When Your Body Won't Let Go: Understanding Trauma Therapy That Actually Works

You’ve built a solid life. You’re responsible, accomplished, and used to being the one others count on. You’ve been through trauma and thought you had worked through most of it, but something still feels off.

Lately, your reactions might feel bigger than the moment calls for. You might snap and feel regret, or shut down even with people you care about. There’s a tension in your body that doesn’t fully go away, and rest rarely feels as restorative as it should.

You’re starting to wonder if the trauma you experienced is still affecting you in ways you didn’t expect. Maybe you’ve tried talk therapy or other approaches, and while they helped on some level, they didn’t bring the lasting relief you were hoping for.

The truth is, when you've experienced trauma, talking alone often isn't enough. Your body holds traumatic memories and protective responses that need a different kind of attention through specialized trauma therapy.

I'm Amy Hagerstrom, a licensed trauma therapist serving clients online throughout Florida and Illinois. I specialize in trauma focused therapy for high-functioning individuals navigating anxiety, burnout, and the lingering effects of traumatic experiences. My approach integrates mind and body work to address where stress actually lives, helping you feel safe, present, and genuinely like yourself again.

When Traumatic Experiences Shape Present Struggles

Trauma isn't always about dramatic events. Sometimes it's the accumulation of heightened stress, overwhelm, or traumatic experiences where you couldn't fight, flee, or fully respond. Whether you're dealing with complex trauma from ongoing stress or the aftermath of specific traumatic events, your nervous system developed intelligent ways to protect you. However, these same survival responses can get stuck, creating patterns that no longer serve your mental health.

This might show up as persistent anxiety, feeling tense, on edge, or hypervigilant, like your system is always bracing for something. You might snap at someone and then feel immediate regret or shame. At other times, you freeze up or shut down in important moments. Emotional overwhelm can hit out of nowhere. Your sleep doesn’t feel restorative, your digestion is off, and no matter how much you rest, your body still feels drained.

These aren’t personal flaws or signs that something’s wrong with you. They’re signs your nervous system is still reacting to past trauma or overwhelming experiences. It’s keeping you in survival mode even when you long to feel calm, present, and connected. Trauma therapy helps your body begin to feel safe again, so those protective responses no longer have to run the show.

How Trauma Lives in Your Body and Mind

When your nervous system faces something overwhelming, it kicks into powerful survival responses: fight, flight, or freeze. If these responses don’t get to complete their natural cycle, that energy can stay stuck in your system and show up as symptoms long after the experience is over.

Sometimes your system stays in overdrive with anxiety, hypervigilance, or emotions that feel bigger than the moment. Other times it drops into shutdown, which can feel like exhaustion, numbness, or feeling disconnected from yourself and others. These patterns are your body’s way of protecting you, reacting as if you’re still in danger even when you’re not thinking about the past.

Over time, these stuck responses can shape your daily life in ways you might not notice at first. Persistent shame, feeling like something is deeply wrong with you, or swinging between reactivity and emotional numbness can all be signs your nervous system needs help shifting out of survival mode.

Why Trauma Focused Therapy Works Differently

Traditional talk therapy often works “top-down,” starting with thoughts and memories to create change. While that can be valuable for many mental health concerns, it sometimes misses the body’s role in trauma. Some approaches to trauma therapy take a “bottom-up” path instead. They begin with present-moment sensations and your nervous system’s responses to help the body feel safe again.

In the trauma therapy I offer, we don’t just talk about what happened or why you react the way you do. We pay attention to what your body is telling us, like a tightness you notice in your chest when something feels off, or a heavy, frozen feeling when things get overwhelming. These physical cues help guide the work. By noticing and gently responding to what shows up, we support your system in releasing stuck stress responses and building the capacity to feel more safe, connected, and present.

This trauma-informed approach recognizes that trauma lives in the nervous system and can’t always be resolved through insight alone. By creating a space where your system feels supported and safe, we begin to work with the body’s protective responses. As these patterns shift naturally, it also becomes easier to make intentional changes, feel more choice in how you respond, and grow in ways that once felt out of reach.

Understanding Different Approaches to Trauma Therapy

The field of trauma therapy has evolved significantly, with various evidence-based approaches helping people heal from traumatic experiences. While I don't offer all modalities, understanding the landscape can help you make informed decisions about your mental health care.

Some trauma therapists use cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to help identify and change negative thought patterns related to past trauma. Others might employ exposure therapy techniques that gradually help process traumatic memories in controlled settings. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) uses bilateral stimulation to help the brain reprocess difficult experiences.

Each approach to treating trauma has its place, and what really makes a difference is finding a trauma therapist who creates a safe and supportive environment while using methods that resonate with your specific needs. The key is trauma-informed care that recognizes how traumatic experiences affect your whole person, not just your thoughts.

My Approach: Somatic Trauma Therapy for Lasting Healing

I use approaches that support your nervous system in shifting out of survival mode and into a state where real healing and change can happen. My trauma-focused therapy approaches are grounded in the connection between mind and body and how the nervous system responds to trauma.

Somatic Experiencing is a gentle, body-oriented approach that helps you reconnect with your internal sensations and natural resilience. We don’t need to revisit traumatic memories in detail. Instead, we work with your felt sense, the physical sensations you notice in the present moment, to help trapped survival energy complete and release. This trauma-informed therapy recognizes that your body holds wisdom from both painful and positive experiences and can guide the healing process.

The Safe and Sound Protocol (SSP) uses specially filtered music to gently engage the vagus nerve and the small muscles in your middle ear. This helps your nervous system tune into cues of safety, calming the stress response and increasing your ability to feel present and connected. For many people, SSP can make Somatic Experiencing and other trauma work more accessible and impactful, especially when the nervous system needs extra support with regulation.

Rest and Restore Protocol is a listening therapy that supports your body in finding deep rest and repair, especially when burnout or chronic exhaustion are part of your trauma experience. The rhythms in the music work with your body’s natural patterns, helping your system gradually slow down, re-regulate, and restore a healthier pace.

These approaches work together as Integrative Mental Health care, honoring the profound connection between your mind, body, emotions, and overall well-being. As your nervous system becomes more regulated through this trauma-focused treatment, you naturally build capacity to process intense emotions that once felt overwhelming.

Building Coping Skills and Resilience

Effective trauma therapy isn’t just about processing past experiences. It also includes building the capacity to navigate daily life with more clarity, resilience, and self-awareness. This kind of work offers practical tools to help you stay connected to yourself in challenging moments, so you're not as easily thrown off by stress or overwhelm.

In trauma-focused therapy, we’ll start to notice how your system responds to stress, whether things begin to ramp up or you start to shut down. We’ll figure out what helps in those moments. You’ll get tools and practices to use outside of sessions, and in our sessions, we’ll gently try things out and learn what your mind and body need to feel safer and more at ease, even in the middle of tough emotions or nervous system shifts.

This trauma-informed approach helps you build what we call a wider "window of tolerance," your capacity to experience strong emotions without being overwhelmed by them. Instead of swinging between being too activated or too shut down, you find a middle ground where you can feel fully without being hijacked by intense emotions.

What Healing from Trauma Actually Looks Like

The goal of trauma therapy isn’t to erase your past or eliminate all stress. It’s to help your nervous system come out of survival mode so you can be more present in your life. In our work together, there’s space for all of you: your thoughts, emotions, and the meaning you make of your experience. As we work together to help you release what’s been stuck in the body, you begin to notice more capacity for the harder things in life, along with more room for connection, ease, and clarity.

As we work together in this safe and supportive environment, you might notice the constant inner tension beginning to ease. Emotional outbursts become less frequent and intense, and when they do happen, you recover more quickly without the lingering shame. You start feeling more present in your relationships and more like yourself in your daily life.

This trauma focused therapy helps you develop resilience that goes beyond just managing PTSD symptoms. You begin to experience what it feels like to respond to life from a place of groundedness rather than reactivity. The hypervigilance that may have kept you safe during difficult times can finally relax, allowing you to be present for your life as it's actually happening.

Many clients find that as their nervous system heals from past trauma, they naturally begin sleeping better, feeling more energy for things they care about, and experiencing moments of genuine ease and joy. It’s not about going back to who you were before. Our work is about helping you grow into a version of yourself where your past experiences are fully integrated, and you can carry them in a way that supports your health, relationships, and sense of self.

What to Expect When We Work Together

I work with clients across Florida and Illinois through secure online sessions. This approach to trauma therapy can be especially helpful for people who are doing well on the outside but feeling overwhelmed, exhausted, or stuck underneath it all. It’s often a good fit for those who have experienced trauma and are just beginning to realize how much it’s still showing up.

Our trauma-focused treatment process begins with a complimentary 15-minute consultation that you can schedule through my website. This gives us a chance to connect, for you to ask questions about trauma therapy, and for us to determine if we're a good fit for working together as trauma therapist and client.

If you decide to move forward, you’ll complete paperwork online and receive your session links automatically. In our first session, we’ll start to get to know each other and begin with a simple practice so you can get a feel for how this trauma therapy approach works. You don’t have to go into difficult history unless you feel it would be helpful.

I recommend weekly sessions for the consistency that allows deeper, more lasting healing from trauma. Between sessions, I might suggest simple, enjoyable practices like grounding or noticing sensations in your body that feel supportive. These are meant to help your system heal and settle without adding extra pressure to your life.

Moving Beyond Survival: Creating a Meaningful Life

If you're tired of feeling exhausted despite your outward success, if you're ready to address the shame around emotional reactions, or if you sense that your body holds keys to healing that talking alone hasn't unlocked, trauma focused therapy might be the missing piece you've been looking for.

The persistent tension, reactive emotions, or feelings of being stuck aren't personal failings. They're intelligent adaptations your system developed to keep you safe when you experienced trauma. While these responses once protected you, they may now be keeping you from living the meaningful life you deserve, one characterized by genuine presence, connection, and aliveness.

My trauma therapy approach helps your whole self come back into balance through trauma informed care that honors both your strength and your struggles. We work together to regulate your nervous system so it can move out of survival mode, creating space for you to process intense emotions, reconnect with your natural resilience, and rediscover joy in your daily life.

This trauma focused treatment is about empowering you to move beyond the echoes of traumatic experiences and reclaim your capacity for genuine presence and connection. You don't have to carry the weight of past trauma alone, and you don't have to accept feeling stuck as your new normal.

Frequently Asked Questions About Trauma Therapy

How is trauma focused therapy different from traditional therapy? While traditional therapy often focuses on thoughts and memories, trauma therapy works directly with your body's sensations and nervous system responses. As your trauma therapist, I use your body's wisdom as our primary guide in the therapy process, helping trapped survival energy find completion without necessarily needing to discuss traumatic experiences in detail.

Do I need to talk about traumatic memories? You don’t need to go into traumatic memories for this work to be effective. We focus on what’s happening in your body now, noticing your present sensations and how your nervous system responds. Sometimes memories surface naturally during the process. If that happens, it’s up to you whether you’d like to talk about them or stay with the somatic work. Either way, we move at a pace that feels safe and supportive for you.

Can this help with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)? Yes, trauma-focused therapy can be very effective for addressing PTSD symptoms. The somatic approaches I use help regulate nervous system responses that often underlie trauma-related symptoms, whether they meet criteria for PTSD or show up as anxiety, complex trauma responses, or other lingering effects of past experiences.

How long does trauma therapy take?Healing from trauma is deeply personal, so there’s no set timeline. It isn’t a quick fix. Real, lasting change takes time, especially when you’re shifting patterns that have been in place since the trauma occurred. Progress isn’t always linear, but you’ll notice it’s working when you feel safer in yourself, more at ease in your body, and able to move through life with less reactivity and more capacity.

What if I'm not sure this approach is right for me? That's exactly why I offer a complimentary consultation. It's a no-pressure opportunity for us to connect, for you to ask questions about trauma therapy, and to get a sense of whether this approach resonates with you. Trust your instincts about what feels right for your healing process.

Ready to Feel Like Yourself Again?

If you’re in Florida or Illinois and ready to address trauma with an approach that works with both mind and body, I’d be glad to support you. This trauma-focused therapy is for people who may appear successful and put-together on the outside yet feel drained, stressed, or disconnected on the inside. It’s for those who want more than just managing symptoms and are ready for meaningful healing and change.

You deserve to feel at ease in your own body, to respond to life's challenges from a place of groundedness rather than reactivity, and to reconnect with the vitality that stress and unresolved trauma may have buried. Healing from traumatic experiences is absolutely possible through trauma therapy, and you don't have to do it alone.

The coping strategies that once helped you survive don't have to define how you live. Through trauma therapy that honors your full experience, you can develop new ways of being that promote healing and help you create the meaningful life you deserve.

Contact me and schedule your complimentary consultation through my website to begin exploring how trauma focused therapy can support your path back to feeling genuinely like yourself again.