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Helping your kid feel connected and capable after sexual abuse
Trauma therapy for kids and teens. In-person in Rockville, MD and online throughout Maryland.
Trauma Therapy for Kids and Teens
Sexual abuse feels confusing, isolating, and icky. It tells your kid that they don’t matter. It tries to take some of the joy out of being a person in a human body.
In therapy, I help your kid to reconnect with themselves and their grown-ups, so they know just how loved they are. I help them recognize their wisdom, creativity, and strength, so they feel more confident and capable when taking on the world. Together, we turn down the volume on the lies that abuse likes to tell, so your kid can hear themselves think.
As your kid’s therapist, part of my job is making the healing process less mysterious. This site has a lot of information about helping your kid after sexual abuse. It’s here for you when you want it, but you shouldn’t feel pressured to absorb it all. If you think I might be able to help, please reach out, so we can find the right fit for your family.
Short-Term Therapy for Recent Events
Your kid was just assaulted, or they just told you about abuse for the first time. You have a million phone calls to return, but most of all, you want to make sure they’re ok.
Short-term early intervention therapy is designed for the days and weeks after a traumatic event. Kids with this support are less likely to develop post-traumatic stress disorder and may not need long-term therapy.
Trauma-Processing Therapy
Your kid’s sleep is shot. They’re on edge and can’t seem to focus in school or keep up with their usual activities. They won’t talk about the abuse, but you know it’s bothering them.
Trauma-processing therapy revisits the hardest moments in a purposeful way to allow kids to access the wisdom they’ve earned without overwhelming distress.
Parent-Child Therapy
Your kid has been through a lot in their short life, and their experiences of the worst ways people treat each other seem to be shaping how they respond to everyone.
Parent-child therapy nurtures your child’s relationship with the most important person in their life — you — to help both of you feel safer and more connected. This is great for kids in adoptive families or when parent-child relationships have not always been healthy.
Trauma-Informed Therapy
Your kid’s abuse history is never going to go away, but they don’t need their therapy to laser-focus on those moments from the past.
Trauma-informed therapy supports kids and teens with specific challenges they’re facing right now, while honoring their survival responses and past experiences of danger, loss, and disconnection.
Hi, I’m Karen
I am a caring, informed, and creative psychotherapist (LCSW-C) bringing my A-game for kids and teens handling things that would overwhelm most adults.
I specialize in supporting kids and teens who have been subjected to sexual violence and other major traumas. I work with adopted kids and those otherwise separated from their families of origin, neurodivergent kids, kids of all gender and sexual identities, and kids with dissociative and body-based symptoms. I provide therapy in English and Spanish.
I have the best job. I get to spend time in your kid’s shoes, working to deeply understand how their emotions and actions just make sense from the inside. I get to empower your kid by helping them recognize how power has been deployed for their harm and benefit, and how they can be powerful without sacrificing their values. I stay energized keeping pace with the ever-evolving research on human hearts and minds.