Therapy for Relational Trauma in Connecticut, New York, and PsyPact States

You’ve spent so long managing everyone else’s feelings. You’ve lost track of your own.

You’re constantly on edge trying to figure out what others are feeling and what they need and want. You’re afraid if you miss something, they’ll get upset or leave.

Others have made you feel like your feelings are too overwhelming or even worse that you’re “too much” overall. You’ve learned to check out from your feelings and become hyper aware of others’ feelings. You try to predict how people will respond to you, so you can prevent making any missteps that lead to disconnection.

In the process of trying to please everyone else, you’ve abandoned your feelings, needs, and wants. You’re starting to feel resentful about it. You’re realizing the strategy you thought was helping you stay connected to others is actually preventing you from building real relationships.

Your people pleasing probably started as an attempt to protect yourself. Maybe your parents or caregivers weren’t able to acknowledge your feelings, or you felt like you had to take care of them, or they were unpredictable about how they responded to your needs. Maybe you’ve experienced relationship(s) where you’ve felt like it was easier to ignore your needs than try to express yourself and feel misunderstood or unheard. You may or may not have realized this is frequently a trauma response.

Your feelings and needs aren’t too much. You’re deserving of relationships with genuine connection.

It has been a long time since you’ve tuned into what you’re feeling and what you really want and need. I can help. You might feel worried that you’ll get overwhelmed by your feelings now, and you’re used to thinking you can’t rely on others to help with your feelings. I’ll support you with staying present with your feelings without getting overwhelmed. You’ll start to build your trust that it’s possible for others to hear and understand your emotions. You’ll get more confident in expressing your needs and wants with others. Your relationships will feel genuine instead of one-sided.

What we’ll work on

Here’s what we’ll do together:

  • Tune into your feelings, wants, and needs

  • Build your capacity to sit with your feelings

  • Get confident in expressing your emotions and needs to others

  • Rewrite your stories about what to expect in relationships

ready to get started?

Stop people pleasing and build genuine connection.

Schedule a free consult

FAQs

  • Relational trauma happens when important relationships teach you that your feelings, needs, or wants are unsafe, inconvenient, overwhelming, or likely to be ignored.

    This can happen in childhood, family relationships, romantic relationships, friendships, schools, or other environments where you had to adapt in order to stay connected. Over time, you may learn to monitor other people’s emotions closely, hide your own feelings, avoid conflict, and make yourself easier to be around.

  • Relational trauma can show up as people-pleasing, difficulty setting boundaries, fear of disappointing others, trouble knowing what you want, or feeling responsible for everyone else’s emotions.

    You may feel anxious when someone is upset with you, overthink small interactions, apologize even when you haven’t done anything wrong, or disconnect from your own feelings because focusing on other people feels safer.

  • It can be. People-pleasing often starts as a way to stay safe, prevent conflict, avoid rejection, or keep relationships from becoming unpredictable.

    If you learned that connection depended on being easy, agreeable, helpful, or emotionally low-maintenance, people-pleasing may have protected you at one point. In adulthood, that same strategy can leave you resentful, exhausted, and disconnected from your own needs.

  • Yes. Therapy can help you understand why people-pleasing developed, what it has been protecting you from, and how to relate to others without abandoning yourself.

    The goal is not to become harsh, selfish, or disconnected. The goal is to build relationships where your feelings and needs can exist too.

  • Feeling responsible for other people’s emotions often develops when you had to pay close attention to someone else’s mood in order to feel safe, connected, or accepted.

    You may have learned to scan for subtle shifts, predict what someone needed, or adjust yourself before conflict happened. Therapy can help you notice that pattern and begin separating what belongs to you from what belongs to someone else.

  • Yes. If you spent years focusing on other people’s emotions, your own
    feelings and needs may feel hard to access.

    You might know what others want before you know what you want. You
    might feel numb, confused, guilty, or at a loss when someone asks what you need. Therapy can help you slowly tune back into yourself without becoming overwhelmed.

  • Relational trauma can develop in relationships where your emotional needs were dismissed, punished, ignored, minimized, or treated as too much.

    This may include relationships with parents, caregivers, romantic partners, friends, teachers, peers, or other important people in your life. The relationship does not have to look obviously abusive from the outside to have affected how you experience yourself and others.

  • Yes. Boundaries are often difficult when you learned that having needs could lead to conflict, rejection, guilt, or disconnection.

    In therapy, we can work on recognizing what you feel, naming what you need, tolerating the discomfort of disappointing others, and communicating more clearly. Boundaries are not about pushing people away. They are about making real connection possible.

  • Therapy for relational trauma often focuses on helping you understand your relationship patterns, tune into your feelings, build tolerance for emotional discomfort, and practice expressing your needs more honestly.

    We may explore where these patterns began, how they helped you survive, and how they are affecting your current relationships. The work is about helping you feel more present with yourself and more genuine with others.

  • Yes. I provide therapy for relational trauma in Connecticut, including clients near Farmington, West Hartford, Avon, Simsbury, and surrounding areas.

    Depending on your location, needs, and current availability, sessions may be available in person or through online therapy.

  • I provide therapy to clients in Connecticut and New York, and I am
    able to work with clients located in participating PsyPact states
    through telepsychology.

    PsyPact states include:

    AL, AR, AZ, CO, CT, DE, District of Columbia, FL, GA, ID, IL, IN, KS,
    KY, MD, ME, MI, MN, MO, MS, MT, NC, ND, NE, NH, NJ, NV, OH, OK, PA,
    RI, SC, SD, TN, TX, UT, VA, VT, WA, WI, WV, WY

  • You can schedule a free consultation to see if working together feels like the right fit.

    During the consultation, we’ll talk about what is bringing you to therapy, what you’re hoping will change, and whether my approach makes sense for what you need.