When your body still thinks it has to survive.
You can understand exactly what happened to you and still feel like your body never got the memo that it's over. You might know you're safe and still brace for something to go wrong. You might shut down, disconnect, stay constantly alert, struggle to trust, or react in ways that don't seem to match what's happening now.
Trauma isn't only a story you remember. It can show up in your nervous system, your body, your relationships, your sexuality, and the ways you've learned to move through the world.
Trauma therapy at SOMA isn't about making you tell the whole story again or pushing you into the hardest parts before you're ready. We start with understanding what your system learned to do to protect you, building enough safety and capacity to work with it, and choosing together what happens next.
Sometimes trauma looks like flashbacks, nightmares, panic, or memories you can't get away from. But it can also be quieter. It can look like staying busy so you don't have to feel, automatically taking care of everyone else, shutting down during conflict, feeling disconnected from your body, or wondering why something that happened years ago still affects you.
Your responses may make perfect sense when we understand what your nervous system has been trying to protect you from.
Trauma doesn't always look like trauma.
Feeling constantly alert, tense, or unable to fully relax
Avoiding people, places, memories, or situations
Shutting down, going numb, or feeling disconnected
Difficulty trusting or feeling safe with other people
Shame, guilt, or feeling like something is wrong with you
Trouble sleeping, concentrating, or settling your mind
Trauma can show up as…
Strong reactions that seem bigger than the situation
People-pleasing, over-functioning, or difficulty setting boundaries
Feeling disconnected from your body or emotions
Relationship or attachment patterns you understand but can't seem to change
Difficulty with intimacy, touch, sex, or vulnerability
Physical tension or other body responses that show up around stress
You don't have to prove that what happened was “bad enough” to deserve support. If your experiences are still affecting how you feel, connect, or live now, that's enough to start the conversation.
You can understand it and still feel it.
You may already know where your reactions come from. You may have talked about what happened, made connections, learned the language, and become very good at explaining your patterns. And yet your body may still respond before your thinking brain gets a vote.
That doesn't mean therapy hasn't worked or that you aren't trying hard enough. Insight is valuable, but trauma can also involve learned patterns of protection that show up automatically through sensation, emotion, movement, attention, and nervous system responses.
That's why we work with more than the story.
At SOMA, trauma therapy can include talking, but we also pay attention to what is happening in your body and nervous system in the present. Depending on what fits you, we may use approaches such as EMDR, Brainspotting, Somatic Experiencing, Internal Family Systems, mindfulness, or other body-based and experiential work.
The goal isn't to make you relive what happened. It's to help your system have experiences that are different from the ones it learned to expect.
And we don't start with the hardest thing.
Preparation matters. Before trauma processing, we spend time making sure you have ways to stay grounded, notice what is happening inside, access supportive resources, and communicate when something is too much.
You control the pace. We can slow down, stop, change direction, or decide that a particular approach isn't right for you. Trauma therapy should not require taking control away from you in order to help you heal from experiences in which control may already have been taken away.
What might trauma therapy include?
There isn't one trauma therapy that works for everyone. Different approaches give us different ways of working with memory, emotion, body responses, attention, and the nervous system. We choose what we use based on you, not because I have a favorite tool I use on everybody.
EMDR
EMDR uses bilateral stimulation, such as guided eye movements or other alternating stimulation like tappers, while working with distressing memories, beliefs, emotions, or body sensations. We prepare before processing begins, and you remain aware and in control throughout the work.
Somatic Experiencing
Somatic work pays attention to sensations, movement, impulses, tension, settling, and other ways your body communicates. Rather than pushing through activation, we work gradually and notice what helps your nervous system move toward greater flexibility and regulation.
Brainspotting
Brainspotting uses where you look and what you notice internally as a way of accessing experiences that may be difficult to reach through conversation alone. There can be much less talking, which some people appreciate when they know something is there but don't have words for it.
Internal Family Systems
IFS gives us a way to understand different “parts” of you without treating those parts as problems. The part that avoids, shuts down, gets angry, stays hypervigilant, or tries to control everything may have developed for a very good reason. We get curious about what those parts are protecting rather than trying to get rid of them.
These approaches can overlap, and we don't have to choose one and stay there. Therapy can move between talking, noticing, resourcing, processing, and simply slowing things down depending on what you need that day.
Trauma isn't only one kind of experience.
Some trauma comes from a single event that clearly divided life into before and after. Other trauma develops over time through relationships, environments, repeated experiences, or having important needs go unmet. Sometimes people know exactly what affected them. Sometimes they only know that something still doesn't feel right.
The work might involve…
Complex or developmental trauma
Childhood trauma or adverse experiences
Attachment and relationship trauma
Sexual trauma or unwanted sexual experiences
Emotional, physical, or psychological abuse
Neglect or chronic invalidation
Religious or spiritual trauma
Medical trauma
Grief and significant loss
Traumatic relationship experiences
Experiences related to identity, discrimination, or systemic harm
A specific event or experience that continues to affect you
You don't need to know what label fits your experience. We can start with what is happening now, how it's affecting you, and what you want to be different.
You don't have to be in crisis, have a PTSD diagnosis, or be ready to process your most painful memories to start trauma therapy. You may simply know that something from the past keeps showing up in the present, even when you understand it, wish it would stop, or have tried other ways of working through it.
Is trauma therapy right for me?
Feel safer and more present in your body
Understand your reactions without judging yourself for having them
Feel less controlled by memories, triggers, or automatic responses
Work with patterns that insight alone hasn't changed
Develop more capacity to stay present with difficult emotions
Trauma therapy might be a good fit if you want to…
Feel more connected in relationships
Work through shame, guilt, or beliefs shaped by past experiences
Explore how trauma affects intimacy or sexuality
Build greater trust in yourself and your own responses
Process past experiences when and if you feel ready
You don't have to arrive ready to tell me everything that happened. We can start with where you are now and decide together what the work needs to look like.
Trauma therapy at SOMA
In person: Elizabeth City, North Carolina
Telehealth: Available throughout North Carolina and Virginia
Who I work with: Adults 18+
Approach: Integrative, trauma-informed, body-based, and individualized
May include: EMDR, Brainspotting, Somatic Experiencing, Internal Family Systems, mindfulness, and other experiential approaches
Provider: Britney Dixon, MS, LCMHC, LPC, AASECT Certified Sex Therapist
Wondering if we'd be a good fit?
You don't need to know which therapy approach you need or whether you're ready to process trauma before reaching out. A free 15-minute consultation gives us a chance to talk briefly about what you're looking for, answer questions, and decide whether working together makes sense. If I'm not the right fit for what you need, I'll tell you that too.