Trauma Therapist in San Rafael

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

I’m Michelle Baumgartner, LCSW, a Trauma Therapist in San Rafael. I help adults who feel anxious, depressed, disconnected, or stuck in old patterns after difficult or painful experiences. 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.

In trauma therapy, 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.

The work is collaborative, compassionate, experiential, and present-moment, body-mind focused.

What You Can Expect from Trauma Therapy

Through trauma therapy, you can begin to:

• Feel calmer and less anxious 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 safer, closer. 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 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.