Trauma &
Somatic Therapy
Your mind may understand what happened, but your body might still be carrying the trauma.
Trauma doesn’t always feel like a memory. It can show up as anxiety, shutting down, feeling on edge, or reacting more strongly than you want to. Our clinicians use EMDR, parts work, and somatic therapy to help you feel more grounded and find new ways of responding.
Why the body
When your mind understands, but something still feels stuck.
You may know where your patterns came from, and even what you should do differently. And yet you still find yourself bracing, shutting down, people-pleasing, or becoming overwhelmed. That doesn’t mean you’re doing therapy wrong.
Sometimes healing takes more than understanding. It can mean noticing what happens in your body, getting to know the protective parts of yourself, and having new experiences of safety and connection.
Our approach
How we work with trauma.
EMDR & Parts Work
EMDR helps process memories that still feel stuck and upsetting long after they happened. Parts work helps you understand the different ways you learned to protect yourself.
Maybe one part of you is always prepared for something to go wrong. Another wants to keep everyone happy. Rather than trying to get rid of these parts, we approach them with curiosity and compassion.
The two work together: parts work builds the stability that makes EMDR processing possible, and EMDR resolves what those parts have been guarding.
Somatic Work
Somatic work means paying attention to what’s happening in your body as part of therapy: tension in your shoulders, a tight chest, an urge to move away, or a tendency to freeze.
Rather than pushing those responses away, we get curious about them and build practical ways to regulate and reconnect. You don’t have to be good at noticing your body to begin.
The goal isn’t to feel calm all the time. It’s to feel more able to understand and respond to what is happening inside you.
Family & Parent Work
For children and teens, trauma often shows up through behavior, play, relationships, or changes at home and school. We use play, movement, and expressive work, with parents and caregivers as partners.
We look at the patterns and relationships around a child, not only the child, so change can continue outside the therapy room.
We work with children ages 5 and up, teens, parents, and whole families.
Culture & family
Trauma doesn’t happen in isolation.
Our experiences are shaped by family, community, and culture. For some people, trauma is tied to migration, racism, discrimination, poverty, or war, and has touched more than one generation.
In many immigrant and BIPOC families, survival gets passed down as overwork, hypervigilance, caretaking, or silence, often out of love. We make space for culture, identity, and family history as part of healing.
Who we work with
Who this is for.
- Childhood, relational, or complex trauma
- Feeling anxious, shut down, disconnected, or constantly on guard
- Understanding your patterns but still struggling to change them
- Grief, loss, or experiences that still feel unresolved
- Intergenerational patterns in immigrant, first-generation, and BIPOC families
- Children, teens, and parents working through trauma or big changes
You don’t need a single defining event to seek trauma therapy. Sometimes it’s the accumulation of experiences over time.
Common questions
Questions people ask before starting.
What is somatic therapy, and how is it different from talk therapy?
Somatic therapy works with the body’s stress responses directly rather than through discussion alone. Trauma is stored in the nervous system as much as in memory, which is why insight on its own often leaves symptoms unchanged. Sessions include attention to breath, sensation, posture, and pacing alongside conversation.
What does a trauma-informed therapy session look like?
Sessions move at a pace that feels manageable. If you arrive overwhelmed, your therapist may slow things down and help you notice what is happening emotionally and physically in the moment, rather than rushing to fix it. Some sessions are mostly talking. Others involve noticing the body, staying with an emotion, or EMDR processing.
How long does trauma therapy take?
It depends on history, goals, and how the nervous system responds to the work. Single-incident trauma often resolves in a shorter course of EMDR. Complex and intergenerational trauma is usually longer-term, with early sessions focused on stabilization before any processing begins.
What is intergenerational trauma?
Patterns of fear, silence, overwork, or emotional distance that pass from one generation to the next, often without anyone naming them. In immigrant and BIPOC families these patterns are frequently tied to migration, war, poverty, or discrimination that earlier generations survived. Therapy focuses on recognizing the pattern and choosing what to carry forward.
What is the difference between “big T” and “little t” trauma?
“Big T” trauma refers to events that threaten life or safety, such as assault, a serious accident, violence, or a disaster. “Little t” trauma describes experiences that may not look dramatic from the outside, like ongoing criticism, emotional neglect, bullying, or a painful loss, but that build up over time. The terms are informal rather than diagnostic, and both can shape how the nervous system responds.
Is trauma therapy covered by insurance?
Kinnection is in network with Aetna, Cigna/Evernorth, Optum/UnitedHealthcare, Blue Shield of California, Carelon, LA Care, and Medi-Cal. Benefits are verified before the first session. A sliding scale is available for clients paying out of pocket.
The first step is just a message.
A clinician will follow up within one business day to set up a free 15-minute call.
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