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Through somatic therapy for trauma and anxiety, Angelenos are learning to recognize what safety actually feels like—not just what it sounds like in theory.
Cheryl Groskopf, LMFT, LPCC is a licensed trauma therapist in Los Angeles specializing in somatic therapy for trauma and anxiety. With advanced training in nervous system science, attachment repair, and Internal Family Systems (IFS), Cheryl helps high-functioning adults move from survival mode into deeper connection. She’s been featured in Verywell Mind, HuffPost, and Newsweek for her insights on emotional health, regulation, and trauma recovery.
Los Angeles is full of people who seem calm on the surface, but are constantly overstimulated. The pressure to perform wellness here is real. People meditate between meetings, drink mushroom lattes, and track their HRV—but still wake up feeling like they’ve been hit by an emotional truck.
I see it all the time: high-functioning, self-aware adults who’ve tried therapy, acupuncture, EMDR, somatic TikTok tools—and are still living in nervous system survival mode. Not because they’re doing something wrong. But because their system never got a chance to feel safe in real time. Somatic therapy shifts that by starting where the dysregulation actually lives—in the body. Not in the biohacking stack.
In L.A., we’re good at branding ourselves. Good at sounding like we’ve done the work. But a lot of what gets mistaken for “healed” is just a well-managed freeze response (more on that later).
Somatic therapy doesn’t care how articulate you are. It doesn’t care if you can name your triggers or explain your trauma timeline. It tracks what’s happening underneath—your shallow breath when you say “it’s fine,” your disappearing gaze when you talk about your mom, your body locking up when someone gets too close.
Why this work resonates with Angelenos now more than ever
After trauma-riddled Covid, things have changed. People don’t just want insight—they want embodiment. They want to feel present in their lives again, not just perform like they are.
And even in a city like Los Angeles—where image is everything—there’s a quiet hunger for something that’s not curated. Something that’s raw, real, and grounded in science.
Somatic therapy delivers that. It doesn’t ask you to believe in it. It asks you to get curious. To notice. To experiment with being in your body differently—without the pressure to have a “breakthrough” moment every time.
Let’s start here: anxiety isn’t just mental. It’s not just racing thoughts or catastrophic thinking. It’s a full-body state shift. It’s your autonomic nervous system preparing for threat—heart rate up, muscles tense, breath shallow—before your brain even has time to narrate what’s happening.
That’s why anxiety often feels like it “comes out of nowhere.” Because your body reacts milliseconds before your conscious awareness catches up. This process is called neuroception, a term coined by Dr. Stephen Porges, which describes how your nervous system evaluates safety or danger automatically and below the level of awareness.
Somatic therapy addresses anxiety at this level—not by “calming you down,” but by helping your system learn what it feels like to not be in threat mode. We’re not just observing anxious thoughts. We’re working with the body signals that create them. Think: your shoulders tightening as you open a calendar invite. Your jaw locking the moment you sense tension. Your breath disappearing in line at Erewhon because you’re already bracing for the day.
Somatic therapy meets you there—in those micro-moments—and helps shift them, slowly and safely.
Most traditional anxiety treatments work top-down: identify the thought → reframe it → hope your body follows. But anxiety doesn’t originate in thoughts. It originates in perception—in your body’s memory of stress, relational ruptures, and chronic overactivation.
This is why people can have perfect self-awareness and still spiral.
Somatic therapy flips the approach. We work bottom-up:
Tracking felt sense (a concept introduced by Eugene Gendlin) to locate how anxiety actually shows up in the body.
Using techniques rooted in polyvagal theory to shift state—not suppress symptoms.
Rewiring defensive patterns like bracing, holding, or freezing by giving your system new input in real time.
Example: instead of trying to “breathe through it,” we might slow things down until your breath returns on its own. Or notice the moment your eyes dart away and gently stay with what your body was about to avoid.
Those tiny adjustments are what create long-term regulation—not a checklist of tools you force yourself to do.
Los Angeles isn’t neutral ground. This is a city of constant sensory load: traffic noise, overstimulation, hyper-productivity culture, and curated self-presentation. All of that keeps your nervous system primed—even if you’re not actively “stressed out.”
For people with a history of chronic stress, early attachment ruptures, or past trauma, this baseline overstimulation can keep the sympathetic branch of their nervous system firing 24/7. You don’t even need a major trigger—your body’s just reacting to life in this environment.
Somatic therapy works by helping your system tolerate safety again. That may sound odd, but for many people, stillness or relaxation can feel unfamiliar—or even threatening—because their system has adapted to “on edge” as the norm.
We work with that directly. Not through exposure therapy or cognitive tricks, but through co-regulation, pacing, and direct sensory awareness. Over time, your system starts to recognize neutral as safe—not boring or dangerous.
Want to explore how somatic therapy blends with anxiety therapy in Los Angeles? My practice integrates both.
Trauma doesn’t show up as “the thing that happened.” It shows up in the way your body learned to survive it.
That means trauma doesn’t always come with flashbacks or nightmares. It might look like shutdown during conflict. Emotional numbness when you should feel something. Or overworking because stillness makes your skin crawl.
So what’s really happening? I’m going to get a little scientific here, but bear with me. That’s your subcortical brain—the part responsible for reflexes and survival—repeating protective responses on autopilot. And traditional talk therapy rarely reaches this layer.
Somatic therapy meets trauma where it actually lives: in the brainstem and nervous system, not the prefrontal cortex. Instead of analyzing the story, we help your nervous system complete responses it never got to finish.
For example, if your body froze during a threat, that freeze might still be running—quietly, chronically—years later. Somatic therapy offers micro-corrections that help your body register: it’s over. You’re not there anymore.
You don’t have to relive your trauma to heal it.
In fact, for many survivors—especially those with complex trauma (C-PTSD)—retelling the story only reinforces dysregulation. Somatic therapy doesn’t ask you to “go back.” It helps you build new reference points for safety in the present.
Here’s how:
We use interoception—your internal perception of sensation—to find where the story still lives in your body.
We stay within your window of tolerance, so your system doesn’t shut down or get overwhelmed.
We follow the body’s own pacing—letting it signal when it’s ready for more, instead of pushing for catharsis.
Over time, this creates something called neuroplastic change: new neural pathways for calm, connection, and choice.
Trauma treatment becomes less about surviving your past and more about building capacity for your present.
Trauma in Los Angeles doesn’t always show up the way people expect. It hides under achievement, burnout, over-functioning, or dissociation that looks like “calm.” It’s the person who can lead a meeting or pitch a script but shuts down when someone gets close. Or the one who can help others emotionally but can’t feel their own heartbeat when something hard happens.
Somatic therapy meets that version of trauma. It speaks the language of bodies that have kept going long after they should’ve stopped.
This is why the American Psychological Association and other trauma institutes now recognize body-based modalities like somatic experiencing and sensorimotor psychotherapy as essential—especially for complex or developmental trauma.
Because healing isn’t just about understanding what happened. It’s about giving your system the felt sense that it’s safe to feel again.
You can learn more about how I approach complex and developmental trauma through my work in trauma therapy in Los Angeles.
I didn’t start out as a somatic therapist. I started out like a lot of people in L.A.—in my head, always figuring things out, always looking for the next thing that might finally make me feel “better.” I knew the language. I’d done the therapy. I could explain myself six ways from Sunday. But I still felt like my system was stuck on a loop I couldn’t name.
What finally shifted things for me wasn’t a better coping tool. It was realizing my body had been trying to communicate with me the whole time—I just hadn’t learned how to listen.
That realization didn’t come in some dramatic breakthrough. It came in small moments. Noticing the tension I carried around certain people. Tracking how often I held my breath. Realizing I couldn’t think my way out of anxiety because my nervous system had never actually been invited into the room.
Living here—among the curated, the polished, the endlessly composed—made it harder to admit when I didn’t feel okay. I was functioning, sure. But I was also dissociating in meetings. People-pleasing in friendships. Freezing during moments that shouldn’t have felt threatening but did.
Somatic therapy gave me a new way in. It taught me how to stop performing stability and start experiencing it.
That’s why I do this work now. Because I know what it feels like to be smart, self-aware, and still silently unraveling. And because I’ve seen what changes when your system finally gets the message that it doesn’t have to hustle for safety anymore.
You didn’t grow up in a war zone. You weren’t abused. You’re functioning. You can hold a job, answer texts, show up to dinner with a bottle of wine and ask about everyone else’s week. So there’s a part of you — maybe loud, maybe subtle — that says: You’re fine. You should be fine. Don’t waste therapy on this.
That voice isn’t you being humble. That’s a nervous system that’s learned to downplay its own pain so it can stay connected, useful, safe.
Somatic therapy helps you meet that part without shaming it. We don’t rank your stress. We don’t need to find a headline-worthy trauma to make the work “worth it.” If your body is reacting like something’s not okay — that’s enough. Full stop.
A lot of my clients show up in what I call nervous system burnout. Not collapsed — just done. Done performing okay-ness. Done managing everyone else’s expectations. Done feeling like therapy is for people in bigger pain. They don’t need crisis support. They need a place to finally let their guard down a little without being asked to explain themselves.
So if you’ve ever thought, I don’t think I’m bad enough to need this, that might actually be your sign.
A lot of my clients show up in two layers. There’s the part that knows—the one who’s read the books, scheduled the consult, can tell you exactly where their patterns came from. And then there’s the part that freezes when someone raises their voice. Or fawns when someone’s upset. Or checks out during hard conversations, even when they planned to say something different this time.
That’s not inconsistency. That’s fragmentation. And somatic therapy is one of the few modalities that makes space for that split—without pathologizing it.
Internal Family Systems (IFS) and somatic work often partner well, because they both understand this core truth: You’re not one thing. You’re many parts trying to stay safe.
If you grew up tiptoeing around someone else’s moods, or learned early that being “too much” would cost you love—you probably carry parts that work overtime to keep you likable, calm, accommodating.
You also probably have parts that are exhausted. Resentful. Lonely.
Somatic therapy helps you notice when those parts are running the show—and gives your system a chance to do something new. It doesn’t make you confront your history in one giant emotional purge. It helps you track what’s still happening in your body when certain dynamics show up.
And when you blend that with IFS? You’re not just managing symptoms—you’re building a relationship with yourself. One where all your parts are allowed to have a seat, not just the ones who keep the peace.
Most therapy focuses on thoughts. Or maybe feelings. Sometimes behavior. But if you’ve ever felt like you’re “doing all the work” and still not feeling better—you’re not missing discipline. You’re missing wholeness.
That’s what makes somatic therapy so quietly powerful: it doesn’t leave any part of you out. Not your body. Not your inner parts. Not the chronic tension you forgot to question because it’s been there for 15 years.
A holistic approach means we work with what’s happening right now—not just what happened back then. How your system scans for threat in traffic. How your jaw locks when your mom calls. How your nervous system keeps bracing during good moments because something inside still thinks it won’t last.
Somatic therapy includes all of that. Because that is the work.
You’ve probably done the worksheets. Tried CBT. Made progress. But if your body still reacts like something’s wrong—even when your brain says everything’s fine—you’re probably ready for a more holistic type of support.
That’s where holistic therapy really means something: when it acknowledges that healing isn’t just mindset shifts and insight. It’s sensory. It’s cellular. It’s relational. And it’s often quiet. It looks like a breath that doesn’t stop short. A conversation that doesn’t require masking. A moment where you don’t abandon yourself to make someone else comfortable.
This body-first, science-backed approach is a big part of how I practice holistic therapy in Los Angeles—not just treating symptoms, but working with your whole system.
You’re not imagining that quiet edge you live on. The subtle clench in your stomach during silence. The way your eyes scan a room before you even realize you’re doing it. The guilt that flares up after you say no—even when your answer was reasonable.
That’s not random.
That’s what happens when your nervous system never really learned what safe feels like. Not just intellectually, but physically.
Even if your life looks calm now—stable job, supportive partner, fewer “big” stressors—your body can still be responding to patterns it learned years ago. That moment your tone got policed. That year no one asked how you were doing. That decade where being easygoing felt like the only way to stay close to people.
Somatic therapy works with those exact patterns—not by picking them apart, but by helping your system try something new.
This isn’t about pulling your past apart on command. And it’s definitely not about pushing you into catharsis for the sake of progress. What actually helps is giving your body time to realize it doesn’t have to flinch.
In somatic sessions, that might look like pausing mid-story to notice your breath. Tracking the micro-shift when your shoulders drop half an inch. Catching the urge to minimize your needs and staying with the discomfort instead of apologizing for it.
These aren’t breakthroughs in the big dramatic sense. But they are the kind that build trust with yourself—the kind your body has been quietly asking for, even when the words weren’t there yet.
You’re not in bed all day. You show up. You’re kind, competent, even funny in meetings. You make the reservations, remember the birthdays, respond with the right emoji when your friend sends a life update. On the outside, you’re fine.
But inside? You’re checked out. Distant from your own life. You pause before opening your inbox because your stomach flips. You rehearse every text. You dread the weekend because you’ll finally have to feel something—and you don’t know where to start.
That’s not laziness. It’s not being “too sensitive.” That’s a functional freeze state.
Freeze isn’t just playing dead. In high-achievers, it shows up as doing everything right—without actually being present for any of it. You might look calm but feel blank. You might socialize but feel unreachable. You might journal and go to therapy but still dissociate in real time.
This is what Dr. Ruth Lanius calls functional freeze: when your nervous system is locked in survival mode, even while you’re outwardly performing normalcy. You can drive, parent, Zoom, help your friends—and still feel like no one can really reach you.
Somatic therapy doesn’t force that to change. It invites you back. Gently. Slowly. It says, “You don’t have to leave yourself every time life asks something of you.”
And that presence—when it starts to come back—feels like something you forgot you were allowed to feel.
You know that thing where you can’t stop fixating? Where one offhand comment spirals into a five-hour mental loop? Where someone’s tone shifts and suddenly your brain won’t stop scanning the last 10 things you said?
That’s not you being dramatic. That’s how your Reticular Activating System (RAS) works.
The RAS is like your brain’s bouncer. It filters what information makes it through to your conscious awareness. And if your nervous system is stuck in threat mode, the RAS will zero in on anything that confirms you’re unsafe—even if the actual danger is long gone.
Which means: you won’t notice the 10 neutral interactions that happened today. You’ll only remember the one that felt off.
That’s not negativity. That’s your system trying to keep you alert. It thinks it’s helping.
You can’t just affirm your way out of hypervigilance. You have to give your body real-time experiences that show it something new is possible. That’s where somatic therapy comes in.
Instead of saying, “It’s safe now,” your system gets to feel what that actually means.
In session, that might look like noticing the moment your gaze softens. Or tracking how your jaw loosens when you finally name what felt off. Or catching yourself in the middle of a spiral and realizing—oh. I don’t have to keep going.
Over time, this rewires your RAS to recognize calm as important, too—not just danger.
And that’s when your world starts to widen again. Your vision expands. Your system stops filtering for fear. And instead of bracing, you start noticing more of what’s actually here.
Felt sensation is what happens beneath the thought, before the feeling, outside of the story. It’s the part that shows up first—tight chest, fluttery belly, buzzing limbs—before you even realize something’s wrong.
It’s the grip in your throat when you’re asked how you’re doing. The micro-holding in your ribcage when you text someone who hasn’t replied. The subtle tension in your hands that you don’t notice until they unclench and you think, Oh wow—I’ve been gripping all day.
Somatic therapy works through felt sensation—not to explain it away, but to help you stay with it. Noticing it. Naming it. Getting curious instead of overriding it.
That’s not just mindfulness. It’s memory. Your body holds years of pattern in the way it subtly responds to life. Felt sensation is the language it speaks.
You don’t need to be fluent in body awareness to do this work. You just need to start paying attention. That tiny lurch in your gut when someone interrupts you? The constriction behind your eyes when you say, “I’m fine”? Those are portals. They’re not problems to fix. They’re breadcrumbs.
When we follow those breadcrumbs in session, it’s not about forcing release. It’s about giving your system space to complete something it never got to finish. Sometimes that means trembling. Sometimes it means a sigh. Sometimes it just means staying with a sensation instead of moving past it.
That’s what makes this work stand out to me. It doesn’t wait for a breakthrough. It meets you in the moment your body says, “Something’s happening here,” and instead of skipping over it—you stay.
You might look calm, competent, even grounded. But inside? There’s a loop. A quiet scan running in the background of every conversation, trying to make sure nothing goes wrong. You’ve learned how to be two steps ahead of every interaction—but it’s exhausting.
Somatic therapy helps with that. Not by making you less sensitive, but by giving your body the message it’s never actually gotten: that you don’t have to brace to belong.
This work resonates with high-achievers who overfunction. With people who replay conversations in their head before and after they happen. With adults who grew up around chaos and learned that being helpful, charming, or easygoing was how you stayed safe.
You don’t need to be in crisis to feel disconnected. You might just be tired of always monitoring the vibe. Somatic therapy helps you stop managing and start relating—in your body, not just your head.
L.A. has its own nervous system. Fast-paced. Curated. Constantly “on.” Whether you’re in entertainment, tech, or just trying to stay afloat in a city full of ambition, your system learns to adapt—and fast.
But when your adaptability becomes your identity, it’s hard to tell what’s actually yours.
That’s where somatic therapy fits. It’s not a quick fix or another tool to optimize your performance. It’s a place to come home to yourself. To relearn how to feel things instead of perform them. And to finally stop outsourcing your safety to how well you’re doing—or how well you’re being received.
Whether you’re navigating anxiety that’s always been there or trauma that you’ve never quite named, this work helps your system settle enough to feel something more regulated. Not all at once. Not perfectly. But enough to start feeling like you again.
I’m not just someone who’s studied somatic therapy—I’ve done it. Personally. Professionally. In the quiet in-between moments where the theory doesn’t cut it and you’re left with your body’s real-time response. I’ve sat in the freeze. I’ve felt the fawn reflex kick in. I’ve been the high-functioner who could explain everything but still couldn’t sleep.
That’s why this work goes beyond the textbook. It’s tailored in real time to you—your cues, your patterns, your pace. Because healing doesn’t come from perfect technique. It comes from attunement. And that’s what I prioritize.
As a dual-licensed LMFT and LPCC practicing in Los Angeles, my clinical foundation is grounded in both depth psychology and evidence-based treatment. But somatic work is where I saw clients shift—not just understand, but feel the change land. I’ve trained in somatic trauma therapy, polyvagal-informed care, IFS (Internal Family Systems), and body-based approaches to anxiety that don’t rely on just “managing” symptoms.
I also bring in attachment work, parts work, and regulation strategies that are customized to your nervous system—not just your diagnosis.
You won’t get a canned treatment plan here.
You’ll get a conversation.
A pace that respects your system.
A therapist who understands that trauma isn’t just a story—it’s a somatic imprint that needs space to move.
I’m not here to fix you. I’m here to walk with you while your system learns how to settle, safely, for the first time in a long time.
If you’re looking for somatic therapy for trauma and anxiety in Los Angeles—and you want something deeper than symptom management—let’s talk.
You’re not broken. You’re probably in a functional freeze state—and you’ve been there for a while. That blankness, the numbness, the “I don’t know what I feel” thing? It’s not a lack of self-awareness. It’s your nervous system doing what it had to do to get through.
Somatic therapy doesn’t expect you to show up emotionally fluent. In fact, sessions often start with just noticing that—the absence, the blank. That’s data, too. That’s where we begin.
Sometimes, yes—and that’s not a failure. That’s your system waking up. When you start connecting to parts of yourself that’ve been shut down or hyper-alert for years, things can feel louder at first. But a skilled therapist won’t flood you. They’ll pace it with you, slowly. Somatic work isn’t about catharsis. It’s about tolerability.
If you’re already in a spiral, anxiety therapy that includes somatic work might be the first step toward stabilizing before diving deeper.
Nope. No weird assignments, no “put your hand on your heart and say you’re safe” unless that genuinely resonates with you. A lot of somatic work happens through awareness, not physical contact. You can do a full session without moving a muscle—just noticing breath, posture, micro-tensions. No performative embodiment here.
That’s your body releasing something it’s held onto for a long time. Crying isn’t regression—it’s regulation. Shaking isn’t weakness—it’s discharge. Most of us have been trained to suppress those signals, so when they show up in session, they feel… raw. That’s okay. I’ll never rush you through it or ask you to “pull it together.” That’s not what this space is for.
If traditional talk therapy has helped you understand your patterns but not shift them, somatic work might be the thing that bridges the gap. It doesn’t replace everything you’ve done—it makes it land. This is often where things start to actually feel like they’re falling in place, not just intellectually clear.
