Trauma Therapist in San Rafael
Begin to Feel Safe and Whole Again
You Feel Overwhelmed and Not Like Yourself
You get overwhelmed easily, sometimes even with the simplest of tasks. You often feel anxious and on edge, waiting for something to go wrong. Some days your mind won’t stop racing, and on the worst ones, the panic takes over completely.
You try to hold it together, but inside, you feel disconnected- like you’re moving through life without really being present. It can feel like you’re floating outside yourself, watching time pass without realizing where it went. You sense something is missing, and you’re not sure how to find your way back to yourself.
You often feel bad about yourself, convinced you can’t do anything right. Then the depression hits, and you feel heavy and may shut down. You might want to hide under the covers or feel empty and numb. You try to fill the emptiness with food, alcohol, phone scrolling, or anything that might distract you, but it never really helps. Deep down, you feel worthless and ashamed, and tired of pretending you’re okay.
Your Relationships and Daily Life Feel Harder Than They Should
Lately, you’ve noticed how reactive you’ve become. You get irritated when your partner doesn’t respond or when someone says something that feels critical. You might yell, then feel awful afterward. You feel guilty for snapping at your kids or withdrawing from friends, but sometimes it just feels easier to go along with what everyone else wants than to risk conflict.
You’ve struggled with relationships for as long as you can remember. You want to feel safe, feel heard, and feel cared for, but it’s hard to trust that anyone will really be there for you. Growing up, things were scary and unpredictable. There may have been drinking, anger, or violence. You learned to hide, stay quiet, or please others to keep the peace. You became good at surviving, but that survival mode is still running your life today.
Your body hasn’t forgotten what you’ve been through. Even after something like a car accident or argument, you can feel your heart race, your chest tighten, or your stomach drop. You can’t always explain it, but your body remembers. Some nights, you even relive it in dreams, trapped, afraid, unable to get out. You wake up exhausted, tense, and on edge before the day even starts.
At work, you try to hold it together, but when stress piles up, you can feel yourself snap. Then the shame hits again: “What’s wrong with me?” You wish you could just feel calm, confident, and in control, but instead, you end up feeling small, scared, and full of self-blame.
There is a way to feel safe, better able to manage your emotions, more secure in your relationships, and whole again.
Healing with a Compassionate Trauma Therapist in San Rafael
Michelle Baumgartner, Trauma Therapist in the Bay Area
I’m Michelle Baumgartner, LCSW, a therapist specializing in trauma in San Rafael or online in California, including the San Francisco Bay Area.
I help adults who feel anxious, depressed, disconnected, stuck in old patterns after difficult or painful experiences, or struggling in relationships. Whether you’ve been through an accident, a medical procedure, a recent loss or betrayal, or years of childhood trauma-neglect, emotional or physical abuse, you don’t have to face it alone.
My work is trauma-informed and grounded in Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, a somatic therapy, as well as influenced by Internal Family Systems to work with parts of the Self. Both are used to treat PTSD, complex or relational trauma, or childhood or early attachment trauma.
In trauma treatment, we first begin by creating a sense of safety and stabilization. You learn what thoughts, emotions, and body sensations arise for you, often without warning, in varying situations or relationships. You will learn to notice what’s happening inside with mindfulness, curiosity, and compassion. I will teach you tools or resources to feel calmer and less reactive, or to brighten your mood and raise your energy levels.
As therapy unfolds, we work on healing the wounds that keep you stuck - the fears, the beliefs about yourself and others, the shame, and the ways you learned to protect yourself long ago. We look at how those patterns show up in your relationships and your daily life, and find ways to create real change.
Healing from trauma looks different for each person. Someone recovering from a single traumatic event needs different support than someone recovering from the long-lasting effects of complex or relational trauma, often from childhood. Some people begin to notice changes after a few months, while for those living with complex trauma the work takes much longer.
The work is collaborative, compassionate, experiential, and present-moment, body-mind focused. We regularly check-in on your goals and your experience so therapy feels meaningful, respectful, and sustainable.
What You Can Expect from Compassionate Trauma Therapy San Rafael
Through trauma treatment, you learn skills to begin to:
Feel calmer and reduce anxiety in everyday situations
Feel less numb, shut down, and have a brighter mood, energy
Notice when you are triggered, and stress, fear, and shame take over; respond with more choices instead of reactivity.
Integrate more of your past so there is “less charge” about what happened
Better recognize patterns, beliefs, and ways you protect yourself
Feel more connected to all parts of yourself, including a Wiser, Higher Self
Build more confidence, and a renewed sense of worthiness and wholeness
Build healthy relationships-feeling a safer, closer connection. Get your needs met and learn to set boundaries
The goal of trauma therapy is to form a different relationship to your past and not keep reliving the trauma in the present.
You deserve to feel grounded, and have a sense of well-being and wholeness again - not constantly surviving, but thriving
Begin Trauma Therapy and Your Healing Journey in San Rafael or Online in California Today
If you’re tired of feeling anxious or on edge, or depressed, disconnected from yourself and others, there is a way forward. If you are ready to learn to pause and observe your experience, practice new skills, do meaningful healing work, and integrate all parts of yourself, I can offer you Trauma Therapy in person in San Rafael, or online throughout California for adults. Start your healing journey today.
Schedule your free 20-minute phone consultation with a trauma therapist in San Rafael or online in California here.
You don’t have to carry this alone — together we can create healing.
FAQ: Trauma Therapy | San Rafael
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Trauma therapy helps you understand and heal from painful or overwhelming experiences that still affect you today. It focuses on helping you feel safe in the present moment; calming your body and mind; moving out of numbness and shut down; making sense of what happened; and restoring a sense of wholeness, worthiness, and confidence.
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You may benefit from trauma therapy if you often feel anxious, on edge, depressed, disconnected from yourself or others. Many people seek support when they feel reactive, stuck in old patterns, feeling ashamed or unworthy, or struggling in relationships.
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Item descriptionThere are several different therapies to treat trauma. These may include Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Somatic Experiencing, EMDR, Internal Family Systems (IFS), and Cognitive Processing Therapy. They all work differently. I utilize Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, a somatic, body-mind therapy, work with parts of the Self, and have some basic understanding of Internal Family Systems.
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Sessions provide a safe and supportive space to slow down and notice what’s happening in your thoughts, emotions, and body. We’ll focus on helping you build tools and resources for emotional regulation and resilience before exploring and processing deeper memories or experiences. You may also identify “parts of the Self” that hold the pain, protect/manage the pain, and are untouched by pain. Everything moves at your pace.
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Not at all. Trauma includes any experience that leaves you feeling unsafe, overwhelms your ability to cope, leaves your nervous system dysregulated, or leaves you feeling negative about yourself.
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Yes. Many anxiety or depression symptoms, and relationship struggles are connected to unresolved trauma. As you learn to feel safer within yourself, more emotionally regulated, and less reactive, you’ll notice greater ease in your connections with others and more confidence in handling stress.
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You may have experienced a car accident, a medical procedure or surgery, a betrayal, or the sudden loss of a loved one. These events might leave you with repeated intrusive memories of the experience; wanting to avoid reminders of the experience; having intense emotions or feeling negative about your life; feeling on edge, vigilant about something bad happening. It is different for everyone. It isn’t about what happened to you, but how you are experiencing it.
Or you may have suffered from repeated, prolonged, distressing, scary interactions with family or caregivers as a child and extending into adulthood. You may feel that you can’t manage your emotions and reactions to people and events. You may struggle with trust and security in relationships.
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Healing from trauma looks different for everyone, depending on whether it’s from an acute, single event or from years of prolonged trauma, especially from childhood.
There are often phases to the work. In a first phase, some people start to feel relief and experience more emotional regulation after a few months, while for others it takes much longer. The second phase, trauma processing and integration, may take many months or years, again depending on the length and severity of the experiences. It can take several years to explore and address patterns, long-held beliefs, and to unblend and integrate parts of the Self to feel whole again.
We’ll regularly check in on your goals and progress so therapy feels meaningful and sustainable.
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That’s a common concern. Therapy is a collaborative process, and we’ll always go at a pace that feels safe. If something feels too much, we’ll pause, return to the present moment, and utilize resourcing and regulating tools and strategies.
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The goal is not to tell all the details of the story in a way that is re-traumatizing. We often “drop the story” and focus on what is experienced in the present moment in the body felt sense and nervous system. The healing happens in the present moment experience, not by re-living the past.
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I provide Trauma Therapy in San Rafael for in-person sessions, as well as secure online therapy for adults throughout California. Together, we can find the option that best supports your healing journey.