Trauma Therapy in San Francisco, CA

Heal trauma at the root and feel empowered in your present with online therapy for childhood trauma throughout California and Virginia.
Schedule a Free Consultation

Heal the experiences that taught you to abandon yourself in order to feel safe, loved, and accepted.

Understand your patterns, reconnect with yourself, and feel more confident, grounded, and secure in who you are.

Start With a Consultation

“Honor yourself for the ways that you have survived"

— Dr. Thema Bryant-Davis

Are You Struggling with the Effects of Childhood Trauma?

You grew up being told or feeling like you were “too sensitive” and “too much.” Maybe you tried to get the love, comfort, or attention you needed by crying louder or trying harder, only to be met with anger, exasperation, or nothing at all. Maybe your feelings were dismissed, your needs felt like a burden, or you learned that being “good,” easygoing, helpful, or successful made things easier.

You didn’t consistently feel seen, understood, protected, or emotionally safe. So you slowly learned to hide parts of yourself away.

You may have stopped asking: Who am I? What do I feel? What do I need? What do I want?

And started asking: Who do I need to be so people will accept me? What do I need to do so they won’t leave?

Trauma isn’t always one big, terrible event. Sometimes, it’s what didn’t happen to you, over and over again. These experiences may not have looked like trauma at the time. But they can quietly shape the way you love, attach, communicate, see yourself, set boundaries, choose relationships, and feel in your body. 

You are not broken.

The parts of you that learned to hide, please, appease, achieve, numb, or stay small were trying to protect you.

Schedule a Consultation

Does This Sound Familiar?

Here are some of the common ways childhood trauma can continue to show up in your life:

  • Persistent or recurring anxiety or depression

  • Ongoing tension in your body—a tight neck and shoulders, clenched jaw, knot in your stomach, or a heavy, aching feeling in your chest

  • Feeling powerless or unsure of your ability to influence your life

  • Frequently criticizing yourself or comparing yourself to others

  • A deep sense of loneliness that you can’t seem to shake

  • Using scrolling, sleeping, overeating, or relationships to numb or avoid difficult feelings

  • Difficulty trusting your intuitive sense of what feels right or wrong

Therapy can help you understand where these patterns came from, reconnect with the parts of yourself you may have had to leave behind, and begin finding your way back to who you really are.

Back to your authenticity.
Back to your confidence.
Back to your wholeness.

Trauma’s impact on relationships and self-worth

Childhood experiences can quietly shape what you believe about yourself and what you expect from relationships.

When you learn early on that connection depends on being easy, helpful, successful, or attuned to everyone else’s needs, you can gradually lose touch with your own.

You may learn to carefully monitor other people’s moods and avoid conflict at all costs.

You may worry that you’re too much or not enough.

You may have difficulty trusting your instincts, fear rejection or abandonment, struggle to set boundaries, or find yourself staying in relationships that don’t feel good.

You may find yourself carrying beliefs like:

  • I can’t trust myself.

  • I’m too much.

  • My needs are a burden.

  • I have to be useful to be loved.

  • Something must be wrong with me.

  • I’m not good enough to be chosen.

These beliefs and patterns can be part of complex trauma. They can be painful and may leave you feeling broken or disconnected from yourself. But I want you to hear me when I say: there is nothing wrong with you.

Let's talk

How Trauma Therapy in San Francisco, CA Can Help

Therapy can help you make sense of what happened to you and understand your patterns with greater compassion.

You can reconnect with the parts of yourself you may have had to leave behind and begin building a different relationship with yourself—one rooted in safety, confidence, self-trust, and greater freedom to choose how you show up in your relationships and daily life.

From Seeking Acceptance to Knowing Yourself

Move away from: Who do I need to be to be accepted? and back toward Who am I, and what do I need?

Over time, therapy can help you move away from shaping yourself around what others need and toward a deeper connection with your own feelings, needs, values, and sense of self.

  • 1. Regulate your nervous system and feel safer in your body

    Trauma can leave your nervous system primed for danger even when you’re safe in the present.

    You may know logically that you’re safe, worthy, or allowed to have needs, yet your body may still feel anxious, tense, shut down, or afraid.

    Using a somatic, mind-body approach, we’ll help you understand your nervous system and develop tools to feel more grounded, present, and able to move through difficult emotions and sensations.

    You’ll learn to notice what’s happening in your body and support yourself in returning to a greater sense of calm, so you can respond rather than automatically react.

  • 2. Process and heal past traumatic experiences

    When you feel ready, we’ll gently work with the memories and experiences that still feel painful, overwhelming, or unresolved.

    We’ll begin to understand the protective parts of you that developed around these experiences and explore why you may feel and respond the way you do today.

    We’ll work at a pace that feels manageable, helping you understand your past with greater compassion and clarity. Together, we’ll begin shifting patterns that no longer serve you, creating space to release shame and self-blame.

    The goal isn’t to relive what happened. It’s to help your mind and body recognize that those experiences happened in the past—and that in your present, you have more safety, choice, and agency.

  • 3. Rebuild confidence, safety, and healthy relationships

    As you reconnect with your needs, emotions, instincts, and inner wisdom, you can begin to trust yourself more deeply.

    You can learn to set boundaries without immediately feeling guilty, stay connected to yourself in relationships, make decisions from a place of confidence, and move through uncertainty without feeling completely undone by it.

  • ★★★★★

    “I was very nervous to start therapy because I struggled with deep feelings of shame and unworthiness. Alexis helped me out of that headspace and taught me how to be in control of my life and emotions. I feel so much better in my daily life, and I am breaking patterns that I never thought possible. I see my growth and the effects of working with her constantly in my daily life. I have more control over my emotions, healthier responses to triggers, and a better understanding of my trauma.”

    — Client

  • ★★★★★

    “My life has fundamentally changed for the better since working with Alexis. I was able to confront things that I never faced until starting the work with her. I am forever grateful for her compassionate and purposeful approach to the work and for how life-changing therapy with Alexis has been.”

    — Client

  • ★★★★★

    “Alexis is a wonderful therapist who is skillful and compassionate. She has amazing tools to help you through your trauma. She reached me in a way I didn’t think was possible. I was able to make my inner child feel safe. I understand boundaries and no longer feel shame in saying no.”

    — Client

  • ★★★★★

    “Alexis is such a compassionate, grounded, and thoughtful therapist. She has a deep knowledge of trauma and attachment that she brings to her work. I highly recommend Alexis!”

    — Colleague

Meet your San Francisco Somatic Therapist

Online Therapy Available Throughout California and Virginia

Hi, I’m Alexis! I’m a licensed therapist and Certified Clinical Trauma Professional with over a decade of experience.

I specialize in helping women understand the connection between childhood experiences, attachment wounds, nervous system patterns, and the ways they relate to themselves and others today.

I don’t believe you need to be fixed. I believe the things you’re struggling with are often protective parts of you that developed to keep you safe or help you stay connected to the people you depended on. Given what you’ve experienced, these patterns make sense.

A mind-body, attachment-based approach.

My approach is grounded in attachment theory and informed by trauma-sensitive somatic therapy, parts work, inner child healing, and mindfulness-based approaches.

I work with both the mind and body because lasting change involves more than changing your thoughts or learning to cope with symptoms. Together, we’ll help your thoughts, emotions, and nervous system move out of old patterns and toward greater alignment, so that safety and confidence become something you can actually feel—not just something you understand intellectually.

At the heart of our work is reconnecting with your authentic self: the part of you underneath the fear, self-doubt, and protective patterns that knows who you are, what you need, and that your worth was never something you had to earn.

Schedule a Consultation

Reach out to your San Francisco Trauma Therapist Today!

Reach out

FAQ’s

  • You may have heard terms like childhood emotional neglect or emotionally immature parents. Childhood trauma doesn’t always look like physical abuse. It can be quieter, more subtle, and more complex.

    Trauma can include:

    • Growing up without resolution after conflict

    • Having a parent with volatile or inconsistent moods

    • Witnessing conflict or aggression between family members

    • Frequently fearing harm or feeling unsafe

    • Feeling like you needed to compete for your parent’s attention

    • Taking care of a parent or sibling at a young age

    • Having a parent who provided for you physically but was emotionally unavailable, or whose needs often took priority over your own

    These experiences can shape how you relate to yourself and others long after childhood.

    Therapy can help you understand the emotional wounds beneath these experiences and develop a stronger, more compassionate sense of self.

  • Whether or not you have specific experiences you identify as traumatic, trauma therapy can help you understand your experiences with greater compassion.

    Trauma therapy may be worth exploring if you want to:

    • Know that it’s okay to put your needs first

    • Feel less thrown off by a bad day, rejection, or criticism

    • Trust yourself again

    • Feel safer and calmer in your body

    • Feel comfortable being fully yourself without constantly wondering if you’re too much, too sensitive, too needy, or not enough

  • The length of trauma therapy depends on your experiences, needs, and goals. We’ll work together to identify what you’d like to work on and where you’d like to see yourself over time.

    Many people begin trauma therapy with weekly sessions, while some choose to meet twice a week when they feel additional support would be helpful. As you make progress toward your goals, we can gradually reduce the frequency of sessions.

    Once you feel your goals have been met, monthly maintenance sessions or sessions as needed can also be an option.

  • Trauma can leave your mind and body responding to the present as though the past is still happening. You may react strongly to rejection or conflict, seek reassurance, shut down, or find yourself choosing relationships based on what feels familiar rather than what feels healthy.

    Trauma therapy can help you develop a greater sense of safety in the present so you have more choice in how you respond.

    You can begin to trust your instincts, recognize what feels healthy, set boundaries, and build relationships where you can stay connected without losing yourself.

  • I offer online trauma therapy to people living in San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, and throughout California.

    I also offer online trauma therapy to people living in Alexandria, Fairfax, Richmond, and throughout Virginia.