Trauma Therapy for Women in St. Petersburg, FL and Online in Florida
You deserve to feel calm, confident, and fully yourself — not stuck in anxiety, overthinking, or self-doubt. Specializing in NARM therapy for high-functioning women healing childhood trauma and relationship patterns.
Hi, I’m Ruth.
I’m a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) and trauma therapist based in St. Petersburg, Florida. I specialize in working with high-functioning women navigating anxiety, childhood trauma, relationship challenges, and life transitions.
I am trained in the NeuroAffective Relational Model (NARM), an advanced approach for healing relational trauma or developmental/attachment trauma. My work focuses on helping you understand the survival patterns you once needed — and gently outgrow them.
Together, we create space for clarity, confidence, and a deeper sense of self-trust.
Serving women in St. Petersburg and throughout Florida via secure online therapy.
Questions to Ask Yourself
You may benefit from this type of therapy if you find yourself asking questions like:
Do I often feel responsible for other people’s emotions, reactions, or wellbeing?
Do I struggle to know what I truly want or need in relationships?
Do I overthink interactions, replay conversations, or worry about how others perceive me?
Do I tend to lose myself, people-please, or abandon my own needs in order to maintain connection?
Do I appear high-functioning on the outside while privately feeling anxious, disconnected, exhausted, or overwhelmed?
Do I have difficulty relaxing, slowing down, or feeling emotionally safe, even when things are going well?
Do I notice patterns of self-criticism, shame, perfectionism, or feeling like I am “not enough”?
Do I struggle with intimacy, trust, boundaries, or fear of rejection in close relationships?
Do I feel emotionally stuck in patterns that I intellectually understand but still cannot seem to change?
Do I want therapy that goes beyond symptom management and helps me better understand myself, my nervous system, and the deeper patterns shaping my life and relationships?
You do not need to have experienced obvious trauma to benefit from relational or trauma-informed therapy. Many people seek therapy simply because they are tired of surviving in ways that leave them disconnected from themselves, their relationships, or the life they want to create.
What Relational Trauma Looks Like:
Relational trauma does not always come from obvious abuse or a single traumatic event. Sometimes it develops slowly through relationships where you had to stay highly aware of other people’s emotions, suppress your own needs, or work hard to feel loved, accepted, or emotionally safe. As adults, these patterns can continue long after the original relationships are over.
You may find yourself overthinking conversations, worrying about disappointing others, struggling to set boundaries, or feeling anxious when someone pulls away emotionally. Some people notice they become highly independent and have difficulty asking for help, while others feel consumed by relationships and afraid of losing connection. You might appear capable and successful on the outside while privately feeling exhausted, disconnected, or unsure of who you are beneath the roles you play for others.
Relational trauma can also show up as people-pleasing, chronic self-doubt, difficulty trusting yourself, emotional numbness, perfectionism, or feeling responsible for everyone else’s wellbeing. In intimate relationships, you may notice fears of abandonment, difficulty expressing needs, or patterns of losing yourself in order to maintain closeness. Even when life looks “fine” externally, many people carry a persistent sense of anxiety, emptiness, shame, or feeling like they are never fully able to relax and be themselves.
Therapy can help bring awareness to these patterns with compassion rather than judgment. Instead of seeing yourself as “too sensitive,” “too much,” or broken, we begin to understand how these adaptations once helped you survive emotionally and why they may no longer be serving the life or relationships you want today.
My Approach to Therapy
My approach is grounded in NARM (NeuroAffective Relational Model), a relational and somatic therapy model designed to help address the lasting impact of developmental and relational trauma. NARM focuses on the connection between our nervous system, emotions, identity, and relationship patterns, especially the patterns that developed early in life as ways of adapting and surviving.
Many people come to therapy feeling anxious, emotionally overwhelmed, disconnected from themselves, stuck in people-pleasing, or caught in painful relationship dynamics. Often these patterns are not random. They developed intelligently in response to experiences where emotional needs, connection, safety, or authenticity did not feel fully available. Over time, these adaptations can begin to shape how we relate to ourselves, our emotions, and other people.
In therapy, I do not focus on “fixing” you or pathologizing your reactions. Instead, we work together to understand the deeper patterns underneath your anxiety, self-doubt, emotional shutdown, perfectionism, overthinking, or relationship struggles. NARM helps clients explore these patterns with curiosity and compassion while building greater self-awareness, emotional regulation, and connection to their authentic selves.
Our work may include exploring present-day relationships, nervous system responses, emotions, body awareness, and the unconscious beliefs that developed through earlier experiences. Rather than only revisiting the past, therapy also focuses on what is happening in the here-and-now — how these patterns continue to shape your current life, relationships, and sense of self.
I strive to create a therapy space that feels collaborative, grounded, and relational. Many of my clients are high-functioning adults who are used to holding everything together for others while feeling disconnected internally. Therapy can become a place where you no longer have to perform, manage, or abandon yourself in order to feel accepted. Over time, the goal is not simply symptom reduction, but helping you feel more connected, empowered, emotionally present, and able to move through life with greater authenticity and self-trust.