How do I know if I need trauma therapy?

Most people wait too long. They delay seeking trauma treatment for years, often because they question whether what they experienced counts as 'real' trauma. You may benefit from trauma therapy in Chicago if any of these are true: you find yourself overreacting to small things and not understanding why, you go numb in close relationships or shut down in moments that should not feel threatening, you carry chronic anxiety or self-criticism that does not respond to logic, you brace at certain sounds, voices, or situations, or you sense you are stuck in patterns that started long before you noticed them. Trauma does not have to come from a single dramatic event to leave a mark. If you recognize yourself in two or three of these, trauma therapy is worth a conversation.

What is the difference between PTSD and trauma?

Trauma is the wound. PTSD is one specific form the wound can take. Trauma is any experience that overwhelms your ability to cope at the moment it happens. That can include a single defining event, like an accident or assault, or it can include a slow accumulation of smaller experiences, like growing up with an unpredictable parent or living through a long stretch of feeling unsafe in your own body. PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) is a clinical diagnosis given when specific symptoms persist after trauma, including intrusive memories, hypervigilance, avoidance, and significant changes in mood. Most people who have experienced trauma do not meet the clinical criteria for PTSD, but they may still struggle with anxiety, perfectionism, relational difficulties, chronic shame, or what researchers call complex trauma. You do not need a PTSD diagnosis to benefit from trauma therapy. The work meets you where the trauma actually lives in your body, not in the diagnostic code.

How long does trauma therapy take?

Trauma therapy is not a fixed timeline, but here is what to expect. For people working through a single recent event, six months to a year of weekly trauma therapy is typical. For people working through developmental or complex trauma (patterns that started in childhood or accumulated over many years), the work often takes longer, sometimes one to three years. Most clients begin to feel meaningful shifts within the first three to six months, like fewer intrusive thoughts, a calmer nervous system, and less reactivity to old triggers. We typically start with weekly 50-minute sessions to build safety and momentum. As the work takes hold, sessions can move to every other week, then to monthly check-ins. The goal of trauma therapy is not to keep you in therapy. It is to help you reach a point where the past stops driving your present, and then to let you go.

Do I have to talk about what happened to me?

No. This is one of the most common reasons people delay starting trauma therapy, and it reflects a real misunderstanding of how this work happens now. Modern trauma therapy approaches like IFS (Internal Family Systems) and EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) do not require you to talk through what happened in detail. With IFS, the work happens through connecting with different protective and wounded parts of yourself, often without ever putting the original story into words. With EMDR, you can hold a memory in mind while your nervous system processes it, with very little spoken description required. You set the pace. You decide what to share. If you never want to say the words out loud, you do not have to. The work happens at a level beneath language, and that is part of why it tends to be more effective than traditional talk therapy for trauma.

What types of trauma therapy do you offer?

I am trained in two of the most well-researched, body-based approaches to trauma therapy: Internal Family Systems (IFS) and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). Both treat trauma at the level of the nervous system rather than just through conversation. IFS therapy helps you build a compassionate relationship with the protective parts of yourself that formed in response to what happened, including the inner critic, the perfectionist, and the part of you that learned to disappear in conflict. EMDR therapy uses bilateral stimulation, usually side-to-side eye movements, to help your brain reprocess memories that are still stuck in the body so they lose their emotional charge. I often draw on both approaches in the same client's work, choosing the right tool for the moment. Both are evidence-based and recognized by the American Psychological Association as effective for trauma.

Can trauma therapy actually help?

Yes. Trauma therapy is one of the most well-researched areas of mental health treatment. EMDR has been studied in dozens of randomized controlled trials and is recommended as a first-line trauma treatment by the World Health Organization, the American Psychological Association, and the Department of Veterans Affairs. IFS is included in the National Registry of Evidence-Based Programs and Practices. That does not mean trauma therapy is easy or fast, and it does not mean every client has the same experience. But the research is clear: most people who do consistent trauma therapy with a trained clinician see significant reduction in symptoms and meaningful improvement in day-to-day life. The harder question is not whether trauma therapy works. It is whether you are ready to do the work and find a therapist whose pace and style fit yours.

What is complex trauma, and how is it different?

Complex trauma (sometimes called C-PTSD) describes the kind of trauma that comes from prolonged or repeated exposure to harm, especially in childhood or in close relationships, rather than from a single discrete event. If you grew up with a parent whose emotions you had to manage, in a household where love came with conditions, or in any environment where you had to suppress what you really felt to stay safe and connected, you may be carrying complex trauma. It often looks like chronic anxiety, perfectionism, difficulty with close relationships, a harsh inner critic, or the sense of never being quite enough. Complex trauma is different from single-event PTSD in two important ways. The wounds tend to be relational, so the healing also happens in relationship, including the relationship with your therapist. And the work tends to take longer, because there is not one memory to process but a pattern of experience to gradually unwind. Both IFS and EMDR are well-suited to complex trauma work.

Can therapy help with childhood trauma I do not fully remember?

Yes. You do not need clear, detailed memories of what happened to benefit from trauma therapy. The body remembers in patterns and reactions, even when the mind has put the specific events out of reach. Many adults working through childhood trauma cannot describe individual moments in detail. What they can describe is the felt sense of how it was: the bracing, the watchfulness, the way they learned to read a room before they learned to read words. That felt sense is exactly what trauma therapy works with. Approaches like IFS do not require explicit memory at all. The work happens through the parts of you that carry the impact, which are always available, regardless of how clearly you remember. You will not be pushed to recover memories, and you do not need to construct a story you do not have. We work with what is here now, in your body and your reactions, not with what you have to dig up.

What does trauma therapy cost, and do you take insurance?

Trauma therapy at Still Oak Counseling is private pay. Our fee for a 50-minute individual trauma therapy session is $250. We do not bill insurance directly. Most insurance plans cover individual therapy as out-of-network, which means you pay at the time of session and submit a superbill to your insurance for partial reimbursement. We provide a superbill at the end of each month with the diagnosis and procedure codes your insurance will need. Your reimbursement rate depends on your specific plan and your out-of-network mental health benefits. We have also partnered with a third party who will submit the superbill on your behalf if you do not want to handle that yourself. If cost is a concern, we are happy to talk through it on a consultation call.

How do I know if your practice is the right fit?

You are likely a good fit if you are tired of high-functioning your way through life, if you want a therapist who will be direct with you rather than nod sympathetically, and if you are ready to take what your body knows as seriously as what your mind has figured out. I work especially well with people who have already done some individual therapy and want to go deeper, with high-achievers whose anxiety and perfectionism trace back to early experiences they have never connected to trauma, and with adults working through long-standing patterns that talk therapy alone has not been able to shift. If you want a space where you can stop performing and actually be honest about how heavy things are, reach out. We can start with a free 15-minute call to see if working together feels right.

Best Chicago Trauma Therapists

What kept you safe then is wearing you out now. The bracing, the hypervigilance, the way you read every room before you walk into it. You can know logically that you do not need to scan for danger, that you are not in that house anymore, that the rules have changed, and still find yourself frozen at familiar sounds, flinching at familiar voices, exhausted before the day has started. Trauma therapy in Chicago is the work of teaching your body that the strategies that kept you alive are not the strategies you need now.

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Meet Your Chicago Trauma Therapists

Meg Doster, LMFT

Hi, I'm Meg. I know what it's like to work hard at keeping everything together on the outside while something underneath stays stuck. I've done my own work around people-pleasing, fear of conflict, and learning that avoiding the hard things doesn't make them go away. It just costs more over time.

That personal experience shapes how I work. I sit with people who feel overwhelmed by shame, anger, and anxiety, and who carry a quiet fear of being truly known. The worry that if someone sees all of you, something will break. I get it. That fear is deeply human.

What I've learned, and what I see in my clients, is that the path to feeling free and connected runs through the hard stuff, not around it. EMDR helps make that path more manageable.

Credentials: Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, EMDR Trained
EMDR training: EMDRIA
Specialties: trauma, anxiety, people-pleasing, boundaries
Clientele: Adults
Location: Chicago, IL
Virtual therapy: Yes
Private pay. Superbills provided for out-of-network insurance reimbursement.

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Elizabeth Bodett Dresser

Hi, I’m Elizabeth. I know what it's like to live caught in anxious overthinking and constantly overfunctioning. I've been there too. I also know, through both my personal journey and my professional experience, that it’s possible to break these patterns and start feeling like your true self.

I specialize in helping overwhelmed high-achievers quiet their inner critic and embrace authenticity through Internal Family Systems therapy. Sessions with me are a safe space where perfectionism can finally take a back seat, and you can reconnect with the confident, calm person underneath all that pressure to perform.

Credentials: Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor, IFS Level 2, EMDR Trained
IFS Training: Level 2
EMDR Training: EMDRIA
Specialties: trauma, anxiety, burn out
Clientele: Adults
Location: Chicago, IL
Virtual therapy: Yes

Private pay. Superbills provided for out-of-network insurance reimbursement.

Book your free intro call

FAQs about trauma counseling

Most people wait too long. They delay seeking trauma treatment for years, often because they question whether what they experienced counts as "real" trauma. You may benefit from trauma therapy in Chicago if any of these are true: you find yourself overreacting to small things and not understanding why, you go numb in close relationships or shut down in moments that should not feel threatening, you carry chronic anxiety or self-criticism that does not respond to logic, you brace at certain sounds, voices, or situations, or you sense you are stuck in patterns that started long before you noticed them. Trauma does not have to come from a single dramatic event to leave a mark. If you recognize yourself in two or three of these, trauma therapy is worth a conversation.
Trauma is the wound. PTSD is one specific form the wound can take. Trauma is any experience that overwhelms your ability to cope at the moment it happens. That can include a single defining event, like an accident or assault, or it can include a slow accumulation of smaller experiences, like growing up with an unpredictable parent or living through a long stretch of feeling unsafe in your own body. PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) is a clinical diagnosis given when specific symptoms persist after trauma, including intrusive memories, hypervigilance, avoidance, and significant changes in mood. Most people who have experienced trauma do not meet the clinical criteria for PTSD, but they may still struggle with anxiety, perfectionism, relational difficulties, chronic shame, or what researchers call complex trauma. You do not need a PTSD diagnosis to benefit from trauma therapy. The work meets you where the trauma actually lives in your body, not in the diagnostic code.
Trauma therapy is not a fixed timeline, but here is what to expect. For people working through a single recent event, six months to a year of weekly trauma therapy is typical. For people working through developmental or complex trauma (patterns that started in childhood or accumulated over many years), the work often takes longer, sometimes one to three years. Most clients begin to feel meaningful shifts within the first three to six months, like fewer intrusive thoughts, a calmer nervous system, and less reactivity to old triggers. We typically start with weekly 50-minute sessions to build safety and momentum. As the work takes hold, sessions can move to every other week, then to monthly check-ins. The goal of trauma therapy is not to keep you in therapy. It is to help you reach a point where the past stops driving your present, and then to let you go.
No. This is one of the most common reasons people delay starting trauma therapy, and it reflects a real misunderstanding of how this work happens now. Modern trauma therapy approaches like IFS (Internal Family Systems) and EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) do not require you to talk through what happened in detail. With IFS, the work happens through connecting with different protective and wounded parts of yourself, often without ever putting the original story into words. With EMDR, you can hold a memory in mind while your nervous system processes it, with very little spoken description required. You set the pace. You decide what to share. If you never want to say the words out loud, you do not have to. The work happens at a level beneath language, and that is part of why it tends to be more effective than traditional talk therapy for trauma.
We are trained in two of the most well-researched, body-based approaches to trauma therapy: Internal Family Systems (IFS) and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). Both treat trauma at the level of the nervous system rather than just through conversation. IFS therapy helps you build a compassionate relationship with the protective parts of yourself that formed in response to what happened, including the inner critic, the perfectionist, and the part of you that learned to disappear in conflict. EMDR therapy uses bilateral stimulation, usually side-to-side eye movements, to help your brain reprocess memories that are still stuck in the body so they lose their emotional charge. Both modalities are evidence-based and recognized by the American Psychological Association as effective for trauma.

Yes. Trauma therapy is one of the most well-researched areas of mental health treatment. EMDR has been studied in dozens of randomized controlled trials and is recommended as a first-line trauma treatment by the World Health Organization, the American Psychological Association, and the Department of Veterans Affairs. IFS is included in the National Registry of Evidence-Based Programs and Practices. That does not mean trauma therapy is easy or fast, and it does not mean every client has the same experience. But the research is clear: most people who do consistent trauma therapy with a trained clinician see significant reduction in symptoms and meaningful improvement in day-to-day life. The harder question is not whether trauma therapy works. It is whether you are ready to do the work and find a therapist whose pace and style fit yours.
Complex trauma (sometimes called C-PTSD) describes the kind of trauma that comes from prolonged or repeated exposure to harm, especially in childhood or in close relationships, rather than from a single discrete event. If you grew up with a parent whose emotions you had to manage, in a household where love came with conditions, or in any environment where you had to suppress what you really felt to stay safe and connected, you may be carrying complex trauma. It often looks like chronic anxiety, perfectionism, difficulty with close relationships, a harsh inner critic, or the sense of never being quite enough. Complex trauma is different from single-event PTSD in two important ways. The wounds tend to be relational, so the healing also happens in relationship, including the relationship with your therapist. And the work tends to take longer, because there is not one memory to process but a pattern of experience to gradually unwind. Both IFS and EMDR are well-suited to complex trauma work.
Yes. You do not need clear, detailed memories of what happened to benefit from trauma therapy. The body remembers in patterns and reactions, even when the mind has put the specific events out of reach. Many adults working through childhood trauma cannot describe individual moments in detail. What they can describe is the felt sense of how it was: the bracing, the watchfulness, the way they learned to read a room before they learned to read words. That felt sense is exactly what trauma therapy works with. Approaches like IFS do not require explicit memory at all. The work happens through the parts of you that carry the impact, which are always available, regardless of how clearly you remember. You will not be pushed to recover memories, and you do not need to construct a story you do not have. We work with what is here now, in your body and your reactions, not with what you have to dig up.
Trauma therapy at Still Oak Counseling is private pay. Our fee for a 50-minute individual trauma therapy session is $250. We do not bill insurance directly. Most insurance plans cover individual therapy as out-of-network, which means you pay at the time of session and submit a superbill to your insurance for partial reimbursement. Your reimbursement rate depends on your specific plan and your out-of-network mental health benefits. We have also partnered with a third party who will submit the superbill on your behalf if you do not want to handle that yourself. If cost is a concern, we are happy to talk through it on a consultation call.
You are likely a good fit if you are tired of high-functioning your way through life, if you want a therapist who will be direct with you rather than nod sympathetically, and if you are ready to take what your body knows as seriously as what your mind has figured out. I work especially well with people who have already done some individual therapy and want to go deeper, with high-achievers whose anxiety and perfectionism trace back to early experiences they have never connected to trauma, and with adults working through long-standing patterns that talk therapy alone has not been able to shift. If you want a space where you can stop performing and actually be honest about how heavy things are, reach out. We can start with a free 15-minute call to see if working together feels right.

Start working with a Chicago PTSD therapist today

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If We’re Not The Right Fit For You, Here Are Other Chicago Trauma Therapists We Trust

These therapists were chosen to represent diverse approaches to trauma healing—from somatic and body-based work to different age groups and cultural backgrounds. While I specialize in adults, this list includes therapists who work with teens, families, specific trauma types, and various therapeutic modalities to ensure you can find the right match for your unique situation.

Emma Peck-Block

Best for trauma therapy for children

  
      Good fit for:
      Not a fit for:
    
      Kids & families
      Morning sessions
    
      EMDR
      In-person & virtual sessions
    
      Afternoon & evening sessions
      In-network care

Good fit for:	Not a fit for:
Kids & families	Morning sessions
EMDR	In-person & virtual sessions
Afternoon & evening sessions	In-network care

Treats trauma ✓
Clientele: Young children, preteens, teens, adults, & families
Location: 4809 North Ravenswood Avenue, Chicago, IL 60640
Virtual therapy: Yes

Emma specializes in providing trauma counseling for children and families. Her approach is playful and compassionate, making a safe space for young people to express their feelings and process their experiences.

Book With Emma

  
      Good fit for:
      Not a fit for:
    
      Relationship issues
      Children or adolescents
    
      Male therapist
      Female therapist
    
      Blended behavioral & mindfulness approach
      EMDR

Good fit for:	Not a fit for:
Relationship issues	Children or adolescents
Male therapist	Female therapist
Blended behavioral & mindfulness approach	EMDR

Jon Colledge

Best for couples impacted by trauma

Treats trauma ✓
Clientele: Adults, couples
Location: 307 North Michigan Avenue, Suite 412, Chicago, IL
Virtual therapy: Yes

Jon offers trauma-informed therapy for individuals and couples navigating anxiety, depression, grief, and relationship issues. By blending evidence-based methods like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and mindfulness, he equips clients with the tools they need to move forward.

Book With Jon

Tori Cherry

Best for trauma-informed eating disorder care

  
      Good fit for:
      Not a fit for:
    
      Health At Every Size & body liberation framework
      Young children
    
      Teens & adults
      EMDR
    
      Online sessions
      In-person sessions

Good fit for:	Not a fit for:
Health At Every Size & body liberation framework	Young children
Teens & adults	EMDR
Online sessions	In-person sessions

Treats trauma ✓
Clientele: Teens, adults
Location: Illinois
Virtual therapy: Yes

Tori’s practice specializes in eating disorders and disordered eating patterns, which can often be related to traumatic experiences. She blends modalities like IFS and CBT with a deeply relational approach that helps clients feel fully seen and supported.

Book With Tori

Autumn Starks

Best for ketamine-assisted psychotherapy

  
      Good fit for:
      Not a fit for:
    
      Trauma-related burnout, overachieving, & perfectionism
      Children or adolescents
    
      IFS & EMDR
      Short-term therapy
    
      Longer-term trauma healing
      In-person sessions

Good fit for:	Not a fit for:
Trauma-related burnout, overachieving, & perfectionism	Children or adolescents
IFS & EMDR	Short-term therapy
Longer-term trauma healing	In-person sessions

Treats trauma ✓
Clientele: Adults
Location: 1040 North Blvd #225, Oak Park, IL 60301
Virtual therapy: Yes

Autumn is a trauma counselor with specialties in supporting those with religious trauma as well as those who identify as LGBTQ+ or neurodivergent. She uses trauma-informed approaches like IFS and ketamine-assisted therapy to help people deeply heal from traumatic experiences.

Book With Autumn