Celebrating the Women Who Shaped Trauma Therapy

When you sit down in a therapist's office and begin the work of healing from trauma, you are not just working with one person.

You are, in a very real sense, working with generations of researchers, clinicians, and thinkers who spent their careers — sometimes at significant professional cost — fighting to have trauma recognized, understood, and treated with the seriousness it deserves. Their ideas are in the room with you. Their frameworks shape the questions your therapist asks, the tools they offer, and the understanding of the human nervous system that guides every phase of the work.

I think about this often in my own practice. And I want to talk about it directly — because the field of trauma therapy, like so many fields, has tended to amplify certain voices over others. The work of male researchers has frequently received more public attention and recognition than the equally significant, often more foundational contributions of their female colleagues.

This post is a gentle corrective to that. A celebration of four women whose work forms the backbone of modern trauma treatment — and whose ideas show up in my therapy room every single day.

Understanding who they are and what they discovered can do something meaningful for you as a potential client: it can help you trust the process. Not because you need to become an expert in trauma theory before you begin healing, but because knowing that what you're about to enter is grounded in decades of rigorous, compassionate, peer-reviewed research — research conducted by people who deeply believed in the capacity of human beings to heal — can make it a little easier to take that first step.

Dr. Judith Herman — The Woman Who Named the Wound

Before Dr. Judith Herman, trauma was largely understood through the lens of combat. The dominant clinical framework was built around the experiences of male soldiers returning from war — which meant that the suffering of the far larger population of people who had experienced sexual violence, domestic abuse, childhood neglect, and relational harm was either misunderstood, misdiagnosed, or simply not seen.

Dr. Herman changed that.

A psychiatrist and professor at Harvard Medical School, Herman spent her career documenting what she observed in her clinical work — and what she observed was that the symptoms displayed by survivors of domestic violence, sexual abuse, and childhood trauma bore striking similarities to the symptoms of combat veterans. The same hypervigilance. The same intrusive memories. The same disruption to the fundamental sense of safety in the world.

Her landmark book Trauma and Recovery, published in 1992, brought this recognition into the mainstream. It was one of the first clinical texts to argue that trauma was not primarily a condition of soldiers — it was a condition of human beings who had been subjected to overwhelming experiences of threat, helplessness, and loss of control. And it gave voice, for the first time in a clinically rigorous way, to survivors whose experiences had been systematically minimized by the medical establishment.

Herman also gave us the three-stage model of trauma recovery that still guides trauma treatment today: safety first, then remembrance and mourning, then reconnection with ordinary life. The logic of this sequence is as sound now as it was when she first articulated it. You cannot process traumatic material safely until you have established the internal and relational safety to do so. You cannot reconnect with your life until you have had the chance to grieve what the trauma took from you.

This is why, in my practice, we never rush to the processing work. Safety comes first — always. Before we touch any traumatic material directly, we build the foundation: the coping skills, the resources, the therapeutic relationship, the nervous system regulation tools that make it possible to go into difficult territory without being overwhelmed by it. That sequencing comes directly from Herman's framework.

She also gave us the concept of complex PTSD — the recognition that prolonged, repeated traumatic experience produces a distinct and more intricate clinical picture than single-incident trauma. The disruptions to identity, to the capacity for relationships, to the fundamental sense of self that can result from chronic relational trauma or childhood abuse — these are not the same as the aftermath of a car accident, and they require a different clinical understanding and a different therapeutic approach. Herman named that distinction, and in doing so, gave legitimacy and language to experiences that had previously fallen through the cracks of existing diagnostic frameworks.

Dr. Francine Shapiro — The Accidental Discovery That Changed Everything

The origin story of EMDR is one of the more remarkable in the history of psychotherapy.

In 1987, Dr. Francine Shapiro was walking through a park when she noticed something unexpected: certain eye movements seemed to reduce the distress she was experiencing around some difficult thoughts. She didn't dismiss the observation. She pursued it — with the rigor of a trained researcher and the persistence of someone who understood what it might mean if it was real.

What followed was decades of clinical research, peer review, and refinement that transformed that initial observation into one of the most extensively studied trauma treatments in the world. EMDR is now recommended by the American Psychiatric Association, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the World Health Organization, and numerous other major health bodies as an effective treatment for PTSD and trauma.

What Shapiro's research revealed — through the Adaptive Information Processing model she developed — was something genuinely illuminating about how the human brain works. Traumatic memories, she proposed, don't get stuck because they're too powerful to process. They get stuck because they were inadequately processed at the time they occurred. The overwhelming nature of the traumatic experience essentially interrupted the brain's natural information processing system — leaving the memory stored in a raw, unintegrated form that continues to generate distress whenever it's activated.

The brain, in other words, was not broken. It was interrupted. And bilateral stimulation — the alternating eye movements, taps, or sounds that characterize the active phases of EMDR — appeared to help restart and complete the processing that was interrupted at the time of the trauma.

What I find most meaningful about Shapiro's contribution is this: her model is fundamentally optimistic. It assumes that the capacity for healing is already present — in the brain, in the nervous system, in the person sitting across from me. My job as a therapist is not to fix what is broken. It is to create the conditions for the brain to do what it was always capable of doing.

Shapiro also founded the EMDR Humanitarian Assistance Programs, bringing EMDR training and treatment to underserved communities, disaster survivors, and crisis zones around the world. She understood that healing should not be the exclusive province of those with resources — and she spent significant energy trying to make it more widely available. That commitment to accessibility is something I carry into my own work.

Dr. Pat Ogden — Teaching the Body to Finish What It Started

Before Dr. Pat Ogden's work, the dominant models of psychotherapy — including early trauma models — were primarily cognitive and verbal. Healing happened through talking: through narrating, processing, making meaning of what had occurred.

Dr. Ogden, founder of the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute with over four decades of clinical experience, recognized something that changed the field: the body is not a passive container for mental and emotional experiences. It is an active participant in them. And trauma is not only stored in the mind — it is stored in the body, encoded as physical patterns, defensive responses, and automatic movements that the nervous system never got to complete.

When we encounter a threat, the body prepares to respond: to fight, to flee, to freeze. These are not choices — they are involuntary physiological responses designed to protect us. When the threat passes without those responses being completed — when we were overwhelmed, or immobilized, or unable to act — the body can remain in a state of incomplete response. The tension that was mobilized for action but never discharged. The bracing that began but never resolved. The protective movement that was interrupted.

This residue lives in the body long after the mind has moved on. It shows up as chronic muscle tension, a persistent sense of unease, an inability to feel safe in one's own skin, physical symptoms that don't have a clear medical explanation. And it cannot always be reached through talking — because the experience that created it predates or bypasses the verbal, cognitive systems that talking engages.

In my practice, somatic work looks like noticing. A client who slouches and looks down when they speak about something painful — I might gently invite them to try sitting tall and notice what that feels like in their body. Does confidence feel different when the posture shifts? What does the body know about this that the mind is still working out? Or a client who begins to show signs of anxiety rising — I might bring their attention to it: what do you notice in your body right now? Where do you feel it? What happens when you simply observe it, without trying to change it or make it stop?

This is somatic therapy in practice — and it is particularly essential for trauma that happened early in life, before language developed. Pre-verbal experiences cannot be fully reached through verbal processing. The body is often the only way in.

Pat Ogden's contribution is the clinical framework that makes this work possible — and it is present in my therapy room every time I ask a client to pause, check in with their body, and listen to what it's been trying to say.

Dr. Janina Fisher — Making the Invisible Visible

Dr. Janina Fisher is, in some ways, the bridge between the theoretical and the immediately practical. A licensed clinical psychologist, former instructor at Harvard Medical School, and internationally recognized expert on trauma treatment, Fisher has spent her career translating complex trauma theory into tools and frameworks that clients can actually use — tools that meet people where they are, in the middle of their confusion and self-blame, and help them begin to understand themselves differently.

Her parts-based approach to trauma — rooted in the theory of structural dissociation and developed into what she calls Trauma-Informed Stabilization Treatment — helps clients understand that the different aspects of themselves that seem to be in conflict are not signs of disorder or brokenness. They are survival strategies. Parts of the self that developed in response to traumatic experience, doing their best to keep the person safe with the resources that were available. Understanding them with curiosity and compassion, rather than trying to eliminate or suppress them, is at the heart of her approach.

But the tool of Fisher's that I return to most consistently in my own practice is the Living Legacy of Trauma flip chart and card deck — and I want to tell you about it because it captures something essential about what good trauma psychoeducation can do.

The flip chart uses diagrams, visuals, and accessible language to explain what trauma is, how it affects the brain and the nervous system, and why people respond to it the way they do. It covers concepts like the Window of Tolerance — the zone of nervous system activation in which we can function, process, and engage with the world without becoming either overwhelmed or shut down — and the Triune Brain, a model of how different parts of the brain respond to threat and how trauma can disrupt the coordination between them.

When I use this flip chart with clients, something consistently happens. They see themselves in what they're learning. They recognize their own responses — the hypervigilance, the emotional flooding, the shutting down — in the diagrams in front of them. And in that moment of recognition, something shifts: the self-blame begins to lift. Because when you understand that your nervous system has been responding to threat in the only ways it knew how — that you were not weak, not dramatic, not broken — it becomes possible to approach your own experience with something other than shame.

That shift — from self-blame to self-understanding, from shame to curiosity — is often where healing actually begins. And Janina Fisher built a tool that helps create it.

What These Four Women Have in Common

Each of these women, in her own way, insisted on the same foundational truth: that the people who come to therapy carrying trauma deserve to be believed, understood, and given effective tools for healing.

Each of them pushed back — sometimes against significant professional resistance — against a medical and cultural establishment that minimized, pathologized, or simply ignored the experiences of the people they were trying to help. Herman fought to have the trauma of women and children recognized alongside the trauma of soldiers. Shapiro fought to have a therapy developed from a chance observation in a park taken seriously by a skeptical clinical community. Ogden fought to have the body included in a field that had largely left it out. Fisher fought to make complex trauma theory accessible to the people who needed it most.

Their work is not abstract. It is not confined to academic journals or clinical training manuals. It is alive in every trauma therapy session being conducted right now, in offices and telehealth windows around the world — including mine.

When you come to therapy, you bring everything you've been through. And the framework that receives you — the understanding of trauma, the sequencing of treatment, the attention to safety, the tools for processing and integration — is built significantly on what these women discovered and shared. You are, in a real sense, the beneficiary of their life's work.

Across cultures, across faith traditions, across the many different forms that human suffering takes — the principles these women articulated hold. Trauma is a human experience. And healing, they showed us, is too.

When You Come to Therapy, You Don't Come Alone

I began this post by saying that when you sit down in a therapy office, you are working with generations of researchers and clinicians whose ideas are in the room with you.

‍I mean that. And I want you to feel the weight of it — not as pressure, but as reassurance.

‍The framework that will receive you has been built and refined over decades by people who believed deeply in the human capacity for healing. Who fought to make that healing available. Who gave their careers to understanding what trauma does and what it takes to recover.

‍You are the beneficiary of that work.

When you work with me, you can feel secure and confident that what I bring to our sessions is grounded in that tradition — rigorously researched, clinically informed, and offered with genuine care for your specific experience and your particular path toward healing.

If you'd like to take a first step, I offer a free 15-minute phone consultation — a no-pressure opportunity to ask questions and see if working together feels like the right fit.

And for a comprehensive overview of evidence-based trauma treatment options, this is a helpful resource: What Are the Best Treatment Options for Trauma & PTSD in San Diego?

‍To understand more about the full trauma therapy process, start here: Trauma Therapy in San Diego: What It Really Takes to Heal — and How to Know If You're Ready.

About the Therapist

Christy Garcia is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist (CA #113176) based in Chula Vista, CA, specializing in trauma therapy, EMDR, grief counseling, and Christian counseling. She provides in-person sessions in Chula Vista and online therapy for California residents, helping adults move from feeling overwhelmed and stuck to living with greater peace, resilience, and purpose. With a compassionate, trauma-informed approach and a deep respect for each client's unique story, Christy creates a safe space for healing, growth, and lasting transformation.

FAQs - Women Who Shaped Trauma Therapy

Who developed EMDR and is it well researched?

EMDR was developed by Dr. Francine Shapiro, a psychologist and researcher who first observed the effects of bilateral eye movements on distress in 1987 and spent the following decades developing and researching the model. EMDR is now one of the most extensively researched trauma treatments available, recommended by the American Psychiatric Association, the World Health Organization, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and numerous other major health organizations as an effective treatment for PTSD and trauma-related conditions.

What is the Window of Tolerance and why does it matter for trauma therapy?

The Window of Tolerance, a concept developed within the trauma field and featured prominently in Janina Fisher's psychoeducational tools, refers to the optimal zone of nervous system arousal within which a person can function, engage, and process experiences effectively. When trauma is activated, people often move outside this window — either into hyperarousal (anxiety, panic, overwhelm) or hypoarousal (numbness, shutdown, dissociation). Effective trauma therapy works to expand this window and help clients stay within it during processing work, so that they can engage with difficult material without becoming overwhelmed or shutting down.

What is somatic therapy and how is it different from talk therapy?

Somatic therapy refers to therapeutic approaches that work directly with the body — with physical sensations, posture, breath, movement, and the felt sense of experience — as part of the healing process. Unlike traditional talk therapy, which primarily engages the cognitive and verbal systems, somatic approaches work at the level where trauma is often stored: in the nervous system and the body. Pat Ogden's Sensorimotor Psychotherapy is one of the most well-developed somatic trauma treatment models, and its principles inform the somatic work I do alongside EMDR in my practice.

What is complex PTSD and how is it different from PTSD?

PTSD typically refers to the psychological aftermath of a single traumatic event or a relatively contained period of trauma. Complex PTSD — a concept developed significantly through the work of Dr. Judith Herman — refers to the distinct and often more pervasive psychological effects of prolonged, repeated traumatic experience, particularly when that experience involved interpersonal harm such as childhood abuse, domestic violence, or captivity. Complex PTSD often involves deeper disruptions to identity, self-worth, the capacity for relationships, and the fundamental sense of safety in the world — and it typically requires a more sustained and carefully paced therapeutic approach.

What is the Adaptive Information Processing model in EMDR?

The Adaptive Information Processing model, developed by Dr. Francine Shapiro as the theoretical foundation for EMDR, proposes that psychological distress arises from memories that were inadequately processed at the time they occurred and are therefore stored in a raw, unintegrated form. These maladaptively stored memories continue to generate distress when activated — driving symptoms, reactions, and beliefs that feel disconnected from the present moment because they are coming from the past. EMDR's bilateral stimulation is understood, within this model, to help the brain's natural information processing system complete the processing that was interrupted at the time of the traumatic experience.

How do I know if a trauma therapist is well-trained?

Look for a therapist who is licensed in your state (LMFT, LCSW, LPCC, or Psychologist), trained in evidence-based trauma modalities, and is able to articulate clearly how their approach is informed by current trauma research. Training or certification in EMDR through the EMDR International Association (EMDRIA) is a meaningful credential for therapists who practice EMDR. A good trauma therapist will also be able to explain their theoretical framework in accessible language, will prioritize safety and pacing over speed, and will make you feel genuinely heard rather than processed.