Interpersonal Trauma and PTSD Therapy in Ontario
Trauma-focused therapy for adults experiencing PTSD symptoms after emotional abuse, childhood abuse or neglect, sexual assault, intimate partner violence, coercive control, betrayal, or other forms of relational trauma.
Virtual across Ontario
Free 20-minute consultation Evidence-based PTSD
treatment Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT)
Prolonged Exposure (PE)
Structured, time-limited therapy
Adults (18+)
PTSD Therapy provides structured, evidence-based trauma therapy for adults across Ontario
PTSD Therapy is a private-pay practice providing virtual trauma therapy for adults across Ontario.
Therapy is provided by Shevanthi Collure, MSW, RSW, a Registered Social Worker and Psychotherapist with more than 20 years of experience in mental health and over a decade providing psychotherapy. Our practice focuses on structured, time-limited treatment for PTSD, traumatic stress, and moral injury, with a particular focus on Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) and Prolonged Exposure (PE).
When the Person Who Was Supposed to Keep You Safe Caused the Harm
You may have learned how to keep going long before you had the chance to understand what happened to you.
From the outside, you may appear capable, responsible, and in control. You go to work, take care of other people, and manage what needs to be managed. But underneath that, you may still question yourself, struggle to trust others, feel responsible for keeping the peace, or find that your body reacts as though danger is still close by.
Interpersonal trauma can change how you see yourself, your relationships, and the world around you. If any of this feels familiar, it does not mean there is something wrong with you. It often means you adapted in the best way you could to experiences that affected your sense of safety, trust, and control. With the right treatment, it is possible to understand those patterns, reduce the hold the trauma has on your life, and begin responding from the present rather than continuing to live as though the past is still happening.Interpersonal trauma happens within relationships. It may involve a partner, parent, caregiver, family member, trusted adult, authority figure, or someone else you depended on, loved, or should have been able to trust.
The harm may have involved physical or sexual violence. It may also have included emotional abuse, neglect, manipulation, coercive control, betrayal, repeated criticism, unpredictable caregiving, or having your boundaries dismissed or ignored.
Sometimes the trauma was obvious. Sometimes it happened gradually, over months or years, and was difficult to name while you were living through it.
You may have learned to minimize what happened because someone else had it worse. You may question whether your experience was serious enough to count as trauma. You may still be trying to make sense of a relationship that includes both care and harm.
You do not need to fit your experience into a perfect category before seeking support.
One of the hardest parts of interpersonal trauma is that it can change how you see yourself, not only what you remember. You may continue to carry beliefs, fears, and patterns that made sense when you were trying to stay safe but no longer fit the life you are living now.
At PTSD Therapy, our work is designed to help you understand why you react the way you do, address the PTSD symptoms and patterns keeping you stuck, and move forward with more confidence, steadiness, and trust in yourself.
Virtual therapy is available to adults throughout Ontario.
Many people who have experienced interpersonal trauma are highly capable.
You may have built a career, maintained relationships, cared for other people, or continued functioning through circumstances that required enormous resilience. Other people may see you as calm, dependable, thoughtful, or independent.
What they may not see is how much effort it takes to hold everything together.
You may be able to make difficult decisions at work but struggle to trust yourself in your personal life. You may replay conversations, question your memory, or wonder whether you are being too sensitive. You may appear confident while feeling deeply uncertain when someone is disappointed, irritated, or upset with you.
Perhaps you automatically scan a person’s tone, expression, or body language for signs that something is wrong. You may avoid conflict because another person’s anger feels dangerous, even when you know intellectually that you are currently safe.
You may put other people’s needs ahead of your own without realizing you are doing it. Saying no, asking for help, expressing a preference, or setting a boundary may bring up guilt, fear, or shame.
You may also feel disconnected from your emotions or unsure what you need. When much of your energy has gone into adapting to other people, it can become difficult to recognize your own preferences, limits, and values.
These responses are not evidence that you are weak, broken, or incapable of having healthy relationships. They are often understandable adaptations to experiences in which safety, love, trust, and harm became tangled together.
You may look capable on the outside and still be struggling
How Interpersonal Trauma Develops
Emotional abuse
Physical abuse
Sexual assault
Childhood abuse or neglect
Intimate partner violence
Coercive control
Betrayal by someone you trusted
Family-of-origin trauma
Repeated boundary violations
Workplace abuse or exploitation by someone in a position of authority
You may recognize your experience clearly in this list, or you may not.
Some people know that what happened was traumatic but do not understand why it continues to affect them. Others have spent years explaining it away because there were good moments, because the person who caused the harm had their own struggles, or because no one else seemed to notice what was happening.
Understanding the context may be important. It does not require you to excuse the harm or deny its impact.
Interpersonal trauma refers to traumatic experiences caused by another person, often within a relationship where safety, trust, care, authority, or dependence should have existed.
It may result from a single event or from harmful experiences repeated over time.
Trauma does not always remain in the past simply because the relationship ended or the immediate danger is over.
Your mind and body may continue responding as though you still need to protect yourself. The reaction may be obvious, or it may appear in ways you have not connected to trauma.
How interpersonal trauma and PTSD symptoms may show up
Reliving what happened
You may experience:
Intrusive memories or images
Nightmares or disrupted sleep
Flashbacks or moments when the past feels present
Sudden emotional reactions that seem stronger than the current situation
Physical reactions to reminders, including nausea, tension, shaking, racing thoughts, or a pounding heart
A reminder may be a place, smell, date, phrase, tone of voice, facial expression, type of touch, or conflict that resembles something from the past.
Avoiding reminders of the trauma
You may find yourself:
Avoiding certain people, places, conversations, or situations
Staying busy so you do not have to think or feel
Avoiding dating, intimacy, conflict, or emotional vulnerability
Using work, food, alcohol, substances, screens, or other distractions to disconnect
Trying not to remember what happened
Avoiding decisions because you are afraid of making the wrong choice
Avoidance often provides short-term relief. Over time, however, it can make your life smaller and reinforce the belief that the memories, feelings, or situations are too dangerous to face.
Feeling constantly alert or on edge
You may notice:
Hypervigilance or constantly watching for signs of danger
Irritability, anger, or a short fuse
Difficulty relaxing, even when nothing is wrong
Trouble concentrating
Feeling easily startled
Sleep difficulties
A need to anticipate every possible problem
Feeling responsible for preventing conflict or managing everyone else’s emotions
You may know that you are safe and still feel unable to settle. This is not because you are choosing to overreact. Your nervous system may have learned that relaxing meant becoming vulnerable.
Changes in how you see yourself and others
Interpersonal trauma can affect deeply held beliefs about safety, trust, responsibility, power, control, intimacy, and self-worth.
You may find yourself thinking:
I should have known better.
I should have left sooner.
I cannot trust my judgment.
My needs do not matter.
I am responsible for keeping other people calm.
If I set a boundary, I will lose the relationship.
I am damaged because of what happened.
No one is truly safe.
I should be over this by now.
These thoughts can feel like facts, particularly when they developed through repeated experiences.
Why you may blame yourself
Self-blame is common after interpersonal trauma.
When another person has manipulated, violated, harmed, or controlled you, it may feel easier to believe that you should have prevented it. If the problem was your judgment, your behaviour, or your failure to recognize the warning signs, then perhaps you can make sure it never happens again.
Self-blame can create an illusion of control. It may also protect you from the painful reality that someone you trusted chose to harm you, failed to protect you, or repeatedly placed their needs above your safety.
You may be judging decisions you made then using the knowledge, strength, resources, or distance you have now.
Therapy can help you look at what happened more accurately and compassionately. This does not mean avoiding responsibility for the choices you make today. It means separating responsibility from blame and recognizing the circumstances you were navigating at the time.
You may have stayed because you were afraid, financially dependent, isolated, manipulated, hopeful that things would change, or trying to protect someone else. You may have frozen, complied, returned, minimized, or disconnected because those responses helped you survive.
You may not be ready to forgive the person who harmed you. Forgiving another person is not a requirement of PTSD treatment.
The work may instead involve learning to forgive yourself for having coped in the best way you knew how at the time.
You may understand the trauma but still feel stuck
Some people begin trauma therapy after years of reflecting on what happened.
You may understand your childhood, relationship patterns, or trauma history very well. You may be able to explain why you react in certain ways and still feel unable to change the reaction.
Insight can be valuable, but insight alone does not always reduce PTSD symptoms.
Our approach is structured, focused, and active. Together, we identify the symptoms, beliefs, avoidance patterns, and relationship difficulties interfering with your life and develop a treatment plan based on your needs.
There is room for emotion, uncertainty, complexity, and the parts of your experience that do not fit neatly together. Structure does not mean rushing you, minimizing your story, or turning your experience into a checklist.
It means that our work has a purpose and that we regularly evaluate whether treatment is helping you move toward the changes you want.
How interpersonal trauma and PTSD therapy can help
Trauma therapy cannot change what happened. It can help reduce the amount of control the trauma continues to have over your life.
Treatment may help you:
Reduce intrusive memories, nightmares, anxiety, and hypervigilance
Understand your trauma responses without judging yourself
Examine guilt, shame, self-blame, and beliefs about responsibility
Approach memories, emotions, or situations you have been avoiding
Rebuild trust in your perceptions and decisions
Set boundaries and respond to conflict with less fear or guilt
Feel more present and connected in safe relationships
Build a life guided by your needs and values rather than by preventing danger
Progress does not mean that you will never feel distressed or remember what happened.
It may mean that the memory feels like something that happened rather than something you are reliving. It may mean recognizing a trigger sooner, recovering more quickly, making a decision without hours of second-guessing, or setting a boundary without immediately feeling that you have done something wrong.
Over time, the goal is for you to have more choice in how you respond.
Ready to take the first step?
If you're wondering whether what you're experiencing is related to interpersonal trauma or PTSD, a complimentary 20-minute consultation can help us determine whether this approach is a good fit.
Our evidence-based approach to interpersonal trauma and PTSD
We use evidence-based PTSD treatments, with a particular focus on Cognitive Processing Therapy and Prolonged Exposure. The right treatment depends on your symptoms, goals, history, preferences, and readiness. We will discuss the options with you rather than assuming that one therapy is the right fit for everyone.
Cognitive Processing Therapy
Cognitive Processing Therapy, or CPT, focuses on beliefs that may have changed or become stuck after trauma. Interpersonal trauma can affect beliefs about safety, trust, power, control, self-worth, responsibility, and intimacy. CPT helps you examine these beliefs carefully and determine whether they are accurate, incomplete, or shaped by what happened.
This approach can be particularly helpful when guilt, shame, self-blame, betrayal, or moral conflict are central to your experience. The goal is not positive thinking. It is learning to think about the trauma in a more balanced and accurate way so that conclusions formed during or after the trauma no longer dictate your present life.
CPT is commonly completed in approximately 12 sessions, although some clients benefit from additional sessions depending on their needs.
Prolonged Exposure Therapy
Prolonged Exposure, or PE, helps reduce PTSD symptoms by gradually approaching traumatic memories and safe situations that have been avoided. Avoidance often makes sense in the short term. It may help you get through the day or keep painful emotions at a distance. Over time, however, avoidance can reinforce the message that memories, feelings, places, people, or situations are still dangerous.
PE helps you approach these experiences in a planned and supported way. The goal is not to force you to relive the trauma. It is to help your brain learn that remembering is not the same as being back in danger and that difficult emotions can be tolerated without controlling your life.
PE is often completed in approximately eight to ten 90-minute sessions.
Treatment
CPT
PE
Best Suited For
Typical Length
Guilt, shame, self-blame, betrayal
Fear, avoidance, intrusive memories
~12 sessions
8-10 sessions
What you can expect from working with us
We begin with a free 20-minute consultation to discuss what is bringing you to therapy, what you hope will change, and whether our approach may be a good fit.
If we decide to proceed, the next step is a comprehensive assessment. We will explore your current symptoms, relevant trauma history, coping strategies, relationships, supports, and treatment goals.
You will not be expected to provide every detail of what happened during the consultation or first appointment.
Following the assessment, we will recommend a treatment approach and explain what it involves, including the expected number and length of sessions, between-session practice, and how progress will be monitored.
The work can be challenging, and we will be honest about that. You may be asked to look more closely at painful beliefs, approach memories or situations you have avoided, or practise new skills between sessions.
At the same time, the work is collaborative. You will understand why we are recommending a particular exercise and how it connects to your goals.
You do not need to feel completely ready or completely confident before beginning. Some uncertainty is normal. What matters is a willingness to participate, attend consistently, and be honest about what is and is not helping.
Is this therapy a good fit for you?
Our approach may be a good fit if you are experiencing PTSD symptoms or ongoing difficulties connected to interpersonal trauma and want treatment that is compassionate, practical, and focused.
You may value a therapist who can sit with difficult material without becoming overwhelmed while also helping you move toward meaningful change.
You may want to understand the why behind your reactions, but you also want support in doing something differently.
This approach may not be the right fit if you are looking primarily for open-ended supportive therapy without a treatment focus, are currently unable to attend sessions consistently, or need a level of crisis support that a virtual private practice cannot provide.
Fit is not about whether your trauma was severe enough. There is no trauma hierarchy here. It is about whether your current needs match the treatment and support we provide
Why choose PTSD Therapy?
Rather than general psychotherapy, our practice focuses specifically on PTSD and trauma-related conditions.
We work with adults experiencing PTSD symptoms following interpersonal trauma, healthcare trauma, medical trauma, and occupational trauma. Our approach is evidence-based and designed to help you understand why your symptoms developed while working toward meaningful improvement.
Our role is not to keep you in therapy indefinitely. It is to provide focused treatment and help you work toward the point where therapy is no longer needed.
If you are ready to do the work, we are here to help guide you through it.
You are not required to remain the person you had to become to survive
The ways you adapted may have protected you. Staying quiet may have reduced conflict. Monitoring other people may have helped you anticipate danger. Disconnecting from your feelings may have allowed you to function. Taking responsibility for everything may have made an unpredictable situation feel more manageable. Those strategies had a purpose.They may simply no longer be serving you in the same way.
Healing does not require you to erase the past, excuse what happened, forgive the person who harmed you, or become endlessly trusting. It means having more freedom to decide who you are, what you need, what you believe, and how you want to live now.
You can learn to recognize the difference between discomfort and danger. You can build boundaries without abandoning your compassion. You can become more confident in your judgment without expecting yourself to predict every possible harm.
The trauma may remain part of your story, but it does not have to remain in charge of it.
Virtual Interpersonal Trauma and PTSD Therapy Across Ontario
PTSD Therapy provides private-pay, virtual psychotherapy for adults across Ontario. Whether you live in a large city, a smaller community, or a rural area, secure online therapy allows you to access specialized trauma treatment from the comfort and privacy of your own home.
Sessions are offered by video and are designed to provide the same thoughtful, evidence-based care you would expect from an in-person appointment.
During your free 20-minute consultation, we will discuss what has been bringing you to therapy, answer your questions, and determine whether this practice is a good fit for your needs.
Interpersonal trauma therapy is most effective when there is consistency and a shared commitment to the therapeutic process. While every person’s journey is different, many clients benefit from regular sessions that build momentum over time.
Together, we will develop a treatment plan that reflects your goals, your readiness, and the kind of change you are hoping to create.
Book a Free Consultation
If you recognize yourself in the experiences described on this page, therapy may be the next step toward understanding how interpersonal trauma has affected your life, relationships, and sense of self.
I offer a free 20-minute consultation to discuss what has been bringing you to therapy, answer your questions, and determine whether my approach is a good fit for your needs. This conversation also allows you to decide whether you feel comfortable working with me before committing to therapy.
Recovery from interpersonal trauma is not about forgetting what happened or pretending it no longer matters. It is about understanding how those experiences continue to influence your life today and learning evidence-based strategies to help you move forward with greater confidence, self-trust, and freedom.
If you are ready to take the next step, I invite you to book a free consultation. Together, we can explore your goals and determine whether this approach feels like the right fit for you.
Frequently Asked Questions About Interpersonal Trauma and PTSD Therapy
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Yes. Interpersonal trauma can lead to PTSD symptoms, especially when the trauma involved emotional abuse, childhood abuse or neglect, sexual assault, intimate partner violence, coercive control, betrayal, or repeated harm within a relationship.
PTSD symptoms may include intrusive memories, nightmares, avoidance, hypervigilance, feeling constantly on edge, emotional numbness, shame, self-blame, or feeling disconnected from yourself and others.
Not everyone who experiences interpersonal trauma develops PTSD, but many people continue to feel the impact of what happened long after the relationship or traumatic event has ended. Trauma-focused therapy can help you understand these symptoms and begin working toward recovery.
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No. Many people begin therapy feeling confused about their experiences or wondering whether they are overreacting.
You do not need to have a clear timeline, the perfect words, or complete certainty before reaching out.
Therapy can help you make sense of your experiences, understand your trauma responses, and identify patterns that continue to affect your life today. We move at a pace that feels respectful while still working toward meaningful change.
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No. Interpersonal trauma can occur at any stage of life.
Some people seek therapy because of childhood emotional neglect, family trauma, or early attachment injuries. Others have experienced intimate partner violence, betrayal, workplace harassment, coercive control, sexual assault, or repeated boundary violations as adults.
Rather than focusing only on when the trauma occurred, therapy explores how those experiences continue to affect your relationships, self-confidence, emotional well-being, and sense of safety today.
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Not immediately.
Trauma therapy is not about telling your entire story during the first session. We begin by understanding your concerns, identifying your goals, and developing a treatment plan together.
When appropriate, evidence-based trauma therapies may involve processing difficult memories. This is done collaboratively, with preparation and support, rather than being rushed or forced.
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Yes. Self-blame is one of the most common consequences of interpersonal trauma, especially when the trauma involved manipulation, emotional abuse, betrayal, coercive control, or years of being made responsible for someone else’s behaviour.
Therapy can help you examine these beliefs with greater clarity and compassion, reduce shame, and develop a more balanced understanding of what happened.
As self-blame decreases, many people begin to feel more confident setting boundaries, trusting themselves, and building healthier relationships.
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No. Although many people who experience interpersonal trauma develop symptoms of PTSD, others seek therapy because they struggle with anxiety, shame, relationship difficulties, emotional regulation, people-pleasing, hypervigilance, or difficulty trusting themselves.
During your consultation, we will discuss your concerns and determine whether trauma-focused therapy is likely to be helpful for your situation.
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General talk therapy can be helpful, but trauma-focused therapy is more structured and intentional.
At PTSD Therapy, the work is focused on understanding how trauma is affecting your current life, identifying what keeps symptoms or patterns stuck, and using evidence-based strategies to support change.
This does not mean therapy is cold or rigid. It means we work with warmth, care, and purpose so the sessions are not only supportive, but also moving you toward the life you want to build.
To read more about PTSD Therapy, please see our full FAQ page.