Founder & CEO, Holistic Trauma Therapy®
Chief Traumatologist, Seema Sharma, SEP, LMFT
Trauma is not a specialty I added to my practice… It is the lens through which I have studied every dimension of being human: across neuroscience, somatic practice, spiritual tradition, global culture, and twenty-five years inside the corporate systems that wound people for a living.
As Featured in:
You were not made wrong. You adapted.
Brilliantly. Completely. And at enormous cost.
The exhaustion, the drive that never satisfies, the body that won't quiet down — these are not failures. They are the intelligent responses of a nervous system doing exactly what it learned to do.
I have sat with healers on five continents. I have studied the science of consciousness through doctoral work at the California Institute of Integral Studies. I have spent twenty-five years inside the Fortune 500 systems that wound people — and over a decade helping them heal.
I know what the Western model can reach, and what it cannot. And I have spent my entire adult life gathering everything else.
Holistic Trauma Therapy® exists because you deserve the full depth of what healing can be. Not the Western slice of it. All of it.
Hi, I’m Seema.
I work with people who are ready to go deep. Not learning more skills to cope, but deeper into themselves… to fully understand themselves.
I work with people who are ready to go beyond coping and into deeper understanding of themselves. If you have spent years managing symptoms, performing, staying strong, or trying to hold everything together, this work offers something more than surface relief. It offers a way to meet yourself at the root.
What we often call symptoms are rarely the problem. They are adaptive strategies, protections shaped around wounds that were never fully seen, held, or healed. Through a depth psychology lens, these patterns are not judged. They are listened to. They point us toward the parts of you that had to hide, fragment, or disconnect in order to survive.
Healing involves more than reducing distress. It means gently turning toward the wounded aspects of your identity and integrating the parts of self that became split off, including dimensions of you that may have been lost beneath survival. As Jung reminds us, woundedness is not something to shame or bypass, but something that can open the way toward deeper wholeness.
Trauma lives in the body as much as in the mind, and is also communicating. If you are looking to understand yourself, you must also learn to understand what it is communicating, somatically. Is it a held breath, a clenched jaw, a racing feeling in your chest, or pain… all the nervous system’s long-held patterns of protection. As healing unfolds, the body can begin to release what it has carried for far too long.
This is slow, sacred, honest work. When you are ready, I am here to help you meet yourself with compassion, depth, and care.
Four Layers of Authority
CLINICAL
ISST-D Advanced Trauma Training
Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (Certified, Peter Levine, Somatic Experiencing Institute)
IFS Level 2 (IFS Institute)
AASECT Sex Therapist
EMDR (ISST-D)
Mindsight Institute (Daniel Siegel)
Compassionate Inquiry Training (Gabor Mate)
Gottman Method, Level 3
ACADEMIC
PhD in Psychology, Integral & Transpersonal Psychology [Depth], focus: Contemplative Neuroscience of Consciousness Studies
MBA
MA, Integral Counseling Psychology
BA, Psychology
Post-Bacc Certificate, Clinical Psychology
CORPORATE
25+ years Senior Leadership at General Motors, Pinterest, CBRE, Flexport, Rexford Industrial, and Oakwood, a subsidiary of Temasek Holdings
Entrepreneur and Founder to Several Small Businesses
Executive Coach
B2B/B2C Consultant
GLOBAL
Healing study with traditional practitioners across India, Peru, Brazil, Mexico, UK, and the US
Healing study at the Oneness Center, Ekam Movement
Research Advocate of the Society of Psychical Research
Why This Practice Exists
This practice does not begin with a market opportunity. It begins with a life.
Holistic Trauma Therapy® is dedicated to the family I once had… and to the family that trauma completely undid. It is personal. It is, in many ways, an offering to the wounds I wish my family had been able to heal. I built this practice so that other families would have what mine did not: a place to bring the depth of what they carry, met by a clinician who understands what is actually at stake.
For twenty-five years, I worked inside corporate America. General Motors. Pinterest. CBRE. Rexford Industrial. Oakwood, a subsidiary of Singapore's Temasek Holdings. I held senior leadership roles in the kinds of high-performance environments that praise the very nervous system patterns trauma builds. And in every city that work took me — Brazil, Peru, India, Hong Kong, across Latin America, the United States, and Europe — I sought out the healers. Not the ones in offices with degrees. The ones the community trusted with their deepest wounds. I knew, even then, that there was something Western models were missing.
I left corporate America after being broken by the very same workplace trauma wounds my clients now come to me to heal. I know that landscape from the inside. I know what it does to a body, an identity, a sense of self. And I know that Western psychology alone could not put me back together.
So I went back to school. To the California Institute of Integral Studies — one of the only accredited institutions in the country that treats consciousness as a clinical subject — and earned a doctorate that bridged everything I had been gathering for twenty plus years. The neuroscience. The somatic. The cultural. The spiritual. The lived.
This practice is what came of all of it. It is the place I wish had existed for the people I loved. It is the place that exists now, for you.
How I Was Trained to Hold This Work.
Trauma is not one wound, and it does not respond to one approach. My clinical training spans the modalities I consider non-negotiable for serious trauma healing — and several that almost no other clinician in California carries together.
Evidence-Based Trauma Modalities
I am trained in EMDR for trauma reprocessing, and fully certified in Somatic Experiencing through Peter Levine's three-year certification at the SE International institute. I hold Level 2 certification in Internal Family Systems (IFS) through the IFS Institute, which informs the parts work that runs through nearly every session I lead.
For dissociative disorders and the most complex trauma presentations, I completed the ISST-D Advanced Professional Trauma Training, a three-year specialization through the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation. For survivors of sexual abuse and sexual trauma, I bring AASECT sex therapy training — because reclaiming the body after sexual trauma requires a clinician who understands intimacy, embodiment, and sexual healing as part of trauma recovery, not separate from it.
Depth, Consciousness, and Cultural Training
My doctoral work at CIIS gave me transpersonal and depth psychology training — the bridge between psyche, soma, and consciousness that Western clinical models often leave out. Over the past two decades, I have studied with traditional healers across five continents: ancestral practitioners in India, plant medicine ceremonies in Peru, John of God's Casa in Brazil, contemplative teachers in Hong Kong, indigenous practitioners in Sedona, and have visited countless spiritual spots throughout the world.
I am a member of the International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA) and have attended ICSA conferences for the past several years — bringing specialized training in high-control group dynamics, spiritual abuse, and cult recovery into my work with survivors of religious and coercive systems.
The Trauma I Hold.
I hold the full spectrum of human trauma personally — built on years of training, research, and the specific wounds I have spent my career learning to meet with depth.
The performing child who became the performing adult. Attachment wounds, emotional neglect, parentification, and the patterns that survival shaped before you had language for any of it.
Sexual Trauma & ABUSE RECOVERY
For survivors of sexual abuse, harassment, and assault — particularly women navigating intimacy, embodiment, shame, and the reclamation of agency over the body.
Workplace TRAUMA/HIGH-ACHIEVERS
For executives, professionals, and high performers carrying nervous systems that turned survival into performance. The wound underneath the ambition.
Additional Specialties I Personally Hold
I am the practice expert on religious trauma and spiritual abuse recovery, cult recovery and high-control group exit, relational and attachment-based trauma, and dissociative disorders — areas requiring specialized training that most clinicians never pursue. My associate team holds additional specialty lanes including LGBTQ+ affirming trauma therapy, first responder family trauma, and neurodivergent adult trauma.
Who Finds Their Way to This Practice
People Who Come to Me
The accomplished people whose lives look successful from the outside and feel quietly unbearable from the inside. The executives who cannot remember the last time they felt safe in their own body. The survivors of childhood, sexual, religious, or workplace trauma who have done years of talk therapy and still feel stuck at the root. The first-generation high achievers carrying invisible inheritances. The professionals who finally said "something has to change" and meant it.
What I Ask of You
You do not need to arrive prepared. You do not need to have language for what happened. You do not need to know what kind of therapy you want. What you need is the readiness to be met deeply, and the willingness to let healing happen at the pace your nervous system can hold.
Professional Affiliations & Training Institutions
The Work Beyond the Therapy Room
My clinical practice is the center of this work, but it is not the whole of it. I write, speak, and produce content for the people who need this work and cannot yet find their way into the room.
The Holistic Trauma Therapist Podcast
Weekly conversations on trauma, nervous system, work, and what actually heals. Coming 2027.
Speaking & Keynotes
Keynotes and workshops on workplace trauma, fear culture, and nervous system leadership for organizations ready to do this work seriously.
Writing & Press
Featured commentary, essays, and the forthcoming book The Only One in the Room.
Come Find What Has Always Been Waiting For You Here
If something in you is ready — even if you cannot name what — that is enough to begin. You do not have to know exactly where to start. You do not have to explain everything perfectly to be understood. We will move at the pace of your nervous system.
-
"Traumatologist" is a term coined by psychotherapist Pete Walker in his work on complex trauma to describe a clinician engaged in the deep, sustained study of trauma. It is a descriptive term within the trauma therapy field — not a licensed title, board certification, or regulated credential.
At Holistic Trauma Therapy®, "Chief Traumatologist" is a brand title I use to reflect the role I hold within my own practice: a clinician who has dedicated every dimension of her life to the deep study of trauma — its neuroscience, its cultural manifestations, its somatic expression, its spiritual dimensions, and its healing across every tradition humanity has ever developed. It reflects a synthesis of clinical training, doctoral scholarship, global healing studies and research, and lived corporate experience.
My licensed clinical credential is Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) in the State of California. All therapy provided through Holistic Trauma Therapy® is delivered under that license.
-
My core clinical trauma training includes EMDR for trauma reprocessing, Somatic Experiencing through Peter Levine's three-year SE International certification, IFS Level 2 certification through the IFS Institute, the ISST-D Advanced Professional Trauma Training (three-year program in complex trauma and dissociation), AASECT sex therapy for sexual trauma survivors through an approved AASECT training site, and transpersonal and depth psychology from doctoral work at the California Institute of Integral Studies. I am also a member of the International Cultic Studies Association, Society for Psychical Research, International Society for the Study of Trauma & Dissociation, and a variety. of other trauma based training and research organizations.
-
Both. I see clients in person at my Pasadena office, and virtually throughout California for clients in Los Angeles, Newport Beach, Santa Monica, the Bay Area, San Diego, and beyond. Some trauma work — particularly somatic and EMDR — can be deeply effective virtually, and I will discuss with you what format best supports your nervous system and your healing.
-
I personally hold the practice's specialty in complex and childhood trauma, sexual trauma and abuse recovery, workplace trauma and high-achiever healing, religious trauma and spiritual abuse, cult recovery and high-control group exit, relational and attachment-based trauma, and dissociative disorders. My associate team holds additional lanes including LGBTQ+ affirming trauma therapy, first responder family trauma, and neurodivergent adult trauma.
-
Trauma work moves at the pace of your healing system, not at the pace of a treatment plan. Some clients experience meaningful change in the first three to six months. Complex trauma, dissociative work, and deep relational healing often unfold across a longer arc. We will discuss expectations openly in your consultation and at regular intervals throughout the work.
-
I am a private-pay practice. I provide superbills for clients with PPO insurance who may be eligible for out-of-network reimbursement. Current fees and reimbursement guidance are available on my contact page and in your consultation. Investment in specialized trauma care is significant, and I treat that conversation with the seriousness it deserves.
-
If you are in immediate crisis or experiencing thoughts of harming yourself, please call or text 988 for the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, or call 911. My practice is not an emergency service. Once you are stabilized, I would be honored to be part of your longer healing journey.
What’s it like to work with me
Healing is Possible.
Chief Traumatologist Seema Sharma, SEP, LMFT is the founder of Holistic Trauma Therapy®, a full-spectrum trauma healing practice in Pasadena, California serving clients in person and virtually throughout California.