Trauma Therapy in Denver, CO
Do you feel unsafe, even when your brain is telling you you’re in a safe place?
You are always on edge, waiting for the next shoe to drop.
Your dreams are so active, it doesn’t feel like you’ve slept at all.
Sometimes your body shuts down and it feels as if you’re moving through a fog. Your head and ears feel full.
When you’ve experienced a highly stressful event or chronically stressful environment, your body and your brain stop aligning on safety.
It feels incredibly confusing to be unable to trust yourself. Your lack of self-trust eventually starts to add to your belief that you aren’t good enough and that you aren’t safe.
You’ve talked about it for years. Now you’re ready to feel the difference.
You know in your head that you’re safe. You’ve been in enough therapy to recognize the pattern between your thoughts, emotions, and behavior.
When you feel like your best self, you’re able to pause and respond differently.
Now you’re ready to respond more naturally. You want to believe in your core that you deserve to be treated better, that you’re safe, and that you’re good enough.
This is what I love about EMDR for PTSD and complex trauma.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy for trauma in Denver
You don’t have to have PTSD, or even consider your experience “trauma,” to benefit from EMDR. There are ways that our minds and bodies hold onto stressful experiences that resonate with trauma, even if we don’t identify with the term. Often, when you have big responses that feel disproportionate to the situation, it’s rooted in something much deeper.
EMDR helps integrate what you know in your head (cognitive) with a felt sense (somatic) of it being true, even in the context of your past your experiences. I often describe EMDR as the thing that’s missing from CBT: It takes CBT positive beliefs from being something you have to actively practice to something you intuitively believe about yourself.
I’m an EMDRIA-certified EMDR therapist and offer trauma therapy in NYC and Denver. My practice is rooted in EMDR, somatic, and parts work to bring healing to your whole system.
Skye Ross is an EMDR trauma therapist practicing in Colorado | Maine | NYC
In September 2026, I trained therapists in trauma modalities. My heart is in trauma work and therapists’ professional development. I speak about the schism between graduate school and providing true trauma-informed care frequently on social media and in my blog and newsletter.
Trauma 201: Moving Beyond Trauma Informed Care through Heart and Solutions “You Need A Training.”
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) about Trauma Therapy
Everything you need to know before getting started.
Do I have to talk about what happened for trauma therapy to be effective?
You are not expected to go into details, especially at the beginning. In fact, part of my job as we start together is to notice if you are going to far into something and support you with coming back to the room. We call this “pacing” in trauma therapy and it’s a crucial part of building a safe enough container around our work together. There needs to be safety and capacity before we get into the desensitization and reprocessing phases of EMDR.
How long does trauma therapy take?
This answer is a frustrating, but honest, “it depends.” I initially send a Good Faith Estimate of Benefits for 12 weeks of therapy. If you are coming to me for a single, acute traumatic event and otherwise have good supports and coping outside of this, we are likely to be able to complete therapy in that timeframe. If your history is more complex, with childhood attachment wounds, difficulty in your relationships, and currently struggle in many areas (relationships, settling in your body, substance use, work stress), then our work will likely be longer.
What’s the difference between trauma therapy and talk therapy?
“Talk therapy” usually refers to narrative therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), or dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT). These are effective therapies that focus on how our thoughts, beliefs, and emotions influence our behaviors. Most of the processing is intellectual and considered a “top down” approach where changing how we think about something influences how we feel towards it and then we can change our behavior.
Trauma therapy recognizes the need for a bottom up (somatic first) approach, or at least integration. I will support you with tuning into your internal experience. I recognize this feels unfamiliar to you and may even feel awkward. The purpose here is that trauma reexperiencing comes from our brain misinterpreting internal and external information. if you’ve done traditional “talk therapy” before, then you know your patterns, but haven’t been able to make a lasting change. Integrating the brain and body information is how you start to get there.
Can EMDR make trauma worse?
EMDR does not make trauma worse when done well. I take the early phases of EMDR very seriously. EMDR is often slower than you want it to be and the purpose of that is that we need to know each other and have sufficient safety in the room together. We will build that together and I’ll support you to build your window of tolerance so that you can remain present with me during EMDR processing.
Do you treat medical trauma and vicarious trauma?
Yes and yes. My early experiences as a social worker and public health professional were in treating chronic illness. I’ve continued to see people with chronic and severe illnesses (HIV, multiple sclerosis, cancer) as well as those with medical trauma in my private practice. A complex history taking is always the first step in treatment. Having compassion and trusting your experience is imperative in treating trauma.
I offer individual trauma therapy and group EMDR therapy to treat vicarious trauma in healthcare professionals.