Therapy for Trauma in NYC
You Don’t Have to Keep Carrying This.
Trauma changes how we feel in our own skin and shapes how we move throughout the world. Even when the danger is long gone, trauma might be behind the unexplained tension in your chest, the way your heart races when everything is "fine," and the urge to shut down and pull away when something familiar gets a little too close.
At its core, trauma can be any experience that leaves a lasting impact on how you feel, think, and react. It's less about what specifically happened and more about how your body processed and stored the memory in your nervous system.
Two people can live through the same event and walk away with entirely different outcomes. For one, it’s just an unpleasant memory. For the other, it’s something their mind and body can't escape.
At LightLine Therapy, we help you process what happened, understand its impact, and decrease the power it holds.
What defines trauma?
How It Shows Up in Everyday Life
You might experience trauma as:
Symptoms of Trauma
Unwanted memories, nightmares, or sudden emotional floods that derail 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 of a lurking belief that you don’t deserve them.
Self-Sabotage:
Feeling detached, disconnected, or isolated, even when you know you "should" feel engaged.
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 that encompasses the big, dramatic events as well as the small moments that catch us off guard.
It could have happened to you or you could have seen it happen to somebody else. It might have happened once or maybe it happened every day. It could have been a profound life-altering event, or it could have slipped under the radar for months until it suddenly popped up again.
High-Stress Work Environments
First responders, medical professionals, or high-pressure careers that expose you to relentless stress.
Accidents & Violence
Car crashes, assaults, witnessing harm, or even feeling the threat of horrific violence.
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. (Neither does trauma-dumping or venting or pushing it 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 healthy relationships that feel secure.
- Develop coping tools that help you feel present, instead of numb
Your trauma is apart of you and you can't just forget what happened. But it doesn't have to define you.
Our Approach to Trauma Therapy at LightLine
If you’ve tried therapy before and left feeling discouraged, untreatable, or simply unseen, there was probably 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–what does this say about you?)
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's stored in your body, nervous system, and subconscious. These are the 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.
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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