—one that can stick around long after the event is over. You might experience:
Symptoms of Trauma
Unwanted memories, nightmares, or sudden emotional floods that hijack your day.
Flashbacks & Intrusive Thoughts:
Always feeling on edge, scanning for danger, overreacting to small stressors.
Hypervigilance & Anxiety:
Pushing people away, numbing out, avoiding opportunities because deep down, you don’t believe you deserve them.
Self-Sabotage:
Feeling detached, disconnected, or like life is happening around you—not to you.
Emotional Numbness:
Pulling away from relationships, struggling with intimacy, or assuming the worst in others.
Difficulty Trusting People:
Headaches, stomach issues, chronic tension, or feeling like your body is constantly in fight-or-flight mode.
Physical Symptoms:
Trauma rewires your brain to expect danger, even when none is there. Therapy helps break that cycle so you can start feeling safe again.
More Than Just “Big” Events
Causes of Trauma
Trauma is a catchall term. At its core, it refers to something that overwhelmed your ability to cope—and changed the way you see yourself, others, or the world.
That could mean it happened to you or you saw it happen to somebody else. That could mean it happened once or it happened every day. That could mean it was a profound life-changing event, or it slipped under the radar for months until it suddenly popped up again.
Work & High-Stress Environments
First responders, medical professionals, high-pressure careers that expose you to relentless stress.
Accidents & Violence
Car crashes, assaults, witnessing harm—anything that left you shaken to your core.
Medical Trauma
A serious illness, surgery, or the helplessness of watching your body be out of your control.
Sexual Trauma
Assault, coercion, or any violation of boundaries that left lasting emotional scars.
Relational & Attachment Trauma
Betrayal, manipulation, emotionally unavailable caregivers or partners.
Childhood Trauma
Emotional neglect, abuse, a chaotic home environment, or growing up feeling unsafe.
How Therapy Can Help You Heal from Trauma
Time alone doesn’t heal trauma. And neither does trauma-dumping or venting or pushing what happened deep down into that hole you’ve dug specifically for this purpose. And that’s where therapy comes in.
Therapy can help you process your trauma so you can:
- Learn to feel safe again—both in your body and in the world.
- Rewire automatic fear responses so triggers don’t hijack your life.
- Stop replaying the past and start living in the present.
- Build relationships that feel secure, not threatening.
- Develop coping tools that actually work—instead of just numbing out.
- Trauma doesn’t define you. Healing does.
Our Approach to Trauma Therapy at LightLine Therapy
If you’ve tried therapy before and left feeling discouraged, untreatable, or simply unseen, it’s likely there was a misalignment somewhere in the journey. While traditional talk therapy can be a vital tool in the healing process, it may not address all aspects of trauma. This could leave you feeling:
A) Angry (therapy wasn’t able to help even after you spent all that time, energy and money)
B) Demoralized and like a failure (everybody said therapy would help–does this mean you’re a lost cause?)
C) Confused and stuck (if talking about it week after week didn’t help, what will?)
D) All of the above
But there are certain therapeutic approaches that tend to heal trauma faster and more effectively than traditional talk therapy. We take a multi-layered approach to access the trauma that is stored in your body, nervous system, and your subconscious—places that words alone can’t always reach.
Trauma shapes the way you see yourself, relationships, and the world. This approach helps you uncover hidden patterns, rewrite old narratives, and process trauma at its roots.
Psychodynamic Therapy:
Trauma lives in the body. We integrate breathwork, grounding techniques, and nervous system regulation to help you feel safe in your own skin again.
Mindfulness & Somatic Work:
A research-backed method that rewires your brain’s response to trauma, helping you process painful memories without getting emotionally flooded.
EMDR Therapy (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing):
What to Expect in Trauma Therapy
It’s possible to think back on what happened through a more neutral lens and not have to go through the whirlwind of emotions that typically come up alongside your memories. It’s possible to revisit painful places in reality or situations in your head and feel only a slight tug of discomfort. It’s possible to rid yourself of negative self-beliefs such as “I’m unlovable,” “I’m invisible,” or “It’s always my fault.”
With time, trust, and hard work (plus maybe a few tears along the way), we’ll unravel the tangled web of trauma and shed its physical and emotional weight. This is a future where you’re no longer defined by your past but empowered by your resilience.
What if I don’t remember everything that happened?
What if I don’t remember everything that happened?
Will trauma therapy make things worse before they get better?
Sometimes, yeah. Looking at hard stuff isn’t easy. But avoiding it hasn’t exactly been working either. Good therapy moves at your pace, with support. It’s not about ripping off the bandage—it’s about actually healing the wound underneath.
Will trauma therapy make things worse before they get better?
I keep hearing about “processing trauma.” What does that actually mean, in plain English?
I keep hearing about “processing trauma.” What does that actually mean, in plain English?
Can trauma really affect me even if what happened was “a long time ago”?
Trauma doesn’t care about timestamps. If it wasn’t processed properly, it’s still living in your nervous system and shaping your reactions in ways you may not even realize.
Can trauma really affect me even if what happened was “a long time ago”?
Other Areas We Specialize In
Feel more confident and connected in your relationships, whether it’s your partner, your mom, a friend, or that coworker who just annoys the hell out of you and you’re not sure why.
Dating and Relationships
Anxiety is often linked to trauma, in both direct and indirect ways. By better understanding the deeper trauma, we can work to erase the symptoms of anxiety that pop up on a day-to-day basis.
Anxiety
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