Trauma Counseling in Alpharetta, GA
The best way to find out if this approach is for you is to schedule a 15 minute consultation. Depending on your clinician’s availability, this consult may be held over the phone, via video, or in-person.
Meet Your Trauma-Informed Therapists
What is Trauma Counseling?
Trauma is our emotional and psychological response to an event or set of circumstances that overwhelms our ability to cope. It can disrupt your sense of safety, your trust in others, and the way you understand yourself and the world around you. Trauma doesn’t always come from a single catastrophic event. It can also develop over time through repeated exposure to harmful situations, chronic stress, or relationships that were unsafe.
Our trauma counseling services in Alpharetta, GA are designed for the whole person: mind, body, and environment. Our trauma therapists use evidence-based approaches to help you process what happened, reduce the symptoms that are interfering with your daily life, and rebuild a sense of safety, connection, and meaning.
The goal isn’t to erase what happened. It’s to help you reach a place where the past no longer controls your present.
Who Is Trauma Counseling For?
Trauma affects people from all walks of life, and it doesn’t look the same for everyone. You don’t need to have experienced a dramatic, life-threatening event to benefit from trauma therapy. Our trauma therapists in Alpharetta work with individuals navigating a wide range of experiences, including:
- Single-event trauma such as an accident, assault, natural disaster, sudden loss, or witnessing violence
- Childhood trauma including abuse, neglect, household instability, or growing up with a parent who struggled with addiction or mental illness
- Relational trauma from abusive or controlling relationships, betrayal, sexual abuse, or domestic violence
- Grief-related trauma following the sudden or traumatic death of a loved one, pregnancy loss, or complicated grief
- Professional trauma experienced by healthcare workers, first responders, and others in high-exposure roles
- Racial trauma and systemic oppression that produces cumulative psychological harm over time
If something happened to you that changed the way you feel safe in the world, trauma counseling can help. You don’t need a formal PTSD diagnosis to seek support.
PTSD and Complex Trauma
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) develops when the brain’s response to a traumatic event doesn’t resolve on its own. Instead of the memory fading into the past, it stays active, intruding into your present through flashbacks, nightmares, hypervigilance, and emotional reactivity that can feel impossible to control.
Symptoms of PTSD
Common PTSD symptoms include:
- Intrusive memories, flashbacks, or nightmares related to the traumatic event
- Avoidance of people, places, or situations that remind you of the trauma
- Emotional numbness, difficulty feeling joy or connection
- Hyperarousal: being constantly on edge, easily startled, or struggling with anger and irritability
- Difficulty sleeping or concentrating
- Feelings of guilt, shame, or self-blame
Complex Trauma
Complex trauma results from prolonged or repeated exposure to traumatic experiences, often beginning in childhood or occurring within relationships where escape wasn’t possible. It produces many of the same symptoms as PTSD, but it also tends to affect your sense of identity, your ability to regulate emotions, and the way you relate to other people.
If you find that you struggle with chronic feelings of emptiness, difficulty trusting others, a deep sense of shame that doesn’t seem connected to any single event, or patterns of relationships that repeat the same painful dynamics, complex trauma may be part of what you’re experiencing. Therapy for complex trauma takes a longer-term, relationally-focused approach that prioritizes safety and trust before moving into direct trauma processing.
Hypervigilance and Your Nervous System
One of the most common and least understood effects of trauma is hypervigilance: the feeling that you’re never truly safe, even when there’s no present threat. Your body stays locked in a state of high alert, scanning for danger, tensing at unexpected sounds, struggling to relax even in familiar environments. This isn’t anxiety in the general sense. It’s your nervous system responding as though the traumatic event is still happening.
Trauma literally changes the way your brain and nervous system process threat. The parts of your brain responsible for detecting danger (the amygdala) can become overactive, while the parts responsible for rational thought and emotional regulation (the prefrontal cortex) may become less effective. This is why you might know logically that you’re safe but feel in your body that you’re not.
Trauma therapy addresses this at the neurological level. Approaches like EMDR and brainspotting work directly with the brain’s processing systems to help your nervous system learn that the threat has passed. Over time, your baseline state shifts from “survival mode” to something calmer, more regulated, and more present.
How We Treat Trauma: Evidence-Based Approaches
Effective trauma therapy is grounded in research and tailored to your specific experience. At Kellen Mental Health, our therapists draw from several proven modalities and match the approach to what your situation requires.
EMDR Therapy
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) helps your brain reprocess traumatic memories so they lose their emotional intensity. During EMDR sessions, your therapist guides you through bilateral stimulation (typically eye movements) while you focus on the traumatic memory. Over time, the memory becomes less distressing and can be integrated into your life narrative without triggering the same level of fear or pain. EMDR is one of the most extensively researched treatments for PTSD and is recommended by the World Health Organization and the American Psychological Association.
Brainspotting Therapy
Brainspotting is a body-oriented approach that uses specific eye positions to access and process trauma stored in the deeper, subcortical regions of the brain. It is particularly helpful for clients who feel “stuck” in traditional talk therapy or whose trauma manifests more in physical sensations than in conscious thought. Brainspotting works with your nervous system’s natural healing capacity, creating space for processing that can feel both profound and deeply grounding.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
Cognitive behavioral therapy helps you identify and restructure the negative thought patterns that trauma creates. Trauma often distorts how you see yourself (“I should have prevented it”), others (“no one can be trusted”), and the world (“nowhere is safe”). CBT gives you tools to challenge these distortions and build more balanced, accurate ways of thinking. When adapted specifically for trauma (trauma-focused CBT), it includes gradual exposure to trauma-related memories and feelings in a controlled, therapeutic setting.
Your therapist may use one approach or a combination depending on the type of trauma, how it shows up in your life, and what feels most effective for you.
What are the Focus Areas of Trauma Counseling?
There is a lot to consider when it comes to trauma counseling. It isn’t enough just for you to have someone who can listen and understand what you are going through. You need more than that level of support in order to heal from your traumatic experience or posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms. For this reason, our trauma counseling services focus on the following:
- Mood stabilization or symptom reduction (anxiety or depression)
- Grief and loss
- Internalized oppression
- Identity and self-development
- Issues of self-worth and self-esteem
- Radical self-care
What are the Symptoms of Trauma?
As you may know, a traumatic event can be anything that is deeply disturbing and distressing to your life. One of the symptoms of trauma could be feeling numb or disconnected from those around them. You might also feel intensely irritable, angry, or moody. For example, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD, is an acute stress disorder that causes long term effects on the mental health of those affected by it. It can cause difficulty concentrating, intrusive thoughts or flashbacks, feeling emotionally numb and be easily startled among other symptoms. Sometimes it’s hard for trauma survivors with PTSD to sleep well at night too as they are constantly haunted by their memories day in and day out. It’s important when seeking treatment for trauma-informed counseling not only to identify what caused your condition but deal with these other symptoms so you have more hope for inner peace and health than ever before!
Trauma Symptoms
- Shock, denial, or disbelief
- Confusion, difficulty concentrating
- Anger, irritability, mood swings
- Anxiety and fear
- Guilt, shame, self-blame
- Withdrawing from others
- Feeling sad or hopeless
- Feeling disconnected or numb
- Substance abuse
- Developing an eating disorder
Choose Kellen Mental Health for Trauma Counseling in Alpharetta, GA
Living with the effects of trauma takes an enormous amount of energy. The hypervigilance, the avoidance, the emotional weight of carrying something you haven’t been able to fully process. You don’t have to keep managing it alone, and you don’t have to be “ready” to start therapy. You just have to be willing to take the first step.
At Kellen Mental Health, our trauma therapists bring specialized training in EMDR, brainspotting, CBT, and trauma-informed care. Whether you’re dealing with PTSD from a single event, the lasting effects of childhood trauma, or the cumulative impact of experiences you’ve never had the chance to work through, we’ll build a treatment plan that meets you where you are.
We offer in-person sessions at our Alpharetta office and virtual counseling throughout Georgia.
Counseling
Individual Counseling Session Rates
Sessions are available in 45- or 60-minute formats and can be conducted either in person or via video. While 60-minute sessions are recommended—especially for the first appointment—they are not required unless deemed necessary by the clinician.
Initially, appointments are typically scheduled weekly or every other week. As symptoms improve and progress toward goals becomes more consistent, sessions can be spaced out to every 3–4 weeks.
45 minute appointments: $160 – $180 per session
60 minute appointments: $215 – $240 per session
Individual counseling rate varies per clinician. Please see clinician bios for more information regarding specialties and rates.
Don’t Just Take Our Word For It
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Frequently Asked Questions
How do I schedule an appointment?
There are a few different ways to schedule an appointment. Please choose the most convenient option for you. If you are a new client, you may schedule your consultation or…
What forms of payment do you accept? Can I use my HSA/FSA card?
Cash, credit cards (Visa, Mastercard, Discover, American Express), and health savings (HSA) or flex spending account (FSA) cards that have a major credit card logo on it are all accepted…
What is EMDR therapy, and who is it for?
EMDR therapy (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is an evidence-based trauma therapy that uses bilateral stimulation like guided eye movements or tapping while you focus on a memory. It helps…
What is your cancellation policy?
If you need to cancel or change your appointment, we ask you to inform your provider at least 24 hours in advance of your scheduled session start time. Your full…
What’s the difference between EMDR and Brainspotting—and how do you choose?
EMDR and Brainspotting are both trauma-focused therapies that help the brain and body process stuck experiences. EMDR follows a structured, phase-based protocol and uses bilateral stimulation (like eye movements, taps,…