You Survived. Now It's Time to Heal.
Therapy for Trauma
Compassionate, evidence-based trauma therapy using EMDR and somatic approaches. Heal from PTSD, childhood trauma, and painful experiences that keep you stuck.
Request Your Free ConsultationTrauma changes you. It rewires your nervous system, shifts how you see the world, and makes you live in a state of constant alertness — even when you're “safe.” Maybe you jump at loud noises. Maybe you can't fully relax, ever. Maybe certain people, places, or situations flood you with emotions that feel way too big for the moment.
Perhaps the trauma is something specific — an accident, an assault, a devastating loss, a medical emergency, a birth that went terrifyingly wrong. Or perhaps it's the slower kind — the cumulative effect of growing up in a home where you weren't emotionally safe, where you learned that your needs didn't matter, where love was conditional or unpredictable.
Either way, trauma leaves its fingerprints on everything: your relationships, your self-worth, your ability to trust, your parenting, your career, your physical health. And you can't think your way out of it. Trust me — if willpower and intelligence could fix trauma, you would have fixed it already.
Healing from trauma requires working with the brain and body in ways that go beyond talk therapy. That's exactly what I specialize in.
I'm Vera McGrath, an EMDRIA-certified EMDR therapist who helps women — and especially mothers — heal from trauma so they can stop surviving and start living. My practice integrates EMDR, somatic awareness, and attachment-focused approaches for deep, lasting change.
Does This Sound Familiar?
If you're experiencing any of these, you're not alone — and therapy can help.
“Trauma is not what happened to you. It's what happened inside you as a result. And what happened inside you can be healed.”
— Vera McGrath, LMFT
Understanding How Trauma Works
Trauma is not just an emotional experience — it's a neurological one. When something threatening happens, your brain's alarm system (the amygdala) activates your fight-flight-freeze response. In a normal situation, once the threat passes, your brain processes the event and files it away as a memory.
But when the experience is too overwhelming, that processing doesn't complete. The memory gets stored in a fragmented, unprocessed state — still connected to the original emotions, physical sensations, and beliefs. That's why a smell can transport you back to a dangerous moment. That's why your body tenses around people who remind you of someone who hurt you. Your brain thinks the danger is still present.
Big-T trauma includes events like assaults, accidents, natural disasters, combat, medical emergencies, and traumatic births. Little-t trauma includes experiences like emotional neglect, bullying, invalidation, unstable caregiving, and chronic stress. Both types change your brain and body, and both deserve treatment.
Importantly, what matters is how the experience affected you — not whether someone else would consider it “bad enough.” If it changed how you see yourself, others, or the world, it counts.
My Approach to Trauma Healing
Healing trauma requires more than understanding it — it requires reprocessing it at the level where it's stored: in your brain's emotional and sensory networks and in your body. My approach weaves together multiple evidence-based modalities:
EMDR Therapy — The cornerstone of my trauma work. EMDR uses bilateral stimulation to help your brain reprocess traumatic memories, reducing their emotional charge and the power they hold over you. As an EMDRIA-certified therapist, I bring advanced expertise to this work.
Somatic Therapy — Your body holds the score. We'll work with the physical manifestations of trauma — the tension, the numbness, the chronic pain, the startle responses — to help your nervous system regulate and feel safe again.
Attachment-Focused Work — For those whose trauma is relational (neglect, unstable caregiving, emotional abuse), we'll explore how those early experiences shaped your attachment patterns and work toward building secure, healthy relationships — including the one with yourself.
We always work at your pace. I will never push you into anything you're not ready for. We build safety and trust first — always.
You've Survived Enough. It's Time to Heal.
You don't have to keep white-knuckling through life. Reach out for a free consultation and take the first step toward freedom from trauma.
Request Your Free ConsultationWhen Motherhood Activates Old Trauma
One of the most common things I see in my practice is women whose unresolved trauma surfaces after becoming a mother. This is not a coincidence. Motherhood is one of the most activating life experiences, and it has a way of pulling old wounds to the surface.
Your baby's cry might trigger the same helplessness you felt as a child. Your toddler's defiance might activate rage that's connected to your own parent's anger. Sleep deprivation strips away the coping mechanisms you've been using to keep the trauma at bay.
If motherhood has cracked you open and exposed wounds you thought were healed — or ones you didn't even know were there — EMDR and attachment-focused work can help. You don't have to pass these patterns on to your children. Healing is possible, and it can happen faster than you think.
Benefits of Therapy
Frequently Asked Questions
You Don't Have to Do This Alone
Take the first step toward healing. Schedule your free consultation today and discover how therapy can help you feel like yourself again.
Request Your Free Consultation