Narcissistic Abuse + Relationship Trauma Therapy
You can know a relationship doesn’t feel right and still have a hard time trusting yourself about it.
You replay conversations. Wonder if you misunderstood, overreacted, or expected too much. Over time, you can become very good at anticipating someone else’s moods and less certain about your own.
Whether this is happening with a partner, parent, sibling, or someone else, I’m less interested in labeling them than understanding what the relationship has been like for you.
We don’t need to diagnose someone else to talk about what happened.
The word narcissist gets used for a lot of things now. Some people are dealing with diagnosed personality disorders. Many are trying to understand relationships that have been controlling, confusing, manipulative, emotionally immature, or simply painful for a long time.
We can talk about the actual dynamics.
What happened when you disagreed? Was there room for your feelings? Did you find yourself keeping the peace, apologizing first, explaining yourself over and over, or changing your behavior to manage someone else’s reaction?
Those details tell us much more about your experience than a label ever could.
Some relationships teach you to second-guess yourself.
When your feelings are regularly dismissed, conversations get turned back around on you, or affection and approval feel unpredictable, you learn to pay very close attention to the other person.
You notice their mood before you notice your own. You think carefully about how to say things. You explain yourself until you’re exhausted. You become accustomed to checking whether someone else thinks your feelings are reasonable before trusting them yourself.
Those habits can make a lot of sense in the relationship where they developed.
They can also follow you long after you leave the room.
Family has a way of bringing out very old versions of us.
You can have a career, a family, a mortgage, a very competent adult life, and still feel sixteen after one conversation with your mother.
Old family roles run deep.
You may still be the peacekeeper, the responsible one, the one who doesn’t need much, the one who smooths things over, or the one expected to understand everyone else’s side.
As parents age, those dynamics can become even more complicated. Love, obligation, anger, grief, caregiving, and history can all end up sitting at the same table.
We can make room for all of it.
What might be showing up now
People-pleasing + over-explaining
You spend a lot of energy making sure other people understand your intentions, approve of your choices, or aren’t upset with you.
Difficulty trusting yourself
You know how you felt about something until someone else tells you that you shouldn’t feel that way.
Boundaries + guilt
You can identify the boundary. The difficult part is tolerating what happens inside you when someone doesn’t like it.
Walking on eggshells
You’re used to reading the room, anticipating reactions, or changing yourself slightly to keep things calm.
Relationship anxiety
You replay conversations, look for signs that something is wrong, or feel responsible for repairing disconnection quickly.
Emotionally immature parents
You’re beginning to understand a family relationship differently now that you have some distance, experience, or a family of your own.
Old relationship trauma
A relationship can be over while some of what you learned inside it is still very much present.
Your body may have learned the relationship, too.
Sometimes your mind has a perfectly reasonable explanation for why everything is fine while your body is considerably less convinced.
You tense when the phone rings. Your stomach drops when you see a name on the screen. You rehearse what you’re going to say before a conversation or feel completely depleted afterward.
I pay attention to those responses alongside the story you’re telling me. My approach includes evidence-based therapy, mindfulness, and nervous-system awareness, with room for intuition and the quieter ways we notice what feels safe, what doesn’t, and what we’ve learned to override.
Nothing needs to be made mystical for us to take it seriously.
Therapy with me is a relationship, too.
That matters to me, especially when relationships are part of what has hurt.
I’m not going to sit silently while you try to figure out whether you’re making sense. I’ll ask questions, share what I’m noticing, and tell you when something lands differently for me. If I misunderstand you, we can talk about that too.
You don’t need to manage my reaction, find the perfect way to explain yourself, or make your feelings more reasonable before bringing them into the room.
I want us to have the kind of relationship where you can notice what it feels like to be yourself with another person.
We’re not working toward becoming harder.
After a painful relationship, it can be tempting to think the answer is better defenses, stronger boundaries, spotting every red flag, and never letting anyone get that close again.
I’m more interested in helping you trust yourself.
To recognize when something feels off without immediately talking yourself out of it. To know when a boundary matters and tolerate the discomfort of holding it. To stay connected to your own experience while still being open to other people.
You don’t have to become suspicious of everyone in order to become more discerning about who gets access to you.
And yes, you can still love them.
Relationships would be much easier if difficult people were difficult all the time.
They aren’t.
There may be good memories, loyalty, tenderness, history, cultural or family expectations, financial ties, children, or a part of you that still wants the relationship to become something it has never quite been.
Therapy doesn’t require you to hate someone before we can talk honestly about how the relationship affects you.
We can let it be complicated.
PRACTICAL DETAILS
Therapy in Los Alamitos + throughout California.
IN PERSON
Los Alamitos, California
ONLINE
Throughout California
SESSIONS
Individual therapy · 50 minutes · $222
Her Turn
You’ve spent enough time trying to understand everyone else.
Therapy can give us somewhere to understand what happens to you in these relationships, what you’ve learned to carry, and what it would feel like to trust your own experience a little more.
