Trauma Therapy for Women & Birthing People in South Pasadena, Los Angeles and throughout California

Living with trauma can be emotionally and physically exhausting, and leave you feeling like you’re in a constant tug of war with yourself. But it’s often difficult to recognize the signs and symptoms of trauma, especially when you’re busy just getting through the day.

So what should you be looking out for?

You’re waiting for the next bad thing to happen.

Bad memories are caught on repeat and won’t let go.

It’s difficult to respond to situations the way you want to and your emotional reactions feel so intense, out of your control. 

It seems like you’re constantly on high alert, and it’s virtually impossible to avoid painful reminders of what happened.

You feel disconnected from yourself and others, unsafe in your body, questioning your reality.

These are all signs that something in your past may need to be addressed.

My Approach

My focus is to help you heal from what you’ve been through so that you can be more focused and present for what’s most important in your life right now.

Overcoming trauma is a complex and deeply personal journey, and it’s possible with the right support, resources and self care practices.

I offer trauma and attachment focused therapies, tailoring treatment to your unique experiences and needs.  This includes building coping skills to help you calm yourself and cope with distress, exploring and understanding how past experiences and relationships are affecting you now, and therapy based on neuroscience to reduce the effects of trauma.

Therapy modalities I use include:

Postpartum post-traumatic stress disorder impacts about 9% of women/birthing people following childbirth, and many more find some aspect of their experience disturbing or traumatic.

Reproductive trauma (also called birth trauma or perinatal trauma) can come from any experience that you felt was frightening, felt life threatening or that overwhelmed your ability to cope. A trauma is an event that you personally experienced, witnessed, or heard about. It can come from something that happened:

- during your fertility process (IVF/ART)

- as you’re trying to conceive

- during pregnancy

- in labor and childbirth

-postpartum and early parenthood

-postpartum experiences; trauma may come from the way you were treated or a lack of communication. Anything that left you feeling out of control or helpless, unsafe, or afraid can be a source of trauma.

What is reproductive trauma?

When old trauma makes a reappearance on your journey to parenthood...

The perinatal period is also a time when past trauma often resurfaces, and memories of your own bad childhood or other disturbing experiences come rushing back.

Trauma comes in many forms, large and small.

Large T Traumas are the most easily recognized kinds of traumatic events, defined as out of the ordinary events that are life threatening, result in injury or have the potential to threaten your physical well-being, or that of someone you love (your partner, your baby). Some examples of Large T trauma are life threatening medical crises or injuries, experiencing combat/living in a war zone, child abuse, sexual abuse, car accidents and natural disasters.

Small t traumas are not life threatening but highly distressing personal events and are usually harder to understand as “counting as trauma”. Small t traumas do, however, overwhelm your ability to cope and are deeply disturbing. Research is showing that the cumulative effect of small t traumas can cause more harm than experiencing one Large T trauma because of the layers of emotional suffering that build up over time. This is where the term “Complex trauma” is used. Some examples of small t traumas are childhood physical/emotional neglect, social isolation, conflict with people you love, bullying, bigotry/discrimination (BIPOC/LGBTQIA) and divorce.

  • Greive your losses and process your story (IVF/ART, losses, birth trauma) so that you can talk about your experiences without distress and emotional overwhelm

    Overcome avoidance, be able to look at your photos, hear about others’ birth stories, or see babies or pregnant people and not be overwhelmed with painful feelings and memories

    Address your fears to prepare for your next pregnancy and childbirth, or another round of fertility treatment with more confidence

    Set boundaries that support you and your family at every stage of family building

    Cultivate self-compassion for what you’ve been through and the challenges you’re currently facing

    Learn coping skills to help you understand and manage your emotions as you navigate fertility, pregnancy and postpartum

    Feel more connected to your body, your sense of identity, and the people most important to you

  • 1 You believed you or your baby were in danger or would die.

    2 You can’t remember important details or have blocks of memory that you can’t recall.

    3 You felt stripped of your dignity, unsupported, disrespected or violated.

    4 You had an “out of body experience", things didn’t seem real, you felt detached from your body or what was happening around you.

    5 You felt helpless, terrified, horrified, flooded by fear and anxiety, a lack of control.

    6 There was poor communication, things weren’t explained to you, or you had to make critical decisions quickly.

    Most importantly, if you feel your experience was traumatic, then it was.

  • I work with women, birthing people and parents who’ve experienced traumatic or distressing experiences including:

    childhood trauma and abuse

    Complex PTSD

    birth related traumas

    fertility challenges

    pregnancy loss/miscarriage

    high risk pregnancy/medical complications

    TFMR

    Abortion care

    NICU experience

    death of an infant/baby loss

    postpartum depression, anxiety, and PTSD

    Single incident trauma (accidents, natural disasters)

    Rape/sexual assault

  • Effects of Trauma and PTSD can lead to:

    Flashbacks, replaying events over and over in your mind, intrusive memories or nightmares

    Constantly expecting something bad to happen, feeling a sense of doom, or caught in thinking of worst-case scenarios. 

    Questioning your own thoughts and feelings, your reality, difficulty making sense of what’s happened to you.

    Feeling on constant alert, becoming anxious, on edge or insecure in certain situations

    Noticing your body is suddenly in distress, in “fight or flight”.

    Feeling closed off, distant from the people most important to you.

    Feeling “out of body”, having a sense that things don’t seem real, feeling numb.

    Because of the way memories of trauma are stored, events from the past can continue to impact your life and your relationships, long after the event is over.  Healing trauma is possible and it’s never too late to begin the recovery process.

AN INTRODUCTION TO EMDR

EMDR: An evidence- based therapy to help you recover from traumatic experiences, PTSD & Complex-PTSD

EMDR or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing is a therapy developed to help people heal from the symptoms and distress caused by traumatic or disturbing life experiences. EMDR has been extensively researched and found to be effective for the treatment of PTSD and other effects of trauma.

Common Questions

Research shows that EMDR therapy during pregnancy can reduce distress and PTSD symptoms, help diminish fears of childbirth and build confidence about going into labor and delivery.

  • EMDR helps to diminish the effects of a traumatic experience, reducing trauma symptoms that can interfere with caring for yourself and your family. EMDR works to provide relief from trauma symptoms including nightmare, flashbacks, depression, intrusive thoughts, and fears.

  • Perinatal trauma is any traumatic or disturbing event that occurs around the time of conception, pregnancy, during childbirth and postpartum. Common experiences that families find traumatic including fertility challenges/treatment, pregnancy loss, termination and TFMR, NICU stays, medical complication during pregnancy/postpartum and the death of an infant. But the most important thing determining whether your experience was traumatic? If you feel your experience was traumatic then it was.

  • You may have felt scared, helpless or unheard and unseen during labor and delivery. Afterward, it’s common to feel shocked, numb or disconnected, to feel guilty or angry about what you went through. The most important factor determining if giving birth was traumatic is how you feel about it. If you feel your experience was traumatic, then it was.

  • EMDR helps to diminish the effects of a traumatic experience, reducing trauma symptoms that can interfere with caring for yourself and your family. EMDR works to provide relief from trauma symptoms including nightmare, flashbacks, depression, intrusive thoughts, and fears.

Hi there, I’m Holly Evans.

I'm a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT), specializing in trauma recovery and perinatal mental health. I offer EMDR and trauma focused therapies to support people who’re facing struggles with depression, anxiety and the effects of trauma.

Sessions are available online throughout California or in-person in my South Pasadena office. Babies are welcome.

LGBTQ+ affirming

LET’S TALK

Schedule a free 20-minute consultation.
I’d love to talk to you about how I can help.

@hollyaevansmft