PTSD & Trauma Therapy in NYC

Blue Canary is an LGBTQ+-owned practice in NYC where trauma therapists bring clinical training and lived experience in the communities we serve. We work with PTSD, complex PTSD, sexual trauma, religious trauma, minority stress, and layered trauma that most therapists aren’t trained to understand.

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What Brings People to Trauma Therapy

People come to us at different points. Some know exactly what happened and just need help processing it. Others have this vague sense that something is wrong but can’t quite put their finger on it. Both are valid starting points.

PTSD Symptoms

Flashbacks that hit out of nowhere. Nightmares that won’t quit. Hypervigilance, that constant scanning, the inability to relax, the feeling that something bad is about to happen even when you’re technically safe.

Sexual Trauma & Assault

Whether it happened recently or decades ago, sexual trauma changes how you relate to your body, to intimacy, to trust. We have sex therapists who specialize in exactly this, so you won’t have to educate your therapist about why this is complicated. We’ve written about healing sexual trauma in queer and trans communities specifically.

Religious & Spiritual Trauma

Growing up being told your identity is a sin does real damage. Conversion therapy, church rejection, purity culture. This kind of trauma sits differently because it came from people and institutions that were supposed to protect you.

Minority Stress & Discrimination

The cumulative weight of microaggressions, workplace discrimination, family rejection, hate violence, and just existing in a world that’s not built for you. This is real trauma, even if nobody threw a punch.

Childhood & Complex PTSD

When trauma starts early or happens over and over, it doesn’t just leave a mark. It shapes how your nervous system develops. C-PTSD shows up in relationships, self-worth, emotional regulation, and a dozen other places that can feel like personality flaws but aren’t.

Medical Trauma

Surgeries, chronic illness diagnoses, medical procedures that felt violating, providers who dismissed your pain. For trans and queer folks, medical trauma is often tangled up with having your identity questioned by the very people treating you.

Domestic Violence & Relationship Trauma

When the person who hurt you was also the person you loved. Leaving doesn’t flip a switch. The hypervigilance, the flinching, the difficulty trusting again, all of that follows you.

Grief-Related Trauma

Sometimes loss is traumatic: sudden death, losing someone to overdose or suicide, watching a community get decimated by a pandemic. If you’re carrying both grief and trauma, we work with both. Our grief therapists get this.

Trauma responses aren’t character flaws. The hypervigilance, the avoidance, the emotional shutdown, all of that is your nervous system doing what it was built to do when faced with something overwhelming. Your system is still running a program that was useful during the threat but is now making daily life way harder than it needs to be. A lot of our clients, especially LGBTQ+ folks, sat with this for years because they weren’t sure their trauma “counted.” It wasn’t a single dramatic event. It was the slow accumulation of a thousand small violations, none of them big enough to point to, all of them adding up. That’s worth treating.

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Here’s how it works

Pick Your Trauma Therapist

Browse our team and find someone who fits. Every therapist at Blue Canary is trained in evidence-based trauma treatment, and most of them bring lived experience in the LGBTQ+, kink, and polyamorous communities they serve. You won’t spend your first three sessions explaining what polyamory is or why coming out at 35 was complicated.

Book a Free Consultation

A 15-minute call to see if it’s a good fit, no commitment, no pressure. You’ll get a sense of how your therapist thinks about trauma work and whether you’d feel comfortable in the room with them.

You Start Your Work

And it really is your work. Your therapist brings the tools and the clinical knowledge, but you set the pace. No one’s going to push you into processing before you’re ready, and no one’s going to keep you stuck in “just coping” forever when you’re ready to go deeper.

What Makes Trauma Therapy Different From Regular Talk Therapy

Talking about trauma isn’t always the first step. Sometimes it’s not even the most important one. Standard talk therapy, the kind where you mostly process out loud, can actually make things worse for some people with PTSD or C-PTSD. Your nervous system needs to be involved, not just your verbal brain.

That’s why we use modalities that work with your body, not just your words: Somatic Experiencing, IFS, trauma-focused CBT, and Cognitive Processing Therapy. These approaches are backed by research specifically for trauma, and our therapists know when to use which one. The goal isn’t to retell your story over and over. It’s to change how that memory is stored in your brain and body so it stops running the show.

  • Antonia Capossela, Blue Canary therapist

    Antonia McDonnell Capossela

  • Kiki Martire, therapist at Blue Canary Psychotherapy NYC

    Kiki Martire

  • Nikita Fernandes, therapist at Blue Canary Psychotherapy NYC

    Nikita Fernandes

  • Tex Gibson, therapist at Blue Canary Psychotherapy NYC

    Tex Gibson

  • Veda Massanari-Thatcher standing before a light-colored, textured wall. Blue Canary Psychotherapy NYC

    Veda Massanari-Thatcher

  • Stephanie Hertel, therapist in NYC, smiles at the camera. She has curly blonde hair and wears a short-sleeve animal print blouse, standing in front of a light-colored, textured background. Blue Canary Psychotherapy NYC

    Stephanie Hertel

  • Lucy Breidenthal

    Lucy Breidenthal

  • Frankie Janiec therapist at Blue Canary Psychotherapy in New York

    Frankie Janiec

  • Simona A. Duque nyc therapist

    Simona A. Duque

Our Team

Meet Our Trauma Therapists in NYC

Our team is trained across multiple evidence-based trauma modalities, including Somatic Experiencing, IFS, trauma-focused CBT, and Cognitive Processing Therapy, so your treatment is matched to what actually works for your situation. Most of our therapists also bring lived experience in the LGBTQ+, kink, and polyamorous communities.

Meet the Full Team

Our Approach to Trauma Therapy in New York City

Good trauma therapy follows a phased approach, and the first phase isn’t diving into your worst memories. Safety and stabilization come first. That means building the skills and the internal resources you need so that when we do start processing trauma directly, you’re not left flooded and raw between sessions.

Some people are ready to start processing pretty quickly. Others need more time in that first phase, maybe a lot more time. Neither is better or worse. Your therapist’s job is to meet you where you are, not where some treatment manual says you should be by session four.

You decide the pace, what we talk about, when to say “that’s enough for today.” For people who’ve experienced trauma, especially trauma involving a loss of control, having that kind of agency in the room matters more than any specific technique.

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Why Queer and Trans People Need Trauma Therapists Who Get It

For LGBTQ+ people, a lot of trauma isn’t separate from identity. Religious trauma is about being told who you are is wrong. Family rejection is about being abandoned for who you love. Minority stress is about existing in a hostile world. Medical trauma for trans people often involves the very providers who were supposed to help.

A therapist who doesn’t understand this, who needs you to explain what minority stress is, who treats your queerness as background noise instead of central to the trauma, is going to miss the point entirely.

Our therapists are part of the communities they serve. They’ve sat in those rooms themselves, not as observers. For trauma work, that’s the difference between therapy that actually works and therapy that makes things worse. We also have therapists who specialize in queer-affirming therapy and trans-affirming care specifically.

Individual Trauma Therapy

One-on-one trauma work is where most of the processing happens. It’s just you and your therapist, at whatever pace makes sense for your nervous system.

Some weeks that means doing deeper somatic, parts-based, or trauma-focused cognitive work. Other weeks it means sitting with what came up last time and letting it settle. Some weeks it means talking about your week because that’s what you need, and the trauma processing can wait.

This flexibility matters because trauma doesn’t operate on a schedule. You might be doing great for three weeks and then get triggered by something you didn’t see coming. A good trauma therapist adjusts instead of pushing you back onto the agenda.

For people dealing with complex PTSD, the kind that comes from sustained or childhood trauma, individual therapy is often where you start rebuilding your relationship with yourself. The parts of you that learned to shut down, to people-please, to be hypervigilant, to perform an identity that wasn’t really yours. Those patterns made sense once. The work is figuring out which ones still serve you and which ones are just running on autopilot.

We see clients in person at our SoHo office (110 Lafayette St, NYC) and our Kingston, NY location, and we offer telehealth across New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Vermont. For trauma work, some people prefer in-person and some find telehealth works just as well. Your therapist will help you figure out what makes sense for you.

When Trauma Shows Up in Your Relationships

Trauma doesn’t stay contained to one part of your life. It leaks into your relationships: the way you attach, the things that set you off, the moments when you shut down or blow up over something your partner thinks is small.

Maybe you pull away when things get too close because intimacy feels dangerous. Maybe you’re constantly scanning for signs that someone’s about to leave. You might pick fights because conflict feels more familiar than peace, or freeze during physical intimacy because your body won’t let you be present.

This isn’t because you’re bad at relationships. It’s because your nervous system learned some rules about people and safety, and those rules are still running even when the current situation doesn’t warrant them.

We work with individuals on the relational impacts of trauma, and we also offer couples therapy for partners who want to do this work together. Sometimes that means bringing your partner into a session to help them understand your triggers and responses. Sometimes it means doing your own individual work first and bringing the changes back into the relationship.

For LGBTQ+ couples, there’s often an added layer: both partners may be carrying their own minority stress, their own family-of-origin wounds, their own history of not being accepted. When both partners are carrying their own history, the dynamic gets complicated in ways that aren’t obvious from the outside. Our therapists know how to work with that without picking sides or flattening anyone’s experience.

Treatment Approaches We Use

Psychodynamic & Relational Trauma Therapy

Trauma often shapes how you relate to yourself, other people, conflict, desire, safety, and trust. Psychodynamic and relational trauma therapy helps you understand those patterns in real time, so the work is not only about symptoms. It is also about building a steadier relationship with yourself and others.

Somatic Experiencing

Trauma lives in the body as much as the mind. Somatic Experiencing works with the physical sensations and nervous system patterns that get stuck after traumatic events. For people who feel disconnected from their bodies or who carry chronic tension, pain, or physical anxiety symptoms, this approach can reach things that talking alone can’t.

Internal Family Systems (IFS)

IFS works with the idea that your psyche has different “parts,” and some of those parts are carrying the weight of what happened to you. It’s a surprisingly gentle approach for trauma work, and it’s especially useful for complex PTSD where the trauma is tangled up with identity and self-worth.

Trauma-Focused CBT & Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT)

For people who want a structured, skills-based approach. CPT is particularly good at addressing the beliefs that form around trauma: “it was my fault,” “I can’t trust anyone,” “the world is dangerous.” It examines whether those beliefs are protecting you or holding you hostage.

Every therapist on our team is also trained in working with LGBTQ+ clients, which means they understand minority stress, the lasting effects of discrimination, and the specific kinds of trauma that show up in queer, trans, polyamorous, and kink communities. You won’t spend your sessions educating your therapist.

Frequently Asked Questions About Trauma & PTSD Therapy

No. Some people never share every detail of their trauma, and that is completely fine. Effective trauma therapy can work with body sensations, emotions, beliefs, and patterns without requiring a blow-by-blow narrative. Your therapist will not pressure you to disclose more than you are ready for. You stay in control of what you share and when.

PTSD and anxiety can overlap. PTSD usually involves triggers tied to something overwhelming that happened: flashbacks, nightmares, avoidance, numbness, hypervigilance, or feeling unsafe when you know you are not in danger. Anxiety can be broader and less tied to one experience. You do not need a formal PTSD diagnosis to start trauma therapy. If something still affects your body, relationships, sleep, or sense of safety, it is worth getting support.

No. Trauma does not expire. Many people start trauma therapy years or decades after the original experience, sometimes because a relationship, loss, transition, or new stress finally brings it to the surface. The work may look different when trauma has shaped your life for a long time, but it can still help your nervous system and relationships change.

That is common. Trauma can leave gaps, fragments, body reactions, or emotional flashes instead of a clean story. You do not need a perfect timeline to do trauma therapy. Approaches like somatic work, IFS, trauma-focused CBT, CPT, and relational therapy can work with what is present now: sensations, beliefs, triggers, avoidance, and the ways your system learned to protect you.

Look for someone with specific trauma training, not just someone who says they are trauma-informed. Ask what approaches they use, how they pace trauma work, how they handle dissociation or overwhelm, and how you will know therapy is helping. For LGBTQ+, kink, poly, or trans clients, fit also means not having to teach your therapist the basics of your life before you can work on the trauma.

It can bring up difficult material, but it should not leave you destabilized without support. Good trauma therapy starts with safety, pacing, and stabilization before deeper processing. If you begin feeling flooded, shut down, or raw between sessions, that is important clinical information. Your therapist should slow down, strengthen resources, and adjust the work instead of pushing through.

Our trauma work can include Somatic Experiencing, IFS, trauma-focused CBT, Cognitive Processing Therapy, psychodynamic therapy, and relational work. The point is not to force one method onto everyone. Your therapist will look at what happened, how symptoms show up now, how your body responds, and what kind of pace feels workable for you.

We choose based on what your system needs. IFS can help when different parts of you are carrying fear, shame, or protection. Somatic work focuses on the body and nervous system. Trauma-focused CBT or CPT can help with beliefs that formed around the trauma. Psychodynamic and relational work can help with patterns trauma created in closeness, trust, or self-protection.

Cognitive Processing Therapy, or CPT, is a structured trauma therapy that helps you examine the beliefs trauma left behind. It is especially useful when trauma has created stuck points around safety, trust, power, control, guilt, shame, or self-blame. CPT has strong research support for PTSD and can be adapted thoughtfully for complex trauma.

Stabilization is the part of trauma therapy where you build enough safety and regulation to do deeper work without getting overwhelmed. That might include grounding skills, nervous system tracking, parts work, crisis planning, or learning what your window of tolerance feels like. It is not avoidance. It is what makes trauma processing more tolerable and less likely to flood you.

It depends on the trauma, your support system, your goals, and how your nervous system responds. A single event may move faster than complex PTSD, childhood trauma, religious trauma, or repeated relational harm. Your therapist should talk with you about progress, pacing, and what changes you are noticing. There is no universal timeline, and faster is not always better.

Sometimes, yes. Starting trauma work can make you more aware of feelings or body responses you have been avoiding. That discomfort should be manageable and temporary, not a sustained crisis. If therapy is making daily life harder in a way that feels unsafe or uncontained, the work needs to slow down. You should be able to tell your therapist when it is too much.

Yes. We work with sexual trauma, assault, coercion, abuse, and the ways those experiences can affect intimacy, desire, boundaries, trust, and your relationship with your body. Because Blue Canary also specializes in sex therapy, we can hold both the trauma and the sexual aftermath without making you split those parts of your experience into separate rooms.

Yes. We work with trauma connected to minority stress, family rejection, religious harm, conversion therapy, discrimination, medical systems, hate violence, and the slow accumulation of being treated as unsafe or wrong. For us, LGBTQ+-specific trauma is not a side note. It is often central to understanding what happened and why your nervous system adapted the way it did.

PTSD often develops after a specific traumatic event or period of danger. Complex PTSD usually comes from repeated or prolonged trauma, especially when escape or protection was not available. C-PTSD can include classic PTSD symptoms plus difficulty with emotion regulation, self-worth, shame, trust, and relationships. Many LGBTQ+ clients are dealing with layered trauma rather than one isolated event.

Yes. We offer telehealth for clients in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Vermont. Many forms of trauma therapy can work well over video, especially when you feel safer in your own space. Some people prefer in-person work for body-based approaches or deeper processing. Your therapist can help you decide what format fits your nervous system and circumstances.

No. Blue Canary is private pay only and does not accept insurance directly. We can provide superbills that you may submit to your insurance plan for possible out-of-network reimbursement. Coverage depends on your plan, so it is worth checking directly with your insurance company if reimbursement matters for your care decisions.

Yes. We offer in-person therapy at our SoHo office at 110 Lafayette St in New York City, and we also have a Kingston, NY location. Telehealth is available across New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Vermont. Some clients use one format consistently; others choose based on the therapist, schedule, distance, and what feels safest for the work.

Further Reading

Ready to start?

If you’ve read this far, something on this page probably landed. Our trauma therapists are here when you’re ready. And “ready” doesn’t mean having it all figured out. It means being willing to try something different.