Trauma Therapy for Women & Girls in Cary and throughout NC
Connect with your story. Reconnect with yourself.
You’re Not Crazy. You’re Not Broken. You’re Responding to Something Real
It happened. It might still be happening. Whether it was from your childhood, a destructive relationship, or a one-time event, it has left you reeling. Life feels like you have no anchor. You wonder if you’re crazy. Even more, sometimes you feel crazy and sometimes you feel completely numb.
“Did it even happen?”
“Am I exaggerating?”
“What did I do to bring it on?”
Trauma manifests in different ways for everyone. You doubt every decision…if you can make one at all. Unexplained diarrhea. Complete shutdown. Crippling panic. Returning to destructive relationships over and over again. It’s hard to trust people again. It might be hard to trust the church, or “Christians,” again. You live in fear that it will happen to your kids so you spend your energy curating the perfect life for them. Trauma therapy can help.
Trauma counseling won’t make you forget. But it can help you process your story, honor your resilience, and start living more fully in the present. If you’re ready to do that work, we’re ready to walk through it with you.
Have Any Questions? Send Us A Message!
Types of Trauma We Treat
Physical, sexual, or emotional abuse
Spiritual abuse
Narcissistic abuse
Domestic violence
Death or traumatic loss
Childhood neglect
Intergenerational or historical trauma
Medical trauma
Natural disaster
And many, many more
if you’re ready to process this, we’re ready to help…
Therapy specializing in trauma can help you reclaim your story, honor your resilience, and live more fully in the present.
Trauma counseling won’t make you forget. But it can help you process your story and memories without being overcome by them. Trauma memories and flashbacks will have less hold over you. Or, if you don’t spend much time thinking about trauma, therapy will help you make connections to how it is affecting your sleep, your work, your relationships, and your health.
Counseling will remove the power trauma has had on you. You can create a life of greater ease, take back your power, and become more open to vulnerability. Day-to-day life can become more manageable. Sleep can become more restful. Your nervous system can become more regulated so you feel less overwhelmed and cope with the headaches, panicky feeling, and GI distress. You will be able to do an inventory of current relationships and identify the healthy and unhealthy people in your life. You’ll learn to take space in relationships and figure out healthy ways to relate to people. You won’t feel so on edge-scanning rooms for danger and feeling an impending sense of doom. Your self worth will no longer be wrapped up in what happened to you. You’ll see yourself as worthy, powerful, and develop a sense of peace…maybe for the first time.
Meet Our Trauma Therapists in Cary, NC
meet your therapist
-
Shannon Salter | LCMHCA | PMH-C
Girls 16 & Up & Women
trauma | miscarriage | infertility | anxiety | depression | relationships | frontline professionals
Immediate afternoon & evening availability
Shannon helps women process the kinds of painful experiences that continue to shape the nervous system long after the moment has passed. She integrates EMDR with body-centered and attachment therapy. Whether someone is carrying trauma connected to relationships, loss, infertility, miscarriage, motherhood, or overwhelming life experiences, she creates a space where women can begin to feel safe enough to slow down, process what happened, and reconnect with themselves again. Her compassionate presence helps clients move from simply surviving their story to understanding it, healing from it, and finding hope beyond it.
-
Pat Lawson | LCSWA
Women
trauma | ministry leaders & helping professionals | crises of faith | chronic illness/pain | anxiety | depression | grief & loss | relationships
Pat has a waitlist
Pat works with women who have spent years carrying the emotional weight of trauma, caregiving, grief, chronic illness, or painful relationships that changed the way they see themselves and the world around them. She uses attachment and body-based therapies to treat trauma. She helps clients gently explore the impact trauma has had on their body, emotions, identity, and relationships while building practical tools for healing and stability. Women often leave feeling more grounded, more empowered, and less trapped by patterns that once felt impossible to change.
-
Kristin Nakhla | Founder | LCSW | Certified Mindfulness Teacher
Kristin is not taking new clients at this time. If you are a previous client, please reach out to her directly.
Kristin helps women understand how trauma can quietly shape the way they think, feel, relate to others, and move through everyday life. She integrates neuroscience, mindfulness, attachment work, and deep emotional processing to help clients recognize the survival patterns underneath anxiety, perfectionism, people-pleasing, shame, and emotional overwhelm. Her work helps women move beyond simply coping and begin building a life that feels more connected, intentional, and emotionally free.
Be Still is the best fit for…
Women carrying the effects of childhood neglect, abuse, or difficult early relationships.
Survivors of physical, sexual, emotional, or spiritual abuse.
Women who have experienced narcissistic abuse or domestic violence.
Women navigating the aftermath of a traumatic loss, a traumatic event, or medical trauma.
Women whose trauma is rooted in a faith community or church environment.
Women who experience anxiety, hypervigilance, numbness, or shutdown and suspect trauma may be underneath it.
Women who feel like they're managing on the surface but carrying something heavy that won't go away.
Teen girls dealing with relational trauma, family pain, or experiences that left a mark.
imagine if you…
Knew how to deal with the memories
Could identify healthy and unhealthy relationships
Felt empowered to take up space
Ditched the shame and felt worthy
Felt life is possible again
we want you to know
Healing and wholeness are possible…and you don’t need to lose your sanity to get there.
You don’t have to live in silence any more. You don’t have to be small so that others can thrive. You don’t have to pretend all is well when inside you’re screaming.
There is a way out, but it takes intention. A holistic mind, body, social, and spiritual approach to trauma therapy will restore hope, identify, and freedom.
Trauma Therapy with Be Still is…
Dealing with trauma gently
Teaching you skills to regulate your body as you process your past
Recognizing how trauma is currently affecting you
Trauma Therapy with Be Still is not…
Changing patterns that no longer serve you
Allowing memories to “make you go off the deep end”
Perpetuating blame and shame
Judgmental or critical of your experiences and current patterns
Overwhelming, terrifying, or unsafe
What to expect
Trauma therapy at Be Still is trauma-informed from the very first session. That means we never push you to share more than you're ready to. Healing moves at your pace.
We use a range of evidence-based approaches depending on what fits you best. Somatic therapy helps us work with how trauma lives in the body, not just in your mind. We also use EMDR and insight-oriented work, and we'll talk with you about which approach makes the most sense for your experience and your goals.
We also want to name something directly: trauma and faith often intersect in complicated ways. Spiritual abuse, church hurt, and crises of faith are areas our team is specifically trained and experienced to support. You won't have to explain why it's complicated. We already understand.
Have questions about how trauma therapy works? Visit our FAQ page.
Have questions?
Frequently Asked Questions About Trauma Therapy
-
You can talk about anything you’re ready for. You can give us the headlines, details, or anything in between. Honestly, you don’t need to discuss every detail to find healing. We’ll ask you “what do you want me to know about this?” It’s up to you what you share!
-
Many, even most, women minimize their experiences. Even more, many people invalidate or don’t acknowledge a woman’s trauma experiences. Your story doesn’t need to meet a certain threshold of suffering to be worthy of healing. If it hurt you, changed how you see yourself, or made it hard to feel safe or whole…it matters.
-
It makes sense to wonder if anything will make a difference and be hesitant to hope that therapy will make a difference. Trauma therapy is not a quick fix. It takes time, intention, and trying out new patterns of thoughts, beliefs, and behavior. But over time, your story will have less of a grip on you. You can even rewrite your future.
-
Call, fill out a contact form, or schedule a complimentary 15-minute consultation with our Care Coordinator. We’ll get a better understanding of your needs and determine if therapy is a good fit.
Learn More
i’m just not sure if i should move forward with counseling
Common barriers for women seeking trauma counseling
-
This we understand! It may or may not be a good time to start trauma counseling, depending on your season of life. We’ll be here when the time is right.
-
We’ll discuss what’s challenging, but keep it within your “window of tolerance.” That is, we’ll talk about that hard stuff, but not take you past the point of no return where you can’t function the rest of the day.
-
We understand…it can be overwhelming, even terrifying, to think about opening Pandora’s box. Know that this is sacred ground we don’t take lightly. We’ll make sure we take it slow and teach you a whole lot of skills to keep you regulated well before we start talking trauma.
Ready to get started
You’ve Carried This Long Enough
You don't have to keep managing it on your own. Healing is possible. We've walked through it with a lot of women, and we'd be honored to walk through it with you.