Therapy After Sexual Assault in Madison, WI
For women who have spent a long time not telling anyone.
Maybe it happened recently. Maybe it happened years ago. Maybe you have told one person, or no one, or only the people who needed to know. You have been carrying it on your own, and you have gotten good at carrying it. You may not even use the word for what happened. You do not have to use the word here.
You don't have to tell the whole story. You don't have to start at the beginning.
It does not always look like what people think it looks like.
From the outside, you are functional.
You go to work. You see your friends. You answer the texts. You do not look like someone who is still carrying what you are carrying.
But you flinch at certain kinds of touch and you cannot always explain why. You go quiet in conversations that turn certain ways. You have stopped wearing certain clothes, going to certain places, watching certain shows. You replay it in moments that have nothing to do with it. Your body remembers things your mind has tried to put away.
You wonder sometimes if it counts. If what happened was bad enough. If you should still be feeling this. If other people had it worse. If you are making too much of it. If you are not making enough of it. It counts. The size of what happened is not the measure. The measure is whether it is still in your life.
What Therapy With Me Looks Like
i.
You don’t have to explain what I already understand
I work specifically with survivors of sexual assault. That means you do not have to spend the first months of therapy explaining the shape of what you went through to a therapist who has not seen it before. I have. I know the language. I know the silences. I know the parts of the story that other people flinch at, and I do not flinch.
ii.
You share on your terms
You will not be asked to tell me everything in the first session. You will not be asked to tell me everything ever. We work with what you bring, in the order it surfaces, at the pace your nervous system can hold.
iii.
You don’t have to say it all out loud
I use EMDR therapy, which means the work does not depend on retelling what happened in detail. We can do meaningful trauma processing without you having to describe the assault out loud. For many of my clients, this is the difference between starting therapy and putting it off again.
When you are ready, we can beginHow EMDR Therapy Helps Survivors of Sexual Assault
Sexual assault lives in the body. The hypervigilance, the flashbacks, the body memories, the way certain triggers can pull you out of the present without warning. None of this is a thinking problem. You cannot logic your way out of it, no matter how much you have already tried. EMDR works at the level the trauma actually lives. It helps your nervous system update the part of you that is still on alert from something that is over. The memory stops feeling current. The triggers lose their grip. The body settles.
Healing does not mean reliving every detail. It means your body finally gets the message that it is over.What people often want to know
Frequently Asked Questions About Therapy After Sexual Assault in Madison, WI
-
You do not need to. Memory after trauma is rarely linear, and some of what your body remembers may not have words attached to it. EMDR works with whatever you have, including pieces, sensations, fragments, and gaps. The work does not require a complete story.
-
Many of my clients are processing assaults that happened years or even decades ago. Time does not move the work along on its own. If something is still affecting how you sleep, how you connect, how your body feels in your own life, it is still worth addressing. EMDR is effective regardless of how long ago the assault occurred.
-
Most of my clients have not reported. Therapy with me does not require disclosure to anyone outside the room, and we will not discuss reporting unless you bring it up. What you do or do not tell anyone else is your decision. My job is the healing, not the legal piece.
-
Most assaults are perpetrated by someone the survivor knew. Many of my clients are still navigating relationships, workplaces, or family systems that include the person or people connected to what happened. The work accounts for that reality. We do not pretend you can simply walk away from circumstances you cannot walk away from.
-
No. EMDR is not exposure therapy. We do not have you relive the experience. The protocol is designed so that you stay in your window the entire time. If something becomes too much, we slow down or stop. You are in charge of the pace.
Still have questions? Other areas where this work overlapsMany of the women I work with are carrying more than one of these.
Trauma rarely arrives in tidy categories. If something on this page resonates but does not quite fit, one of these other doors may be closer to your experience.
-
Therapy for Adult Survivors of Childhood Abuse
Many of the women who reach me about adult assault are also carrying earlier experiences that shaped how they understood what was happening when it happened again. If something about the way you have always related to closeness predates what brought you here today, this work may meet that part of your story too.
-
Therapy After Domestic Violence
Sexual coercion and assault inside an intimate relationship are some of the most common and least named forms of both. If the person who hurt you was also the person you loved, the work has to account for that, and it can.
-
Therapy for Survivors of Trafficking
When sexual assault happened in the context of being controlled, trafficked, or coerced over time, the impact runs deeper and the path to therapy is often more complicated. If that is closer to your experience, this is the door for it.
If any of this sounds like the kind of work you have been looking for, I would be glad to talk
A free fifteen-minute call. No paperwork. No pressure. No requirement to explain anything before we even speak. Just a real conversation about what is going on and whether this feels like the right fit.
Get Immediate Support Through RAINN
If you’ve experienced sexual assault, you don’t have to face it alone. The Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) offers confidential support, a 24/7 hotline, and helpful resources for survivors and their loved ones. They provide guidance on safety planning, reporting options, and emotional support.