Julie Morgavi Therapy
Trauma Therapy
in Tarzana, CA
Trauma Doesn't Always Look Like Trauma
If I had a nickel for every client who swore they didn't have any trauma in their lives, I could buy a LOT of overpriced coffees. Some traumas (Big T) are big and obvious. Assault, Abuse. A catastrophic accident. A terrifying loss. Other traumas (Little t) are less obvious, more insidious and have been quietly, or not so quietly, riding shotgun in our lives often since childhood. Clinical diagnoses such as PTSD have specific criteria. What I have come to notice is that trauma can include anything that overwhelms our emotional capacity to tolerate and process it. Anything that the body and mind were not emotionally/psychologically or developmentally equipped to withstand at the time.
And “at the time” matters.
Because the same experience can affect two people very differently depending upon who they were, how old they were, what else was happening around them, and whether there was someone safe available to help them through it.
And if there wasn’t? That’s when the Mind/Body does its things to protect.
Adaptations evolve; protector parts are created. And as well-intentioned as they are, they often negatively impact the way we move through our world.
The “C” in CPTSD stands for complex. Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is often associated with experiences that were repeated, relational, difficult to escape, and sustained over time. Frequently, although not exclusively, those experiences trace back to childhood.
Children don’t simply want connection with their primary caregivers. They depend on it for survival.
So when something in that environment is chronically frightening, unpredictable, neglectful, rejecting, overwhelming—or simply more than that particular child has the resources to manage—the developing nervous system has a problem to solve.
How do I survive?
Dramatic, I know. But biologically speaking, that’s how the body interprets trauma.
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What Can Complex Trauma Look Like in Adulthood?
So the developing nervous system adapts.
Now jump ahead 20, 30, 40 years.
Often, nobody walks into my office saying, “Hello. I'd like some complex trauma therapy for the adaptations I developed in response to early attachment disruption.”
They say:
Why am I anxious all the time?
Why do I completely fall apart when someone is upset with me?
Why do I feel responsible for everybody?
Why do I shut down during conflict?
Why do I know intellectually that I'm safe, but my body doesn't seem to believe me?
When Your Nervous System Thinks You're in Danger-The Physiology
Our brains and bodies are constantly taking in data, scanning our environment for safety or threat—often unconsciously.
When a real or perceived threat is detected, a switch is flipped, and our primal brain sounds the alarm. Adrenaline and cortisol help mobilize the body for survival. Heart rate may increase. Muscles tense. Attention narrows. Meanwhile, the parts of the brain responsible for logic, reason, and impulse control go largely offline.
The message is simple.
WE HAVE A PROBLEM.
And it is not particularly interested in hearing your well-reasoned PowerPoint presentation about why everything is actually fine.
And so we react. And it often looks like these familiar trauma responses.
Fight. Flight. Freeze. Fawn.
Unfortunately, these guys show up even when we’re not actually defending or running for our lives.
Fight doesn't necessarily mean throwing punches. It can look like anger, defensiveness, irritability, control—and in relationships, it can sometimes look like pursuit or protest.
Talk to me.
Don't walk away.
Tell me we're okay.
What can look like demandingness or control may sometimes have something far more vulnerable underneath it:
Please reconnect with me. I don't feel safe.
Flight can mean physically getting away, but it may also look like avoiding difficult conversations, staying relentlessly busy, overworking, various addictions, or finding ways to escape uncomfortable feelings.
Freeze can look like shutting down, going blank, feeling numb or disconnected, or genuinely being unable to find words when we're overwhelmed.
And Fawn describes an appeasing response to perceived threat: How do I keep you happy enough that I remain safe? It can show up as people-pleasing, over-accommodating, difficulty saying no, or becoming extraordinarily skilled at monitoring everyone else's emotional state.
These aren't neat little boxes. We can move among them depending on the circumstances, and none of these behaviors automatically means someone has trauma.
But a nervous system that became really good at protecting us can continue doing its job long after the original circumstances have changed.
Sometimes too good.
When the Past Keeps Showing Up in the Present
This is part of what can make CPTSD and developmental trauma so confusing.
The danger may be over.
The relationship may be different.
You're not five years old anymore.
And yet something happening right now can activate an emotional and physiological response that seems wildly disproportionate to what's actually happening in the present.
A partner needing space can feel like abandonment.
Someone's disappointment can feel like danger.
A mistake can feel catastrophic.
Conflict can create an urgent need to pursue, escape, appease or disappear.
This is where childhood trauma therapy, attachment trauma therapy, and developmental trauma therapy can begin helping us connect some very old dots.
So What Does Trauma Therapy Actually Do?
We don't necessarily need to excavate every painful memory you've ever had.
Good trauma treatment shouldn't simply overwhelm your nervous system all over again in the name of healing it.
Sometimes something needs to be witnessed.
Sometimes it needs to be regulated.
Sometimes it needs to be understood.
And sometimes we're ready to integrate what happened when you were less resourced in the “then and there” with the perspective and resources of the adult you are in the “here and now.”
Our work might include exploring attachment and family-of-origin experiences, working with the body and nervous system, or using Internal Family Systems (IFS) to understand the protector parts that developed around painful experiences. I may also incorporate more direct trauma-processing approaches, such as Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART), or Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP),when appropriate.
Maybe You Weren't Broken
Trauma healing allows for the very real likelihood that you were adapting the best way you knew how to an environment you didn't choose, with the emotional and developmental resources you had available at the time.
That deserves compassion.
Understanding it doesn't mean the ways we learned to protect ourselves can't hurt us—or other people. Understanding isn't absolution, and compassion doesn't eliminate responsibility.
But shame rarely gives us much room to grow.
Understanding can.
Who you became wasn't your fault.
Who you want to be now is your responsibility.
And that is where we begin moving from survival toward choice.
Not erasing the past.
Not blaming our families forever.
Not getting rid of every protector.
Not promising that you'll never be triggered again.
But developing enough awareness, regulation, compassion and choice that the past no longer gets to make quite so many decisions about the present.
