You can begin without telling the whole story at once.
Sexual trauma can keep showing up in ways that are hard to connect back to what happened: going numb, bracing during closeness, second-guessing your boundaries, or feeling far from your own body. I help adults understand those responses and work with them at a pace that protects choice, safety, and control.
The body can keep reacting after danger has passed.
Something can be over and still feel present. You might go blank during intimacy, pull away from touch you thought you wanted, replay whether a boundary was clear enough, or feel shame that never belonged to you. On other days, the impact may be less obvious: staying alert, keeping busy, looking fine, and feeling disconnected underneath it all.
Those responses were usually developed for a reason, even if they no longer fit the life you want now.
In therapy, I do not ask you to push through a response just because it is inconvenient. I help you look at what it has been protecting, what helps you stay present, and how to restore more choice without forcing closeness, memory work, or disclosure before you are ready.
You might connect with this work if any of these patterns feel familiar:
You stay in charge of what you share.
Sexual trauma therapy does not require you to tell the entire story or revisit memories before you feel ready. I pay attention to what helps you stay present, what makes you pull away, and what kind of pacing allows the work to feel collaborative rather than overwhelming.
The work can involve:
A free consultation is where we begin. We’ll talk about what you’re carrying, what you’ve tried, and whether the way I work feels like the right fit. No pressure. Just an honest conversation.
There doesn't have to be a right answer before we begin.
Care that respects your pace and your choices.
I’m Micah Fleitman, MA, LPC, a licensed professional counselor based in Arlington who works with adults across Virginia. My practice focuses on trauma and dissociation, and I bring a calm, relational approach to experiences that may be difficult to put into words.
What I offer:
You do not have to know which kind of therapy you need before your first session. Each approach offers a different way to understand what is happening. Together, you and I can decide what fits the moment, the goal, and your capacity that day.
With EMDR therapy, I can help you work with a memory, belief, or body reaction that still feels immediate. The process does not require a detailed retelling. I start by establishing ways to stay connected to the present, check your level of choice often, and pause whenever the work is moving faster than feels useful.
What this looks like in sessions:
Some effects of sexual trauma show up first as physical reactions: tension, collapse, numbness, shallow breathing, or the urge to get away. Sensorimotor Psychotherapy makes those patterns easier to notice in small, manageable pieces. I work with posture, sensation, movement, and impulse only with your permission, without treating the body as something that needs to be pushed past.
What this looks like in sessions:
After trauma, different parts of you may take on different jobs. One may stay alert, another may go numb, and another may blame you because blame feels more controllable than uncertainty. IFS gives those responses room to explain what they are trying to prevent. The aim is to help each part work less urgently, with more room for your full perspective.
What this looks like in sessions:
Sexual trauma can shape what you expect from other people, including whether closeness feels safe, whether disagreement feels risky, and whether your needs are allowed to matter. Relational psychodynamic therapy can bring those expectations into view as they appear in current relationships and sometimes in the therapy relationship itself. I use that information carefully, without blaming you for what you learned to anticipate.
What this looks like in sessions:
Sexual trauma can leave behind conclusions such as “I should have known,” “my boundaries do not count,” or “I cannot trust my own reaction.” Trauma-focused CBT helps bring those beliefs into view and examine how they affect emotion, behavior, and relationships. The work stays concrete and collaborative. It does not rely on forced positive thinking or a single explanation for what happened.
What this looks like in sessions:
The impact of sexual trauma can be physical, emotional, relational, or difficult to name. These are some of the patterns that can become part of the work.
Sexual trauma can create distance from physical sensations, emotions, or the sense that your body belongs to you. You might notice numbness, tension, difficulty identifying what you want, or a strong urge to leave the moment. Therapy can help you notice those reactions without demanding that they disappear. Over time, small moments of comfort, preference, and presence can become easier to recognize and trust.
Shame can turn an experience that happened to you into a harsh story about who you are. You may know intellectually that you were not responsible and still feel guilty, contaminated, weak, or somehow at fault. I can help you slow that story down, understand how it formed, and separate responsibility from survival. The goal is a more accurate relationship with what happened and with the person you are now.
After sexual trauma, a boundary can feel clear in hindsight and hard to access in the moment. You might agree when you want to pause, freeze when you want to speak, or question whether your discomfort is enough reason to stop. Therapy can help you notice the earliest signs of a yes, a no, or an unsure response, then practice treating that information as meaningful rather than negotiable.
Closeness may be something you want and something your body prepares to avoid. That conflict can show up in dating, long-term relationships, sex, affection, or ordinary moments of being seen. I do not assume what intimacy should look like for you. The work focuses on what helps trust feel earned, what makes connection easier to stay present for, and how to keep your own needs in the relationship.
A reminder does not have to look obvious to set off a reaction. A tone of voice, smell, kind of touch, room, date, or feeling of being cornered can bring on panic, numbness, a flashback, or the sense that you are somewhere else. Therapy can help you recognize what is happening sooner, return to the present more reliably, and respond with more options than were available during the original experience.
Sexual trauma can leave grief for a sense of safety, a relationship, a version of yourself, or time that cannot be returned. That grief may sit beside anger, relief, numbness, or confusion. When loss is a central part of what you are carrying, online grief and loss therapy can help make room for it without reducing your experience to a single emotion or asking you to move on.
Understanding the pattern can make your reactions feel less confusing and easier to respond to.
Sexual trauma can involve many kinds of experiences, and the impact matters more than whether it matches one narrow description.
It can involve:
There is no single correct response during or after a traumatic experience.
Protective reactions can include:
Experiences that happened early can become part of how safety, responsibility, and closeness are understood later. Childhood trauma therapy may explore effects such as:
The effects of sexual trauma vary, and therapy does not require your experience to look a certain way.
A few things can be true:
You do not need to prepare a complete account before meeting with me.
By the end, the goal is a clearer sense of how I work, what I heard, and whether the pace feels right for you. There is no requirement to commit to a treatment plan before you have that clarity.
Sexual trauma can affect how the mind and body interpret safety, choice, trust, and closeness after an experience in which consent or control was lost. A reaction that feels confusing now may have begun as a way to survive, reduce danger, or stay connected to someone you depended on.
That can include freezing, going numb, staying alert, appeasing, avoiding reminders, or blaming yourself because self-blame can feel more predictable than uncertainty. Therapy looks at what those responses have been protecting and whether they still fit your present life. Understanding the pattern can make room for more choice without judging how you survived.
Sexual trauma can involve any sexual experience in which consent was absent, coerced, compromised, or not freely given. It does not have to fit one narrow label to affect you, and the impact can come from a single event or repeated experiences.
Examples can include:
People often describe four broad protective patterns: fight, flight, freeze, and fawn or appease. These responses are automatic ways of trying to reduce danger, and one person may move between them in different situations.
They can appear after sexual trauma in ways such as:
None of these responses proves consent or responsibility. They describe how the body and mind may try to survive a situation with the options available at the time.
Sexual trauma can show up through tension, numbness, startle responses, shallow breathing, sleep changes, discomfort around touch, changes in desire, or difficulty staying present. In relationships, you might want connection and still pull away, question your boundaries, avoid conflict, or feel responsible for keeping another person comfortable.
There is no single technique that releases trauma from the body all at once. Therapy can help you notice what happens before a reaction becomes overwhelming, orient to the present, and experiment with small choices that support safety and control. The work can include the body without pushing past its limits.
You do not need to feel completely ready before starting sexual trauma therapy. Readiness can be as simple as noticing that the impact is taking up more of your life than you want and being willing to have one conversation about what is happening now.
You can begin without naming every detail, deciding on a method, or committing to memory work. It may be useful to ask what would help you feel enough choice to continue, what pace feels manageable, and how the therapist responds when you say no, pause, or change direction.
No. You choose what to share, how much detail to use, and when to stop or pause. Therapy is generally confidential, with limited legal and ethical exceptions that should be explained before treatment begins. You can ask about privacy, telehealth, records, and those exceptions before discussing any part of your history.
Clear or complete memories are not required in order to work on present-day reactions, boundaries, relationships, or shame. A careful therapist should not treat disclosure as proof that you are ready for focused trauma processing.
Look for an independently licensed mental health professional with specific experience in trauma, dissociation, consent, boundaries, and the ways sexual trauma can affect the body and relationships. Credentials matter, and fit also includes whether the therapist answers questions clearly, respects your pace, and can explain how they respond to overwhelm or a change of mind.
I am Micah Fleitman, MA, LPC, a Virginia-licensed professional counselor who works with adults and focuses on trauma and dissociation. My approach is relational and draws from EMDR, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Internal Family Systems, relational psychodynamic therapy, and trauma-focused CBT.
Sexual trauma treatment usually begins with understanding the current effects and establishing ways to stay present before any focused memory work. The process should protect choice and reduce the risk of moving faster than feels useful.
Trauma-informed therapy can involve:
In my work, I draw from the approaches already described on this page and decide with you what fits the goal and the moment.
There is no single type of therapy that is best for every person with sexual trauma. The most useful approach depends on what is happening now, how you respond to stress, what you want to change, and how much structure or reflection feels helpful. EMDR may focus on a specific memory, belief, or body reaction.
Sensorimotor Psychotherapy pays closer attention to physical patterns, Internal Family Systems explores protective parts, relational psychodynamic therapy looks at trust and relationship expectations, and trauma-focused CBT examines thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. I may combine approaches rather than asking one method to explain the whole experience.
Yes. EMDR can be used for sexual trauma when the therapist has appropriate training, and the work is paced around safety, choice, and present-day stability. It can focus on a memory, belief, or body response that still feels immediate, and it does not require a detailed retelling of everything that happened.
In my work, I begin by making sure you have ways to stay connected to the present, check your level of choice throughout, and pause if the process is moving faster than feels useful. EMDR is one option, not an automatic starting point for every person.
The effects of sexual trauma can change, sometimes substantially, even though the experience itself cannot be undone. Therapy may support a greater ability to stay present, trust your boundaries, approach relationships with more choice, and respond to internalized shame with more context and self-compassion.
Some people describe this as rebuilding emotional resilience or feeling less controlled by automatic reactions. No therapist can promise a cure, a particular outcome, or a fixed timeline. The aim is to help the past take up less authority in the decisions you make now.
Sexual trauma can be hard to overcome because it may affect several parts of life at once: memory, body reactions, trust, identity, closeness, and the sense that your choices will be respected. The experience may also involve secrecy, self-blame, cultural messages, or harm from someone known or depended on.
Avoidance and numbness can reduce distress in the short term, which makes sense, while also limiting opportunities to learn that the present is different. Recovery often requires enough safety and repetition for new responses to feel believable, not just intellectually correct.
There is no standard number of sessions for sexual trauma therapy. The length of the work depends on your goals, the patterns you want to address, how much the experience affects daily life and relationships, and whether you are focusing on one specific reaction or a longer history.
Some people begin with a limited goal, while others need more time to work with trust, dissociation, shame, or repeated experiences. Session frequency is part of the initial planning and can be revisited as the work changes. We can review what is shifting, what still feels stuck, and whether the current pace and focus continue to make sense.
Yes. I offer secure online sexual trauma counseling to adults aged 18 and older who are located anywhere in Virginia, including Richmond and communities across Northern Virginia, Hampton Roads, the Shenandoah Valley, and other regions of the state.
Virtual therapy can make specialized care more accessible when travel, privacy, mobility, or limited local options complicate in-person support. The work still begins with fit: you can ask about credentials, methods, pacing, confidentiality, and what happens if a session starts to feel overwhelming.
You can begin with one honest, unhurried conversation.
I offer a free 30-minute consultation for adults considering online sexual trauma therapy anywhere in Virginia. You can ask questions, share what has been happening, and get a clearer sense of whether working together feels right.
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