Remember Your Wild Nervous System
Trauma & PTSD Therapy
Services available virtually throughout California
I understand trauma as an unfinished act of self-protection. Trauma is less about what happened and more about what your body tried to do to keep you safe — and wasn’t allowed to complete. The boundary that couldn’t be set. The escape that wasn’t possible. The reaching for help that went unanswered. These were not weaknesses. They were intelligent survival movements that got interrupted. When the body cannot finish protecting itself, it keeps holding that survival energy, shaping your reactions long after the original danger has passed.
You do not have to navigate this alone. Healing becomes possible when your nervous system is met with safety, attunement, and deep respect for the intelligence that has been keeping you alive.
When there is a threat to your safety, your autonomic nervous system does exactly what it is designed to do: it mobilizes you for survival. Fight, flight, and appease (often called fawn) arise as intelligent attempts to neutralize danger and restore safety. But when the threat is too much, too fast, or too soon — and none of those options are possible — the system becomes overwhelmed and that mobilization is interrupted. Freeze then steps in as a final strategy, numbing and dissociating you, slowing everything down so that the least amount of harm occurs and you can live to fight another day.
But once the danger passes, all of that unfinished survival energy is still alive in the body. When it cannot complete, discharge, or resolve, it becomes stored — looping beneath the surface and shaping your reactions long after the threat is gone, waiting for the conditions that will finally allow it to finish what it started.
Our current way of living is inherently traumatic.
We live in a world with very little space for slowness, attunement, or the co-regulation necessary for the completion of survival responses.
It often shows up as:
chronic survival mode and nervous system overwhelm
hypervigilance, exaggerated startle response, and persistent anxiety
emotional numbness, dissociation, and shutdown
intrusive memories, flashbacks, and feeling hijacked by triggers
sleep disturbance, chronic stress, and exhaustion
relational disconnection, difficulty trusting others, and fear of intimacy
avoidance of reminders of the trauma and constriction of daily life
a pattern of “pushing through” that rewards dissociation over embodiment
Unresolved survival energy does not disappear. It moves into the body and the nervous system, where it reappears as anxiety, hypervigilance, shutdown, addiction, chronic pain, depression, rage, and relational reactivity — toward ourselves, one another, and the living world.
Your body is not broken — it is responding exactly as any animal would to overwhelm, threat, and disconnection. Human beings are not meant to survive alone. We are a deeply interconnected species, born into one another’s hands and dependent on years of being held, soothed, mirrored, and protected in order to survive. Our nervous systems evolved in communities of shared care.
In therapy, we gently return to this relational ground together, restoring the co-regulation your nervous system has always been organized around. I hold deep trust in the body’s wisdom and in our innate capacity to heal through connection. I am passionate about helping people come back into relationship with themselves, with others, and with their own wild, social nature, so they can live with greater ease, resilience, and a felt sense of belonging.
What if you could go from:
⟡ Living in chronic survival mode → Feeling safer and more grounded in your own body?
⟡ Feeling flooded by triggers or overwhelmed by your emotions → Trusting your nervous system
⟡ Numbing out, dissociating, or overfunctioning → Feeling present, embodied, and connected
⟡ Shrinking yourself to stay safe → Taking up space in your own life with clarity, agency
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We begin by slowing down and building safety and trust—both in the therapeutic relationship and in your body. We orient to your nervous system, your personal values, and what feels meaningful and alive for you. This creates a grounded container where you can share your story without fear, shame, or urgency to “fix” yourself.
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Together, we begin to map your internal landscape—your nervous system patterns, protective strategies, emotions, sensations, and trauma responses. We gently uncover how overwhelm, threat, attachment wounds, and unresolved survival responses have shaped your body and your relationships. You learn to track what is happening inside you so you feel less pulled into automatic survival mode by triggers, less alone, and more resourced in the face of intensity.
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As your capacity grows, we practice staying present with activation, fear, grief, and aliveness—without numbing, bypassing, or collapsing. You learn how to ride waves of sensation and emotion with greater choice and agency.
From here, we develop a living plan for how you want to take up space in your own life:
how you set boundaries, honor your desires, choose relationships, and move toward what you value.
The goal of healing trauma and returning to regulation is not to be calm or numb, but to have the capacity to hold grief, rage, fear, and aliveness without collapsing or becoming overwhelmed by them. When we reconnect to the body’s innate wisdom and to our own wild nature, we become more fluid, resilient, and sovereign.
Meet Your Trauma Therapist
Hi, I’m Kayleigh. I’m a California-licensed clinical social worker and somatic therapist who helps people heal trauma and reclaim their sovereignty after lives shaped by overwhelm, threat, and disconnection. I work with highly sensitive people, cycle breakers, and those who live heart-forward lives—people whose nervous systems learned to survive in a world that did not offer enough safety, attunement, or protection. Many of my clients feel exhausted, guarded, flooded by emotion or shut down, disconnected from their bodies, and unsure how to trust themselves or others again. I don’t believe there is anything wrong with you. I believe your symptoms make sense. I believe your body has been doing exactly what it needed to do to keep you alive.
Here’s why I’m passionate about this work: I believe healing trauma is an act of personal and collective liberation. When we resolve survival responses and rebuild trust with the body, we reclaim our agency to choose how we live, love, and relate. We become more capable of presence, intimacy, creativity, and courage. I believe that every nervous system that is able to come out of chronic survival mode makes the world a gentler, brighter place. I’m here to help you reconnect with your body’s wisdom, restore your capacity for connection, and take up space in your own life with clarity, dignity, and devotion to what truly matters.
