When you’re living with PTSD, it can feel like safety is always just out of reach. After a traumatic experience—whether it’s a natural disaster, sexual assault, accident, or combat—your mind and body may continue to react as if the danger is still present. You might have trouble sleeping, experience vivid nightmares, or feel constantly on edge. Maybe things you once enjoyed feel dull or distant. You might even prefer to be alone because it feels more manageable.

These feelings are common in the aftermath of trauma. For many people, they ease over time. But for others, they persist and interfere with daily life—sometimes for years. When that happens, it may be Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

What PTSD Looks Like

PTSD symptoms typically fall into four key categories:

1. Re-experiencing the trauma through intrusive memories, flashbacks, or nightmares.
2. Avoidance of people, places, or situations that trigger reminders of the trauma.
3. Negative changes in thoughts and mood, such as persistent guilt, shame, or emotional numbness.
4. Hyperarousal, including irritability, insomnia, or constantly feeling on guard.

A diagnosis of PTSD requires symptoms in each of these categories. Only a licensed mental health professional can determine whether you meet the criteria—and that first step of talking to someone can feel both terrifying and empowering.

How PTSD Shows Up in Our Communities

At Epiphany Lane Counseling, we understand that PTSD doesn’t look the same for everyone—especially in Black, Brown, and marginalized communities where trauma may be layered with systemic injustice, generational stress, and cultural silence around mental health. PTSD can show up as chronic irritability, disconnection in relationships, panic attacks, or high-functioning anxiety that masks deep emotional pain. Women and femmes, in particular, may carry trauma related to sexual violence, caregiving burnout, or racialized misogyny, while youth and professionals with ADHD or anxiety may experience trauma as physical restlessness, emotional overwhelm, or a constant fear of failure. We hold space for all these expressions of pain—and guide you with compassion and evidence-based care toward healing that honors your whole story.

You Are Not Alone—And There Is Help

At Epiphany Lane Counseling, we specialize in trauma-informed care that centers your unique story, needs, and healing goals. We draw from evidence-based and integrative models to treat PTSD in both teens and adults:

• Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) helps you reshape the connection between thoughts, emotions, and behaviors related to trauma.
• Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) equips you with tools for emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and interpersonal effectiveness.
• Narrative Therapy empowers you to re-author your story, placing the trauma in context rather than at the center of your identity.
• Our Integrative and Somatic Treatment options incorporate mindfulness, breathwork, grounding, and body-based techniques to help release trauma stored in the nervous system.

Our clinicians create a personalized, strengths-based plan to help you reclaim peace, power, and joy—the pillars of our care.

Support Tools and Resources

If you think you might have PTSD, you can explore these trusted self-assessment and educational tools:

• National Center for PTSD
• PTSD Coach App and PTSD Coach Online
• PTSD Treatment Decision Aid
• Understanding PTSD and PTSD Treatment Booklet (PDF)
• PTSD Whiteboard Videos

These tools are a helpful way to learn about symptoms and begin thinking about treatment options—but they are not a substitute for care.

Start the Healing Process

You deserve healing. Whether you’re newly experiencing symptoms or have lived with them for years, there is help—and hope. Let this be your moment of epiphany: healing is possible, and you don’t have to do it alone.

Join the Client List or Schedule a Free Consultation with our Crew today and take the first step toward feeling safe in your body and life again.