Trauma therapy in NYC

Our team of therapists with doctoral-level training bring a wealth of knowledge about trauma and expertise in helping you process and begin healing, whether what happened recently or decades ago. It’s understandable that you may avoid talking about what you’ve been through. But burying unresolved trauma keeps you stuck and in pain. We want you to live a full, joyful life.

Therapy for trauma means you can start addressing and moving forward from past painful experiences. Trauma therapy teaches you about how trauma affects your body and beliefs. You can learn healthy and proactive coping skills for intense feelings and process your experiences in a safe and supportive relationship with your therapist. To learn more, book a free, 15-minute consultation with us today.

Signs and symptoms of unresolved trauma, PTSD, or C-PTSD

  • Intrusive, involuntary memories, flashbacks, or nightmares

  • Feeling “triggered” unexpectedly by present-day experiences in ways that don’t make sense to you

  • Unrelenting anxiety or depression despite trying to address symptoms

  • Feeling chronically disconnected from your body or difficulty staying present

  • Consistent emotional dysregulation

  • Disruptions to sleep or appetite

  • Avoidance of trauma-related memories or reminders

  • Physical symptoms like chronic pain “without medical explanation”

  • Challenges in relationships (poor boundaries, fearing abandonment, difficulty trusting, excessive people pleasing)

  • Burnout, loss of faith or spiritual crisis

  • Internalized narratives of unlovability, defectiveness, or unworthiness

  • Behavioral difficulties that don’t feel voluntary like “self-sabotage” in relationships, anger, impulsivity

  • Self medicating through overworking, substance use, social media, sex, food, etc.

While there are a lot of reasons that you may notice some of the above symptoms in your life - if you have experienced trauma(s), even if it was a long time ago, it can be important to make connections between those experiences and their effect on you. Having insight can bring clarity and help you exercise personal choice in how you want to move forward or change.

 

What is trauma?

Sometimes our lives are shaped by unimaginable moments outside of our control that are awful. Life after a traumatic event can feel surreal and full of uncertainties as you try to come to grips with what happened and face tomorrow. If it happened a long time ago you may work hard to avoid any reminders.

A trauma isn’t limited to one kind of experience. Sometimes people are hesitant to label their experience as traumatic even though it’s had a significant and lasting negative impact on their lives. Many people think of war-time experiences and assault or domestic violence, but traumas can also include emotional neglect or chronic invalidation, a major accident, unexpected death, and many others described below.

What all traumas have in common is that they significantly disrupt our ability to feel safe and cared for. As a result we are overwhelmed and struggle to find ways to cope. Experiencing trauma profoundly affects our sense of self, how we connect to others, and how we see the world.

Trauma doesn’t automatically mean PTSD

It’s also important to know that not everyone who has experienced a trauma develop PTSD, although some do. PTSD is a specific diagnosis given to people who experience a specific combination of active symptoms for over a month following a traumatic events. Often symptoms are significantly disruptive to daily life, work, and relationships.

wilted purple rose in vase

Childhood trauma and trauma in adulthood

Traumas can happen across the lifespan - there is no age limit. It could be a one-time terrible event to multiple, repeated experiences of fear, violence, instability, abuse, or neglect. You may experience a traumatic event firsthand or witness it - as in the case of children exposed to intimate partner violence between their parents. Sometimes it can be years after exposure to trauma that you begin to appraise its impact upon your life.

What causes trauma and what’s traumatic stress?

Often traumatic events include some aspect of seeing or experiencing serious threat, harm, or death - but it can also include extreme deprivation or distortion of what we need for basic physical, emotional, and relational safety. Traumatic stress can be defined as the negative psychological, physical, and interpersonal effects after exposure to a traumatic event. At its core, exposure to trauma significantly disrupts our ability to thrive and fully connect with ourselves and others. A disproportionate amount of conscious and unconscious energy is spent trying to survive or deal with what happened and what we worry it means for the future. Sometimes a traumatic event becomes your primary lens for what to expect in the world.

 

Types of trauma disorders

As shared before, not all traumatic events result in traumatic stress or PTSD that is diagnosed by a mental health professional. In fact, it is considered healthy and expected for someone to experience distress and disruption after any adverse event - this is simply part of what it means to go through an awful experience.

However, when those symptoms or disruptions become prolonged or start to affect other areas of life unrelated to the traumatic event - this may mean you are struggling with a trauma disorder. Read on to learn about some trauma disorders we see in our practice.

 

Acute Stress Disorder

Acute stress disorder is characterized by symptoms such as recurring, intrusive distress or memories, avoidance, hyperarousal, changes in mood, and an altered sense of reality or dissociation following exposure to death, injury, or violence within 3 days to 1 month of a traumatic event. Symptoms are not only distressing, but get in the way of social, work, or personal responsibilities and functioning.

Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

You may be diagnosed with PTSD if you experience the symptoms of Acute Stress Disorder, but extend for longer than 1 month. However, symptoms can present at any time, even years following a traumatic event. Sometimes a life transition, new relationship, or anniversary of an event can activate unprocessed memories and symptoms.

Complex PTSD (C-PTSD)

C-PTSD is characterized by core features of PTSD, in addition to difficulty with emotion regulation, a persistently negative sense of self, and chronic difficulty in relationships. C-PTSD often occurs after repeated and prolonged exposure or experience of traumatic events, often starting in childhood where escape from the situation was not possible. C-PTSD is not a universally accepted diagnosis - it was only accepted to the ICD-11 in 2018. It recognizes that someone’s experience of trauma may not have a neat beginning and end, and they must manage the effects of enduring trauma compounded over time.

Prolonged Grief Disorder

Prolonged grief disorder is characterized by a number of symptoms occurring nearly every day for at least one month, 12 months after the death of a loved one, including: persistent longing or preoccupation for the deceased person, disbelief, intense emotional pain, feeling of identity confusion, avoidance of reminders of the loss, numbness, intense loneliness, meaninglessness or difficulty engaging in present life.

 
sign on post with words thank you ICU nurses

Other types of trauma

The study of trauma is still evolving - more types of trauma are being labeled and recognized as having a profound impact on mental health and wellbeing - especially the ones that affect us across particular communities, social groups, and generations.

Collective trauma

Collective traumas may be a shared experience of violence, threat, or natural disaster. For example, New Yorkers still remember where they were on 9/11. Undoubtedly it will take years before we can process the long-term traumatic effects of COVID-19 for the country. Collective trauma can be felt when a nation goes to war, survives a natural disaster, or when neighborhoods of color endure oppressive policing methods.

Intergenerational trauma

Intergenerational trauma occurs when the effects of traumatic stress in one generation (often within a family or social group) is passed down to subsequent generations (e.g., survivors or war, racial trauma, parental abuse). Survival strategies used in response to traumas can become part of a family legacy and relationship dynamics (e.g., addiction, aggression, emotional cutoff)

Vicarious trauma

Can occur when you are exposed to trauma secondhand - which is often the case for first responders, physicians, therapists, and caregivers whose careers put them in close contact to adverse events on a regular basis. It is important to validate these types of trauma as real and with damaging effects if not given adequate support and care.

Spiritual trauma

Examples of spiritual trauma include abusive experiences by a spiritual or religious leader within the context of a faith community or use of spiritual authority in a coercive manner. These experiences often represent an extreme power differential and seriously affect someone’s spiritual identity, participation in religious practices, or experience of isolation.

 

How does therapy for trauma work?

It’s understandable that you don’t want to revisit or talk about experiences that have caused incredible pain. Yet avoidance means that the pain goes untended to. It doesn’t disappear - it only means it seeps into your life in other ways that get in the way of thriving. Therapy for trauma can help you address the effects of a traumatic experience with professional support so you can get unstuck and move forward.

Examples goals in trauma therapy

  • Learn about trauma and how it affects you and your mental health

  • Understand normal survival responses that are often misinterpreted as a character flaw or failure

  • Process and manage strong emotions effectively

  • Unpack and process traumatic memories or trauma-related triggers with practical coping skills

  • Restore a safe and healthy connection with your own body

  • Change unwanted relationship patterns shaped by traumatic experiences

  • Build a life based on values and intentions instead of past events

  • Change internalized narratives of shame, defectiveness, or low worth

  • Exercise decision-making power in personal and work life

  • Practice self-acceptance and greater mindfulness

Types of therapy for unresolved trauma, PTSD, and C-PTSD

Cognitive Processing Therapy

Cognitive Processing Therapy is a type of cognitive behavioral therapy that helps identify, challenge, and change unhelpful beliefs or thoughts associated with a traumatic event. CPT helps you examine the story you’re telling yourself about what happened and how the narrative may be holding you back.

Dialectical Behavioral Therapy

Dialectical Behavioral Therapy focuses on teaching a number of emotional and behavioral strategies to manage and tolerate strong feelings. DBT also helps people manage challenging relationship dynamics more successfully. DBT can help you let go of maladaptive coping skills that may have served a purpose before but are no longer helpful in the present.

Psychodynamic Therapy

Psychodynamic Therapy focuses on making connections between past experiences and their impact on your sense of self or relationships today. In particular, highlighting the effects of unsafe attachments and relationships or unmet emotional needs can give insight into the patterns or assumptions you may hold today so you can change them. '

Somatic Therapy

Somatic therapy approaches focus on body-centric interventions and are premised on the idea that the body remembers traumatic experiences and can also play a strong role in healing. The word “soma” means body in Greek. Somatic interventions incorporate body awareness, breathing, movement, and neuroscience to help the body process and recover from traumatic stress.

 

Trauma, PTSD, & C-PTSD therapists in Manhattan NYC

Our team of psychologists at Manhattan Therapy Collective are trained in a range of relational, multicultural, and evidence-based trauma-informed therapies such as Cognitive Processing Therapy, Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, and somatic-based approaches.

Each of these therapies offer an opportunity to safely process, incorporate new skills, and a deeper sense of personal agency. We also incorporate mindfulness techniques and skills based on what we know about how trauma affects the body and nervous system.

We encourage you to reach out for support - we’d love to connect and answer your questions. Therapy for trauma can help you experience the care and support it takes to process, heal, and move forward. Being able to talk through what happened and actively move forward at your own pace can be an incredibly healing experience. Doing so with a therapist can also give you the opportunity to learn what it means to trust yourself and someone else in the context of an unconditionally supportive relationship. Book a free consultation today.

 

FAQs about therapy for trauma and PTSD

 

  • Absolutely. Having flashbacks is often disorienting and terrifying, and even moreso if you don’t understand what is happening or why. Sometimes the things you are trying to manage your flashbacks may be unintentionally making them worse. By demystifying what is happening and learning how to respond in healthy ways, you can regain a sense of control of your body and emotions with professional support.

  • It can make sense to go to therapy now even if your trauma(s) happened years ago and you’re in a very different place in life. Sometimes the effects of trauma are obvious, while sometimes they are not - learning more about the range of ways trauma can affect us (e.g., how old you were), can be very validating and connect some dots. It can also be hard to have a full perspective of your own life, which makes having an outside set of eyes and ears helpful.

    We also know that while the impact of trauma may not be disruptive now - life experiences, such as new relationships, parenthood, relocation, or losses - may bring up what’s been buried or forgotten in unpleasant ways. Being proactive in addressing trauma in therapy can be a wonderful form of self-care and empowerment.

  • We actually get this a lot. As you can see from above, there is no singular definition of a traumatic event. What we care about the most is understanding and thoughtfully supporting you through whatever were the most painful experiences you’ve been through. It does not matter if someone else considers your experience a trauma or not - we are not interested in comparing one’s experience to another. What we do care about is its impact on your life - whether or not a significant experience is keeping you from the life you want to live or the person you want to be. Our ultimate goal is to help you thrive.

  • Absolutely not. When we are overwhelmed by a traumatic moment, we're wired to survive it in any way we can - and this can mean shutting a part of us off or doing whatever it takes to get through. Even after a traumatic moment sometimes there's no space, safety, or helpful support to process what you experienced, which can keep everything buried. Sometimes we try to stay busy and distracted for a long time to avoid thinking about what happened.

    This can be the case for many and we want to normalize that sometimes people don't feel that affected by trauma until years later. What's most important is seeking help whenever you're ready.

  • If you’ve actively avoided thinking about traumatic memories and experiences, we do know that avoidance has the opposite effect and usually backfires, the thing we're running from gets bigger and more overwhelming over time. Talking about unresolved trauma may feel painful and bring up a lot of intense feelings at first, but these feelings lessen over time as you learn to process and cope with support.