Skip to content 
Trauma Therapy in Washington DC
If you are reading this, you might have experienced something that your mind and body have not reconciled. You may not even be sure it counts as trauma. That question alone keeps a lot of people from calling anyone.
You do not have to have that settled before we talk.
How I think about trauma
Trauma is not just the event. It is the nervous system deciding the world is still dangerous long after the danger is gone.
That is what makes it confusing from the inside. The experience is over. You may have told the story a dozen times already. And your body still braces at a certain tone of voice, a certain hallway, a certain time of year. Nothing is wrong with you for that. The system is doing what it learned to do.
In session, I care less about the story details and more about what the body and mind still treat as the current threat. That is the part that is now an endless loop in your brain.
The kinds of experiences I work with
Much of my work is with people whose pain comes from the major life events we all go through: a death, the end of a relationship, the birth of a child, a career change, such as going back to school or retirement, or trauma from the family you grew up in.
The way our brain and body experience these shifts causes our emotions to feel chaotic, and our nervous system needs to reset. We can work on that reset in therapy.
Much of how I practice ties our somatic experience, what is actually happening in the body, to the narrative we use to process what has happened. Those two threads are not separate projects. They tend to move together and need to be integrated.
Pace matters more than most people expect
Memory reconsolidation, dual awareness, titration: those ideas make sense to me. In plain language, that means working in pieces small enough for your system to handle, staying connected to the present while we touch the past, and going slowly enough that you are processing something rather than reliving it.
Flooding someone with the full memory before their system can handle it is usually counterproductive.
So you will not be asked to hand over everything in the first session, or the fifth, to prove you are doing this properly. You decide what we open and when. If something is too much on a given day, that tells us about pacing. It is not a failure.
What a first conversation looks like
Mostly I want to understand what your days are like now. What sets things off. What you have stopped doing. What the bracing costs you. We talk about what you would want to be different, and then we decide together where to start.
You can ask me questions. You can also decide if I am the right person for this. Finding a therapist who fits matters more than starting quickly with someone who does not.
Working with clients in Washington DC
I am a Licensed Professional Counselor in the District of Columbia (LPC #PRC 14494).
My practice, True North Psychotherapy, is at 1555 Connecticut Avenue NW, Suite 401A, Washington DC 20036, just north of Dupont Circle. We might arrange to see one another virtually or in person.
If you want to start
You do not have to be certain. You do not need the right words for it yet. We can talk over the phone to see if we are a good fit.
Call 202.599.0522 and tell me a little about what has been going on and what you are hoping for. If I am with a client, leave a message and I will get back to you. If I am not the right fit, I will say so and try to help you find someone who is.
Take whatever time you need with the decision. When you are ready, reach out.
Ariel VanDoren, LPC
True North Psychotherapy
1555 Connecticut Avenue NW, Suite 401A, Washington DC 20036
202.599.0522
