PTSD isn't just about flashbacks. It's the hypervigilance, the avoidance, the way your body responds to things before your brain has a chance to catch up. It's exhausting to live in a nervous system that's still responding to something that already happened. That's what we work on.
What's actually happening
Trauma rewires the nervous system. When something overwhelming happens — even once — your brain adapts to survive it. Those adaptations become patterns: hypervigilance, emotional numbing, avoidance, reactivity. They were protective once. In the present, they get in the way.
Therapy doesn't erase what happened. It changes your relationship to it — so it stops driving everything.
Signs PTSD might be affecting you
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Flashbacks, intrusive memories, or nightmares that won't stop
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Feeling emotionally numb or disconnected from your own life
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Avoiding people, places, or situations that trigger memories
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Constant hypervigilance — waiting for something bad to happen
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Difficulty sleeping, concentrating, or feeling safe in your own body
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Intense shame, guilt, or self-blame connected to what happened
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Relationships that keep getting destabilized by your responses
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Therapeutic approaches
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CBT — identifying and reshaping the beliefs that trauma built
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DBT — emotional regulation and distress tolerance for when trauma responses are activated
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ACT — building psychological flexibility when trauma has narrowed your world
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SFBT — identifying what safety and stability actually look like for you
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Polyvagal-informed — working directly with the nervous system's threat responses
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Attachment-informed — addressing how trauma disrupted your capacity for safe connection
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Parts work — working with the parts of you that are still protecting against the original threat
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Window of tolerance — gradually expanding your capacity to process without becoming overwhelmed
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Somatic awareness — recognizing how trauma lives in the body, not just the mind
This is where I do my best work
Complex PTSD and childhood trauma are at the core of my clinical practice — but not the limit of it. I bring training in attachment theory, polyvagal theory, parts work, somatic awareness, and developmental frameworks to this work. That depth matters when you're dealing with trauma that's been layered over a lifetime, not just a single event.
I work at your pace. We go toward the hard stuff — but carefully, with you in control of the process.
Free consultation. No pressure. I'll know pretty quickly if I can help.
A different relationship with what happened
PTSD doesn't have to keep running your life. Healing doesn't mean forgetting what happened — it means it stops driving everything. You get to have a present that isn't controlled by the past. That's what we're working toward.
Meet your therapist
Griffin Oakley, MSCP, NCC, LMHC, LPC
PTSD doesn't always look like what people expect. Sometimes it's loud — flashbacks, nightmares, hypervigilance. Sometimes it's quiet — numbness, avoidance, a life that's gotten smaller without you fully noticing. I've worked with both. I know the difference.
