Trauma-Informed Care
What happened to you matters. Trauma-informed care starts with that recognition—and builds a path to healing that respects your pace, your boundaries, and your resilience.
Understanding How Experiences Shape Us
Trauma isn't defined by the event itself—it's defined by how the event affected you. Two people can go through the same experience and respond completely differently. What makes something traumatic is when it overwhelms your capacity to cope, leaving lasting effects on your nervous system, your beliefs about yourself and the world, and your relationships.
Beyond obvious traumas like accidents, abuse, or violence, this can include experiences often minimized or overlooked: childhood emotional neglect, chronic invalidation, medical procedures, discrimination, immigration stress, witnessing violence, or growing up with an unpredictable parent. It also includes intergenerational trauma—the effects of historical and family trauma passed down across generations.
Trauma-informed care means I approach our work with awareness of how these experiences shape you. It means creating safety first, going at your pace, and never pushing you to share more than you're ready for. It means recognizing that your symptoms—however frustrating—are adaptations that made sense in context.
How Trauma Shows Up in Daily Life
In Your Body
Chronic tension, unexplained physical symptoms, feeling disconnected from your body, startle responses, difficulty relaxing, sleep problems, or feeling constantly on edge. Your nervous system may be stuck in survival mode.
In Your Emotions
Intense reactions that seem disproportionate, emotional numbness, difficulty naming what you feel, shame that doesn't budge, persistent fear or anxiety, or depression that won't lift despite your best efforts.
In Your Thoughts
Negative beliefs about yourself ("I'm broken," "It was my fault"), hypervigilance, intrusive memories, difficulty concentrating, or a persistent sense that something bad is about to happen.
In Your Relationships
Difficulty trusting, patterns of choosing unhealthy relationships, fear of abandonment or engulfment, trouble with boundaries, or feeling like you're always waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Trauma Takes Many Forms
Single-incident trauma involves one overwhelming event: an accident, assault, natural disaster, or sudden loss. The nervous system gets stuck in the moment of the threat, and symptoms can persist long after the danger has passed.
Complex trauma comes from repeated or prolonged experiences, often in childhood—ongoing abuse, neglect, living with an addicted or mentally ill parent, or chronic family dysfunction. This shapes core beliefs about self, others, and the world.
Developmental trauma refers specifically to disruptions in early attachment and caregiving. When children don't receive consistent, responsive care, it affects how the brain develops and how emotions are regulated throughout life.
Intergenerational trauma describes patterns passed down through families and communities. The effects of war, displacement, colonization, racism, or family trauma can shape parenting, emotional expression, and coping strategies across generations—even when the original events aren't discussed.
Principles of Trauma-Informed Care
Safety First
Before any deeper work, we establish safety—in our relationship, in your environment, and in your own body. Healing can't happen when you're still in survival mode.
You Set the Pace
Trauma often involves loss of control. Therapy restores it. You decide what we talk about, how deep we go, and when to pause. I follow your lead—never pushing you faster than your nervous system can handle.
Building Resources
We don't just dive into trauma. First, we build coping skills, grounding techniques, and internal resources. You need a strong foundation before addressing difficult material.
Honoring Your Survival
The coping strategies you developed—even the ones causing problems now—helped you survive. Rather than shame, we approach them with curiosity and gratitude while building new options.
When Trauma-Informed Care Makes Sense
Past Keeps Intruding
Flashbacks, intrusive memories, or feeling like you're back in the past
Hypervigilance
Always on alert, scanning for danger, difficulty feeling safe or relaxing
Emotional Flooding
Intense reactions that feel out of proportion to current situations
Numbness
Feeling disconnected, empty, or unable to access emotions
Body Symptoms
Physical symptoms that doctors can't explain, or chronic tension
Relationship Struggles
Difficulty trusting, patterns of unsafe relationships, fear of intimacy
Childhood Was Difficult
Abuse, neglect, chaotic home environment, or emotionally unavailable parents
Intergenerational Patterns
Family history of trauma, immigration, war, or unspoken pain
Previous Therapy Didn't Help
Tried talk therapy but it didn't touch something deeper
Culturally Attuned Trauma Care
Trauma-informed principles are foundational to all my work—not a separate specialty, but the lens through which I approach every client. I believe that understanding how difficult experiences have shaped you is essential to meaningful healing.
For AAPI clients and children of immigrants, trauma often interweaves with culture in complex ways. Immigration itself can be traumatic. Intergenerational patterns from war, displacement, or political persecution affect families for generations. Cultural norms around emotional expression, saving face, and family loyalty can make it harder to acknowledge or process trauma. The model minority myth adds pressure to appear successful regardless of internal struggle.
I bring cultural humility and lived understanding to this work. We explore not just what happened, but how your cultural context shapes what it means, how you were expected to cope, and what healing looks like for you specifically.
Trauma-Informed Principles Across Services
All of my therapy services are grounded in trauma awareness.
No. Trauma-informed therapy doesn't require detailed recounting of traumatic events. We can work with trauma through body awareness, present-moment experiences, and understanding patterns—without retraumatization. You're always in control of what we discuss.
The Pearly Therapy