ONLINE THERAPY IN CALIFORNIA
Trauma Therapist in California for Relational Trauma and Emotional Overwhelm
When You Feel Too Much and Never Enough at the Same Time
You feel like you can’t take it anymore. There are moments you want to crawl out of your own skin. You are exhausted from trying so hard to get it right, from carefully choosing your words, from adjusting yourself again and again, yet it never feels like enough. Someone always seems disappointed. You cannot shake the feeling that people are mad at you no matter how careful or accommodating you are.
You live in a constant tension of being too much and not enough at the same time. Your emotions feel too big for the room. You are worn down from monitoring yourself, from managing how you show up, from hoping that this time you will finally be understood. You want to feel seen. You want to feel safe being yourself without paying for it later.
It can feel like you have spent your whole life shape shifting just to belong or keep the peace. Even then, it still does not work. You end up feeling terrible anyway. You learned early how to squash parts of yourself to stay connected, but lately even that is no longer holding things together. You feel alone in it, like something always gets in the way of the closeness you want.
Sometimes it feels like something in you is broken. Like you were made different and will never figure out how to make life work the way it seems to for other people. You ache for relief, for a sense of safety inside yourself, yet it feels out of reach. You are so tired of apologizing for existing.
How Relational Trauma Shapes These Patterns
Many women who look for a trauma therapist in California do not think of themselves as having trauma. They think they are just too sensitive, too reactive, or bad at relationships. But relational trauma often does not come from one single event. It comes from repeated experiences of emotional misattunement, inconsistency, or having to manage other people’s emotions to stay connected.
Over time, your nervous system learns that connection is unpredictable. You may become hyper aware of tone, expression, and silence. You may over give, shut down, freeze, or collapse under emotional pressure. Your body stays on high alert, even when nothing is obviously wrong. This is not a personal failure. It is an adaptive response to relational environments that did not feel safe.
Relational trauma lives in the body, not just in your thoughts. That is why logic alone does not fix it. Healing requires creating safety inside yourself, so your system no longer has to work so hard to protect you.
You Do Not Need to Keep Proving Your Worth
Therapy with me is a place to lay it all down. The striving. The self criticism. The quiet guilt of wanting more than you have been allowed to want. Together, we slow things down so you can begin to hear what your body, your emotions, and your deeper self have been communicating all along.
I am Kathy, a trauma therapist in California offering online therapy statewide and in person sessions in Redlands, CA. I specialize in working with women healing from relational trauma, emotional overwhelm, and long standing patterns of self abandonment.
My work is grounded in an understanding of trauma as something that shapes your nervous system, your relationships, and your sense of self. I integrate STAIR skills, IFS informed parts work, somatic awareness, and neuroscience based approaches to help you build internal safety, not just insight.
This work helps you learn to trust yourself again, even when uncertainty shows up. It helps you soften the inner critic that keeps you small. It helps you set boundaries that honor your needs without guilt. It helps you remember your inherent worth without having to earn it.
This is not about fixing you. It is about coming home to yourself.
FAQS
What others have wondered about trauma therapy in California
-
Trauma is not defined by how extreme something looks from the outside. It is about how your nervous system experienced what happened. Relational trauma often comes from repeated experiences of emotional misattunement, inconsistency, or having to manage other people’s emotions to stay connected. If your system learned to stay on high alert to feel safe, trauma informed therapy may be helpful for you.
-
Yes. Many people with relational trauma do not have one clear memory. Instead, they notice patterns like emotional overwhelm, people pleasing, shutting down, or feeling responsible for others. Trauma therapy works with how these patterns live in your body and relationships now, not just with memories.
-
No. Trauma informed therapy does not require reliving or retelling everything that happened. We move at a pace that feels manageable and focus first on building internal safety and stability. You are always in control of what we explore.
-
Feeling numb, blank, or unsure what you feel is a common trauma response. It often develops as a way to cope. Therapy helps you reconnect gently and gradually, without forcing emotions or overwhelming your system.
-
Trauma therapy pays close attention to your nervous system, body responses, and protective patterns. While talking can be part of the work, we also focus on sensations, emotional regulation, and internal boundaries so change happens at a deeper level, not just cognitively. description
-
My work integrates STAIR skills, IFS informed parts work, somatic awareness, and neuroscience informed care. These approaches help you understand your emotional patterns, build internal safety, and relate to yourself with more compassion and clarity.
-
That fear makes sense, especially if your emotions were overwhelming or dismissed in the past. Therapy is structured to help you stay within a window of tolerance. We slow things down and work with emotions in ways that feel contained and supportive. description
-
Feeling safe and understood matters. A consultation gives you space to ask questions, share what you are hoping for, and see how it feels to talk together. You do not have to decide everything right away. description
More questions? Check out my FAQs page.
You are allowed to change at your own pace.
You are allowed to grow without abandoning yourself.
You are allowed to become who you were before you learned to disappear.
If you are ready to explore this gently, without forcing or fixing, trauma informed therapy can offer a steady place to begin. You do not have to rush. You do not have to do this alone.