Trauma & PTSD Therapy at Lori Kimmerly Therapy, Renton WA and online across Washington

Heal at a Pace You Control

Trauma is not only what happened — it is what your nervous system still does about it. That can look like hypervigilance, numbness, nightmares, or reactions that feel out of proportion to the moment. Therapy helps your system finish something it never got to finish.

In person in Renton, WA · Online throughout Washington · Most insurance accepted

In Short

In person in Renton, WA
Online throughout Washington
Most insurance accepted
Self-pay $40–$150

Insurance

Premera, Cigna, Aetna, Kaiser, Molina, Coordinated Care, Community Health Plan, WellPoint, TriCare, United.

Availability

Now accepting new clients — in person and online.
Schedule Your Consultation ›

From Our Blog

Healing Trauma Through Connection
Read the Article ›

What Is Trauma & PTSD Therapy?

Trauma keeps the nervous system braced for danger. Healing lets the storm settle into steadier ground.

Trauma therapy is support for experiences that overwhelmed your capacity to cope at the time and are still affecting you now. That includes single events and long-running experiences from childhood or a relationship. Our therapists work in a trauma-informed way, which means safety and pacing come before anything else — you are never required to retell the whole story to get help.

Memories, images, or flashbacks intrude when you do not want them
You are jumpy, on guard, or startle easily
You avoid people, places, or conversations that remind you of what happened
You feel numb, detached, or disconnected from your body
Sleep is disrupted by nightmares or you cannot settle
Your reactions feel out of proportion and you cannot explain why
Something happened long ago that you have never really talked about

What Trauma Does to Your Nervous System

Trauma leaves the threat-response system switched on. The brain’s alarm keeps firing — fight, flight, freeze, or fawn — even when the danger is over, which is why you can feel jumpy in a calm room or shut down in an ordinary conversation.

Therapists describe this as a narrowed window of tolerance: the zone where you can feel things without being overwhelmed shrinks, so you swing between hypervigilance and numbness. Flashbacks, a hair-trigger startle response, and dissociation — checking out when things get intense — are the nervous system protecting you the only way it knows how. Trauma therapy widens that window again, so the alarm can finally stand down.

Types of Trauma We Work With

Acute trauma — a single overwhelming event: an accident, assault, loss, or medical crisis
Chronic trauma — repeated or prolonged exposure, such as ongoing abuse or domestic violence
Complex trauma (C-PTSD) — long-running, often beginning in childhood, that shapes identity and self-worth
Relational and attachment trauma — harm inside the relationships that were supposed to be safe
“Big-T” and “little-t” trauma — it does not have to be catastrophic to count; accumulations of smaller wounds are treated with the same seriousness

Types of Trauma Therapy We Use

Good trauma work does not start with the worst memory. It starts with stability, resourcing and pacing, so that processing does not overwhelm you. Our therapists use EMDR, IFS and somatic approaches, and you set the pace throughout.

EMDR — EMDR is used to help the brain reprocess distressing memories so they lose their grip. It is particularly associated with trauma and PTSD work. We have therapists who offer EMDR specifically.Often helps with

Intrusive memories and flashbacks
Distress that spikes without obvious cause
Single-incident and childhood trauma

In sessions, you hold a difficult memory briefly in mind while following side-to-side movement or tapping — the bilateral stimulation that gives EMDR its name — and the brain gets a second chance to file the memory properly. You do not have to describe what happened in detail for it to work, and many people find distressing memories lose their charge faster than with talk alone.

Internal Family Systems (IFS) — IFS works with the different “parts” of you — the protector that keeps you busy, the critic, the part underneath carrying the hurt. Rather than fighting those parts, IFS helps you understand what each one is trying to do for you, so they can relax. It is one of our practice’s core approaches.Often helps with

Inner criticism and harsh self-talk
Feeling pulled in two directions at once
Old wounds that resurface in current relationships

In trauma work, IFS gets to know the protectors first — the parts that numb, distract, or control — and only approaches the wounded parts they guard when your system is ready. Nothing is forced, and no part of you is treated as the enemy. Read more about how IFS works →

Somatic & Mind-Body Approaches — Distress lives in the body as much as the mind — the tight chest, the clenched jaw, the restless nights. Somatic work brings the body into therapy, helping you notice and settle those physical patterns rather than only talking about them.Often helps with

A body that will not settle or switch off
Panic, tight chest, clenched jaw, restless sleep
Feeling disconnected from physical sensation

In practice this means learning to track sensation, using breath and grounding to settle activation, and moving attention gently between what feels calm and what feels charged so the nervous system can finish stress responses it never got to complete. It is especially useful when trauma shows up physically — startle, tension, shutdown — more than in words.

Trauma-Informed Care — Trauma-informed care shapes how sessions are paced and how safety is built, so that past experiences are not accidentally re-lived in the room.Often helps with

Feeling unsafe or on guard in sessions
Needing to control the pace of the work
Past therapy that moved too fast

Concretely, that means you set the pace, nothing happens without your consent, stabilization always comes before processing, and your therapist watches for signs of overwhelm so sessions stay within what your nervous system can use. It is less a technique than a promise about how every technique is delivered.

Attachment-Based Therapy — Attachment-based work looks at how your earliest relationships shaped what you expect from people now. Understanding those patterns makes it easier to change how you show up in current relationships.Often helps with

Fear of abandonment or of being crowded
Patterns that repeat across every relationship
Difficulty trusting or depending on others

For relational and childhood trauma this matters doubly: the harm happened in relationship, so the healing happens in one too. The steady, reliable relationship with your therapist becomes the place where new expectations of safety are built and practiced.

Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) — CPT is part of the cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) family — a structured, evidence-based form of CBT built specifically for PTSD. Trauma often leaves behind “stuck points” — beliefs like it was my fault, I can’t trust anyone, the world is dangerous — and CPT works through them systematically, examining how the trauma reshaped your thinking and building more accurate, livable beliefs in their place.Often helps with

Guilt and self-blame that logic cannot budge
Trust in people or the world that shattered
Feeling permanently changed or unsafe since it happened

It is typically short-term and does not require retelling the trauma in detail, which makes it a good fit when the meaning of what happened weighs heavier than the memory itself.

Other Ways Trauma Shows Up

Trauma is not only what happened in one terrible moment. Open any of these for the forms it takes that people often do not recognize as trauma.

What are Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)?

ACEs are stressful or traumatic events in childhood — abuse, neglect, a household affected by addiction, mental illness, separation, or violence. Decades of research link higher ACE exposure to anxiety, depression, chronic health problems, and relationship difficulties in adulthood. An ACE history is not a life sentence: the same research shows that safe relationships and effective therapy change those trajectories, and much of our trauma work is exactly that — giving what happened then somewhere to finally be processed now.

Can burnout and toxic stress be trauma?

Prolonged stress without recovery — a punishing job, caregiving without relief, years of survival mode — changes the nervous system in ways that look a lot like trauma: exhaustion that sleep does not fix, cynicism or numbness, a body that cannot come down from alert. You do not need a single catastrophic event for your system to be carrying too much, and the same stabilization and processing work applies.

What are secondary traumatic stress and compassion fatigue?

People who care for others — nurses, first responders, therapists, teachers, family caregivers — can develop trauma symptoms from repeated exposure to other people’s suffering: intrusive images, dread, detachment, and a shrinking capacity to feel. This is secondary traumatic stress, and its close cousin compassion fatigue is the gradual erosion of empathy that comes with it. Both are occupational realities, not personal failings, and both respond well to the same trauma-informed care.

What actually gets better with trauma therapy?

People usually notice sleep improving and the startle response softening first. Then the bigger shifts: flashbacks and intrusive memories losing their charge, reactions becoming proportional to the moment you are actually in, self-blame giving way to self-compassion, relationships feeling less like a minefield, and — the one people mention most — finally feeling safe inside your own body. Progress is rarely a straight line, but it is cumulative.

What to Expect: Your First Session and Beyond

1Reach out

Fill out the contact form or call the office. We’ll match you with a therapist who fits and schedule a complimentary consultation.

2First session

Your therapist gets to know you and what you want to be different. You will not be asked to recount the trauma on day one.

3Early sessions

The first work is stability and safety — building the resources you need before going anywhere near the hardest material.

4Ongoing work

Processing happens only once you have the footing for it, at a pace you control, with regular check-ins on what’s changing and what still needs work.

Try a Grounding Exercise

Five senses, about one minute. A skill you can carry out of session and into the moments that need it.

See

Name 5 things you can see around you right now.

Feel

Name 4 things you can physically feel — your feet on the floor, the chair beneath you, the air on your skin.

Hear

Name 3 things you can hear.

Smell

Name 2 things you can smell — or two scents you like.

Taste

Name 1 thing you can taste, or one thing you’re grateful for right now.

Take a breath

Notice how you feel now compared to a minute ago. Even a small shift — slightly slower breathing, feeling your feet again — is your nervous system responding. That is the skill, and it gets stronger every time you practice it.

In trauma therapy, skills like this come first — before any of the harder work. If you’d like support building that foundation, schedule a complimentary consultation.

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Grounding works by pointing your attention at what is actually around you, which signals to a braced nervous system that the danger it is reacting to is not in this room. It is one of the first skills practiced in the stabilization phase of trauma therapy — something to reach for when memories intrude or your body goes on alert. Walk through the 5-4-3-2-1 exercise above at whatever pace feels right.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does trauma therapy cost?

Sessions run $40–$150 depending on which therapist you see. We accept most major insurance, self-pay is welcome, and a limited number of reduced-fee spots are available.

Do I have to talk about what happened?

Not in detail. Approaches like EMDR and IFS do not require recounting everything. Your therapist will explain what each involves so you can choose what feels workable.

What is the difference between a trauma therapist and a regular therapist?

Any licensed therapist can listen; a trauma therapist is trained in how trauma actually lives in the nervous system — and in approaches built for it, like EMDR, IFS, and somatic work. That training changes how sessions are paced: safety and stabilization come first, you are never pushed to retell what happened, and processing only starts once you have the footing for it. With trauma, the how matters as much as the talking.

What is the difference between PTSD and complex PTSD?

PTSD generally follows a specific event or events. Complex PTSD tends to follow prolonged or repeated experiences, often early in life, and affects identity and relationships more broadly. We work with both.

Will therapy make me feel worse before I feel better?

It can temporarily stir things up, which is exactly why pacing matters. A good trauma therapist builds stability first and checks in constantly. You should never be pushed past what you can handle.

How long does trauma therapy take?

It depends on the type of trauma and your goals. Single-incident work is often shorter than work on prolonged or childhood trauma. Your therapist will talk this through honestly with you.

Does insurance cover therapy here?

We accept Premera Blue Cross, Cigna, Aetna, Kaiser Permanente, Molina (Medicaid), Coordinated Care, Community Health Plan, WellPoint, TriCare, and United Health Care. Coverage varies by plan, so contact us to verify yours before your first session.

Is online therapy as effective as in person?

Yes — telehealth sessions use the same approaches, and many clients find it easier to attend consistently. We offer online therapy throughout Washington.

What is EMDR and how does it help trauma?

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) uses guided eye movements or other bilateral stimulation while you briefly hold a distressing memory in mind, helping the brain reprocess it so it loses its charge. It involves far less verbal recounting than people expect, and many people find it easier than talking a memory through.

What if I do not remember everything, or I am not sure it “counts”?

Gaps in memory are common with trauma and do not disqualify you from care. Neither does comparing your experience to someone else’s. If it still affects you, it is worth bringing in.

Is what I share in therapy confidential?

Yes. What you share in session is protected by therapist-client confidentiality and Washington state law. There are a small number of legally required exceptions (for example, imminent risk of harm to yourself or others), which your therapist will explain clearly before you begin.