Your body remembers what your mind tries to forget. That sudden tightness in your chest when someone raises their voice. The way your stomach drops when you pass that intersection. The exhaustion that has no medical explanation, or the hypervigilance that keeps you scanning every room you enter.
This isn’t weakness. This isn’t you being “dramatic” or “stuck in the past.” This is your nervous system doing exactly what it was designed to do—protect you from perceived danger, even when the original threat is long gone.
At Ontario Therapy, located at 171 Main Street South in downtown Newmarket, we understand that trauma lives in the body, not just the mind. Our trauma therapy approach honors both your survival instincts and your incredible capacity for healing.
He came back from overseas deployment looking fine on the outside, but his family in King City notices he's different. Loud noises make him jump. He can't relax at his kids' sporting events. Sleep brings nightmares, and awake brings flashbacks. The VA suggested "traditional counseling," but talking about it just makes everything worse.
She desperately wants connection but finds herself pushing away anyone who gets too close. Her body tenses during intimate moments, her mind goes blank during conflict, and she dissociates when emotions get too intense. She's been told she has "trust issues," but what she really has is a nervous system that learned early that people can be dangerous.
A door slams in the office and he's instantly 12 years old again, cowering in his childhood bedroom in Bradford. His heart races, palms sweat, and he needs to excuse himself to the bathroom to breathe. His colleagues have no idea that his successful exterior masks a nervous system that's been on high alert for 30 years. He googles "trauma therapy near me" during lunch breaks but worries he's "too far gone" for help.
She's been awake since 4 AM again, body rigid with tension she can't explain. The accident was two years ago, but her nervous system acts like it happened yesterday. She checks the locks twice, scans the street before leaving her Aurora home, and takes the long way to work to avoid that stretch of Davis Drive. Her family keeps asking when she'll "get over it," but her body won't let her forget.
Start with a 20-minute confidential phone conversation where we discuss your specific trauma history and how our approach might help. This allows you to get a feel for our work together before committing to therapy.
If you’re in immediate danger or having thoughts of self-harm:
When most people think of trauma, they picture car accidents, violence, or war. But trauma is any experience that overwhelmed your nervous system’s ability to cope—and it’s far more common than most people realize.
“Big T” Traumas in Our Newmarket Community:
“Little t” Traumas That Add Up:
Complex Trauma (C-PTSD):
Your nervous system doesn’t distinguish between “big” and “small” traumas—it responds to threat, overwhelm, and disconnection wherever they occur.
Traditional therapy often focuses on changing thoughts and processing memories through talking. But trauma isn’t stored in the thinking part of your brain—it’s held in your nervous system, muscles, organs, and cellular memory.
Your Body’s Trauma Responses:
Fight Response: Road rage, explosive anger, confrontational behavior, muscle tension, clenched jaw, aggressive body language
Flight Response: Anxiety, panic attacks, restlessness, inability to sit still, racing thoughts, constant busy-ness, workaholic tendencies
Freeze Response: Feeling stuck or numb, procrastination, inability to make decisions, depression, fatigue, feeling disconnected from your body
Fawn Response: People-pleasing, difficulty setting boundaries, losing yourself in relationships, apologizing excessively, ignoring your own needs
Collapsed/Dorsal Shutdown: Extreme fatigue, dissociation, feeling “not real,” emotional numbness, social withdrawal, sleep disturbances
These aren’t character flaws—they’re adaptive responses that helped you survive. But they may no longer serve you in your current life.
Your body holds the keys to your healing. Through gentle attention to physical sensations, we help your nervous system complete interrupted survival responses and return to a state of safety and flow.
What This Looks Like:
We integrate traditional therapy techniques with deep understanding of how trauma affects memory, emotion, and relationships.
Approaches We Use:
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) helps your brain process traumatic memories so they lose their emotional charge and stop interfering with your daily life.
How EMDR Works:
Before we can process trauma, your nervous system needs to feel safe. We spend significant time building your capacity for regulation and resilience.
Regulation Techniques Include:
This is a very valid concern. Traditional talk therapy can sometimes retraumatize people by pushing them to discuss experiences before their nervous system is ready. Our approach is different—we prioritize safety and stabilization first, and we have multiple tools beyond talking for processing trauma.
Your body remembers even when your mind doesn’t. Much of our trauma work focuses on present-moment body sensations and nervous system responses rather than detailed memory recall. Healing can absolutely happen without complete memories.
Trauma therapy can bring up intense emotions and memories, but you won’t fall apart—you’ll be supported every step of the way. We build resources and coping skills before doing any intensive processing work.
If trauma responses are interfering with your life, relationships, or well-being, then it’s “bad enough.” There’s no trauma Olympics—your experience matters regardless of how it compares to others.
It’s never too late for trauma healing. The nervous system remains plastic throughout life, and people can experience significant healing even from very old trauma. Sometimes having more life experience and resources actually supports deeper healing.
Trauma therapy is often longer-term work, but we offer sliding scale fees and work with extended health benefits. We also focus on building your own regulation skills so you’re not dependent on therapy forever.
The stretch of Highway 404 through York Region, Davis Drive, and Yonge Street see thousands of accidents annually. If you’ve been in an MVA, your body may still be braced for impact even years later.
MVA Trauma Symptoms:
Our MVA Recovery Approach:
Workplace injuries aren’t just physical—they often involve trauma around safety, trust, and financial security. Many clients from Newmarket’s industrial and healthcare sectors come to us for support.
Common Workplace Trauma Issues:
Many adults in our Newmarket practice are dealing with the long-term effects of childhood experiences that shaped their nervous systems during crucial developmental years.
Complex Trauma Healing:
We have extensive experience working with police officers, firefighters, paramedics, and military personnel from the York Region and surrounding areas.
Specialized Understanding:
When trauma responses hit—panic, dissociation, flashbacks—this technique can bring you back to the present moment in under 5 minutes.
Your nervous system gets activated when it perceives danger, even from memories or triggers. Grounding techniques engage your prefrontal cortex (thinking brain) and interrupt the trauma response cycle.
How to do it:
Why it works: This technique interrupts trauma responses by engaging your senses and grounding you in present reality rather than past memories or imagined futures. It activates the part of your brain responsible for logic and present-moment awareness.
When to use it: During flashbacks, panic attacks, dissociation, hypervigilance, before difficult conversations, when you feel “triggered,” or anytime you notice your nervous system becoming activated.
Pro tip: Practice this when you’re calm so it’s readily available during difficult moments. You can do this anywhere—in your car, at work, during family gatherings, or lying in bed.
I’m not someone who learned about trauma from textbooks—I’ve been walking alongside trauma survivors for over a decade in some of the most challenging settings imaginable.
My Trauma Specialty Background:
I understand trauma not just professionally, but personally. I know what it’s like to have a nervous system that’s been shaped by difficult experiences, and I bring both clinical expertise and genuine empathy to our work together.
171 Main Street South offers the perfect setting for trauma therapy—accessible yet private, right in downtown Newmarket’s vibrant core.
Why Our Location Matters for Trauma Work:
Discreet and Private:
For many trauma survivors, especially those dealing with agoraphobia, severe anxiety, or transportation challenges, virtual therapy can be a lifeline.
Our Secure Virtual Platform:
Virtual Trauma Therapy Benefits:
Technical Support for Trauma Survivors: We understand that technology stress can trigger trauma responses. We provide:
Ontario Therapy is more than a collective; it’s a community where healing begins with connection. From every corner of Ontario, we’re here to support your journey to wellness.
Trauma therapy must begin with safety—both emotional and physical. We never rush into trauma processing before your nervous system is ready.
Phase 1 Focus:
What This Looks Like: We might spend entire sessions just practicing breathing techniques, identifying what safety feels like in your body, or exploring what triggers your fight/flight/freeze responses. This isn’t “wasting time”—it’s essential foundation work.
Once your nervous system has enough stability and resources, we can begin carefully working with traumatic memories and experiences.
Phase 2 Focus:
Important Notes:
Trauma healing isn’t about “getting over it” or returning to who you were before. It’s about integrating your experiences and discovering who you’re becoming.
Phase 3 Focus:
Trauma healing isn’t linear. You might need intensive weekly sessions during difficult periods, then monthly check-ins during stable times, then breaks followed by return when new triggers emerge.
This is completely normal and healthy. Your healing journey is unique to you.
Individual Trauma Therapy:
Sliding Scale Available: We believe trauma therapy should be accessible. Sliding scale options range from $120-180 per session based on income and circumstances.
Extended Health Benefits:
Group Programs:
Investment Perspective: Trauma therapy is an investment in reclaiming your life. Many clients find that effective trauma treatment reduces other healthcare costs, improves work performance, and dramatically enhances relationships and overall quality of life.
If past experiences continue to impact your daily life, relationships, work, or physical health, trauma therapy can help. Signs include hypervigilance, sleep disturbances, relationship difficulties, chronic pain, anxiety, depression, or feeling “stuck” in certain areas of life.
PTSD typically results from specific traumatic events (accidents, violence, disasters), while complex trauma (C-PTSD) results from repeated or prolonged trauma, often in childhood. Complex trauma affects identity, relationships, and emotional regulation more broadly.
No. While some memory processing may be part of healing, we never force you to relive experiences. Modern trauma therapy focuses on building resources and processing trauma in ways that don’t retraumatize you.
This varies widely depending on the type and severity of trauma, your current resources, and your goals. Some people find significant relief in 3-6 months, while others benefit from longer-term support. Complex trauma typically requires more extended treatment.
Yes. Trauma often manifests in the body as chronic pain, headaches, digestive issues, autoimmune problems, and other physical symptoms. Body-based trauma therapy can help address these somatic manifestations.
Safety is always the first priority. We spend as much time as needed building safety, stability, and resources before doing any trauma processing. Some clients need months of stabilization work before they’re ready for deeper processing.
Yes, when appropriate. Trauma affects entire family systems, and involving supportive family members can enhance healing. We also offer psychoeducation for family members to understand trauma responses.
Medication can be helpful for some trauma survivors, particularly for sleep, anxiety, or depression symptoms. As a psychotherapist, I can’t prescribe medication, but I work collaboratively with physicians and psychiatrists when medication might be beneficial.
We establish safety protocols and grounding techniques before doing any trauma work. If you become triggered during a session, we have multiple strategies to help you regulate and return to safety. Sessions always end with grounding and stabilization.
Current safety is essential for trauma processing. If you’re still in danger, we focus first on safety planning and stabilization rather than trauma processing. We can also coordinate with other services for domestic violence, workplace safety, or housing support.
Secure, encrypted video sessions for trauma survivors anywhere in the province who cannot access quality trauma-informed care in their local communities.
Trauma changed you, but it doesn’t have to control you. The hypervigilance that exhausts you also shows your incredible awareness. The emotional intensity that overwhelms you also demonstrates your capacity for deep feeling. The survival strategies that now limit you once saved your life.
You are not broken. You are not damaged goods. You are not “too much” or “too sensitive.” You are a survivor who developed incredible adaptive skills, and now you’re ready to expand beyond mere survival into genuine thriving.
At Ontario Therapy in Newmarket, we don’t see trauma as something to “get over” or “fix.” We see it as information about your strength, resilience, and capacity for healing. Your nervous system’s responses make perfect sense given what you’ve experienced, and they can absolutely change.
The cozy chair in our Main Street office has held space for hundreds of trauma survivors who thought healing was impossible. The secure virtual therapy room has supported people across Ontario in transforming their relationship with their past.
Your body’s wisdom guided you to survival. Now let it guide you to healing.
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Providing expert trauma therapy to Newmarket, Aurora, King City, Bradford, Stouffville, and communities throughout Ontario. Sliding scale fees, flexible scheduling, and trauma-informed care that honors your journey.
Trauma Therapy Hours:
24/7 crisis support resources provided to all trauma therapy clients
Take the first step today:
Ontario Therapy – Newmarket
171 Main Street South
Newmarket, ON L3Y 4Z1
