Trauma therapy

Provided by Nastasia Freeman, Licensed Psychotherapist

Neuropsychotherapy

Neuropsychotherapy brings the science of the brain into the healing process. It’s based on how the brain changes in response to trauma—and more importantly, how it can reorganize and heal through safe relationships and targeted therapeutic interventions.

In this approach, therapy is designed not only to explore thoughts and emotions, but also to address how your nervous system stores and reacts to trauma. You learn how to regulate your emotional responses, rewire harmful patterns, and create new, healthier ways of thinking, feeling, and connecting

Couples Trauma Therapy

When one or both partners in a relationship have a history of trauma, the effects often surface in the form of emotional reactivity, miscommunication, mistrust, avoidance, or difficulty feeling safe and connected. Traditional couples therapy can fall short when it doesn’t address the underlying neurobiological impact of trauma. That’s where neuropsychotherapy becomes a valuable framework.

Neuropsychotherapy blends neuroscience with relational psychology to help couples understand how trauma has shaped the brain, nervous system, and attachment patterns, and how those changes continue to impact the relationship in present time.

Key Goals of Neuropsychotherapy in Couples Therapy:

  • Regulate the nervous system: Trauma often leaves individuals in a state of chronic hypervigilance or emotional shutdown. Neuropsychotherapy teaches couples how to co-regulate, recognize when trauma responses are activated, and create emotional safety in the relationship.

  • Reprocess trauma-informed patterns: Partners often respond to current stress through the lens of past trauma. This therapy helps couples identify and reprocess those deeply ingrained survival patterns that show up in arguments, withdrawal, or fear-based behaviors.

  • Rebuild secure attachment: Neuropsychotherapy supports the development of new neural pathways associated with trust, emotional safety, empathy, and connection. These are essential for creating a more secure, resilient partnership.

  • Improve emotional communication: Trauma can impair the brain’s ability to name, regulate, or even access emotions. This approach helps partners better understand and articulate emotional states, reducing misunderstanding and increasing empathy.

By working with the brain–body–relationship connection, neuropsychotherapy in couples therapy helps partners move from reactive patterns to regulated, intentional connection. It’s especially effective for couples navigating the long-term effects of PTSD, complex trauma, childhood emotional neglect, or relational betrayal.

Notice: Couples trauma therapy is not recommended nor appropriate when domestic violence is present. If you are dealing with domestic violence, please call the national domestic violence hotline 24/7. Help is available. 

Individual Trauma Therapy

Neuropsychotherapy is an integrative, brain-based approach that connects neuroscience with established psychological treatment. In individual therapy, it offers a powerful way to treat trauma, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and attachment wounds by focusing on how the brain and nervous system process and store emotional experiences.

Trauma doesn’t just leave emotional scars—it reshapes how the brain perceives safety, processes stress, and responds to relationships. Neuropsychotherapy addresses these changes by working with both the mind and the nervous system to promote long-term healing.

How neuropsychotherapy supports individual trauma therapy:

  • Regulates the nervous system: Clients learn how to calm internal states of hypervigilance, shutdown, or emotional overwhelm often rooted in past trauma.

  • Improves emotional processing: Trauma can disrupt the brain’s ability to process experiences clearly. Neuropsychotherapy helps clients revisit and reprocess these memories in a safe, grounded way—allowing for resolution instead of reactivation.

  • Rewires unhelpful patterns: The brain is plastic, meaning it can change. With targeted interventions, clients can replace fear-driven responses with more adaptive, secure ways of thinking, feeling, and relating.

  • Restores a sense of safety and agency: By understanding how trauma shaped their inner world, clients gain the tools to rebuild a stronger sense of self, autonomy, and emotional balance.

  • Bridges insight with change: While traditional talk therapy offers valuable self-awareness, neuropsychotherapy goes further by targeting the biological systems that sustain trauma symptoms—making it especially effective for long-standing patterns.

In individual therapy, this approach empowers clients to not just talk about their trauma—but to change how it's held in the body and brain. The result is deeper healing, greater clarity, and an improved ability to engage with life and relationships from a place of confidence and safety.