Therapy can be life-changing — especially when it’s set up with intention, structure, and the right support. For trauma survivors in particular, creating the right conditions for healing is essential.
Recently, we shared how therapy works. Now let’s explore how to make therapy work for you — by setting it up for success from the start.
Trauma recovery isn’t linear. Progress and success depend on creating a foundation that supports safety, trust, and consistency. For trauma survivors, the therapeutic relationship, environment, and approach are just as important as the content of each appointment.
Here are five key ways to set yourself up for success in therapy:
1. Choose a Trauma-Informed Therapist Who Is Licensed in Your State
Not all therapists are trained in or work with trauma-specific care. Even if you’re not sure whether trauma plays a role in your story, working with a trauma-informed therapist ensures your care is grounded in safety, compassion, and a deep understanding of the mind-body connection.
A trauma-informed therapist brings more than just empathy and support. They provide:
- Emotional safety and trustworthiness
- Transparency and empowerment
- Curiosity and collaboration
- Cultural, historical, and gender awareness
- Knowledge of trauma’s impact on both body and mind
As Janina Fisher, PhD, beautifully puts it:
“We now understand that trauma’s imprint is both psychological and somatic: long after the events are over, the body and mind continue to respond as if danger were ever present. We hold what happened as a ‘living legacy’ of emotional and body memories that keep the trauma alive for decades. My professional mission has been to bring this understanding of trauma to both clients and their therapists as a psychotherapist, consultant, and trainer of clinicians looking for answers to helping their traumatized clients. I believe the key to healing is not knowing what happened but transforming how our younger selves still remember it. When we accept the child we once were and welcome them into our minds and hearts, we can finally heal.”
A therapist’s education, training, and experience matter. Here’s more on how to find the right therapist for you.
2. Make Sure Your Therapist Is Willing to Coordinate Care
You deserve collaborative, whole-person care from your therapist. That means working with a therapist who understands the interconnectedness of body, mind, and relationships — and is open to collaborating with your other healthcare providers to ensure you are getting comprehensive care.
At our practice, this systems-based approach is central to how we work. As a therapist trained in Marriage and Family Therapy (MFT), I view every individual as part of multiple systems — social, familial, and internal — all of which affect well-being.
When all your providers are on the same page, you benefit from more integrated, consistent, and effective care.
3. Choose In-Person Therapy If You Can
Virtual therapy can be convenient and necessary in some cases, and for many trauma survivors, in-person therapy offers important advantages:
- Non-verbal cues are more easily seen and addressed
- Nervous system regulation is often more effective in person
- Distractions are reduced
- Dissociation may be less necessary
- The physical therapy space provides a contained and grounded environment where you can build safety with the provider, and develop healthy boundaries as self-care and the boundaries in relationships that are so important to healing and growth. Having a scheduled time and a dedicated physical space — the therapist’s office — makes this easier.
Here’s more about why we prefer and value in-person therapy.
4. Start with weekly sessions.
While frequency can vary, it must be dependent upon need. Starting with weekly therapy creates the consistency — a predictable rhythm for building the safety, trust, and rapport that are the foundation for healing trauma. Especially for trauma survivors, structure and repetition help build safety and stabilize the nervous system, while establishing the therapeutic bond.
At Brickel & Associates, we encourage weekly care to start to:
- Build the relationship, developing rapport and structure
- Evaluate therapeutic fit
- Develop a sense of relational safety
- Coordinate care
- Co-create a treatment plan
We aren’t the only ones who prefer weekly therapy. This outcome-based study shows that weekly therapy leads to faster progress and a greater likelihood of achieving recovery and healing.
More frequent therapy is needed sometimes.
Some clients benefit from more frequent sessions, such as twice-weekly—especially if they are:
- In acute emotional pain or distress
- Living with a complex trauma or PTSD history
- Needing more intensity around relationship building for safety and stability
- Struggling to make progress – feel stuck
- Feeling overwhelmed
- Facing a particularly difficult life transition
- Entering a deeper processing phase of therapy – requiring more help holding emotions and regulating the nervous system
This higher frequency can support deeper work, faster stabilization, and reduce overwhelm during emotionally intense periods. It’s most important for you to feel safe!
The therapeutic relationship isn’t just about regular attendance; it’s also about building trust, understanding, and collaboration. Over time, as the therapeutic connection solidifies, the frequency of care may naturally shift. This transition is something you and your therapist can decide on together, based on your needs and goals. This typically occurs when you’ve made significant progress and are ready for a less frequent schedule. Consistent open dialogue with a therapist during each session is paramount.
5. Understand that the therapeutic relationship takes time to build.
Therapy is not just about talking. It’s about safety, healing, and connection — especially for trauma survivors who may have experienced harmful or boundaryless important relationships in the past.
A healthy therapeutic relationship provides a new experience of being seen, heard, and valued in a safe, consistent space. It helps you:
- Build awareness and curiosity of your internal world
- Understand and uphold your boundaries
- Explore emotions without judgment
- Develop a sense of trust in yourself and others
The therapist-client relationship is built intentionally, through consistency, mutual respect, and collaboration, knowing that a gradual deepening of trust will occur over time.
Therapy is not a quick fix. It’s a powerful, personal process — and one that can lead to deep, lasting change when built on a foundation of safety, relationship, and shared intention.
If you’re a trauma survivor, your healing journey will be nonlinear — and that’s okay. With the right support, structure, and care, therapy can help you create meaningful change.
Set therapy up for success by choosing the right provider, showing up consistently, and honoring the pace and process of your own healing. You deserve a safe space to grow, and a therapist who walks alongside you with compassion, knowledge, and respect.
If you’re seeking a trauma therapist in the Alexandria, VA area, consider reaching out to us. Brickel and Associates has over 25 years of experience and a commitment to trauma-informed care. We are dedicated to supporting clients in their healing journey.
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
Robyn is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with 20+ years of experience providing psychotherapy, as well as the founder and clinical director of a private practice, Brickel and Associates, LLC in Old Town, Alexandria, Virginia. She and her team bring a strengths-based, trauma-informed, systems approach to the treatment of individuals (adolescents and adults), couples and families. She specializes in trauma (including attachment trauma) and the use of dissociative mechanisms; such as: self-harm, eating disorders and addictions. She also approaches treatment of perinatal mental health from a trauma-informed lens.
Robyn also guides clients and clinicians who wish to better understand the impact of trauma on mental health and relationships. She has a wide range of post graduate trauma and addictions education and is trained in numerous relational models of practice, including Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy (EFT), the Psychobiological Approach to Couple Therapy (PACT), and Imago therapy. She is a trained Sensorimotor Psychotherapist and is a Certified EMDRIA therapist and Approved Consultant. Utilizing all of these tools, along with mindfulness and ego state work to provide the best care to her clients. She prides herself in always learning and expanding her knowledge on a daily basis about the intricacies of treating complex trauma and trauma’s impact on perinatal distress.
She frequently shares insights, resources and links to mental health news on Facebook and Twitter as well as in her blog at BrickelandAssociates.com
To contact Robyn directly:
www.BrickelandAssociates.com
