Trauma & PTSD · Houston
Specialized, trauma-informed care for adults living with PTSD, complex trauma, and childhood trauma, and the anxiety, depression, and substance use that so often travel with it. Care is built around your history and your pace, using proven trauma therapies. Private pay, with superbills for out-of-network reimbursement.
Trauma & PTSD
Trauma is not a character flaw or a failure of willpower. It is the nervous system doing exactly what it learned to do to keep you safe, long after the danger has passed. At Heights Behavioral Health, we treat trauma as the root it so often is, not just the symptoms on the surface. Our master’s-level clinicians are trained in the leading trauma modalities, and care is customized around your history, your readiness, and your goals rather than a fixed protocol, always dual diagnosis-forward when anxiety, depression, or substance use is part of the picture.
Understanding Trauma
Trauma is any experience that overwhelms the nervous system’s ability to cope, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is what happens when that survival response gets stuck: the brain keeps sounding an alarm the danger no longer justifies. Not everyone who experiences trauma develops PTSD, and trauma does not require a war zone. Accidents, assault, loss, betrayal, medical events, and childhoods that were frightening or neglectful all count. What matters clinically is not what happened, but what it left running in your nervous system, and that is treatable.
How It Is Spotted
The Forms It Takes
PTSD from a single event, like an accident, assault, or loss. Complex trauma (C-PTSD) from prolonged or repeated experiences, often in childhood, that shape self-worth and relationships. Developmental and childhood trauma, including households that were frightening, chaotic, or emotionally absent. Medical and birth trauma. Betrayal trauma, including the discovery of a partner’s addiction or infidelity. And vicarious trauma carried by first responders, medical professionals, and caregivers. Each form calls for its own pacing, and all of them respond to specialized treatment.
Evidence-Based Modalities
We match the approach to the person. These are the core trauma therapies our clinicians use, often in combination, always at your pace, in individual therapy and group work.
Cognitive Processing
A structured, gold-standard therapy for PTSD that helps you examine and shift the stuck beliefs trauma leaves behind, the self-blame, the mistrust, the sense of permanent danger, so the past stops dictating the present.
Reprocessing
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing helps the brain reprocess traumatic memories so they lose their charge, without requiring you to relive every detail aloud. One of the most researched trauma treatments in existence.
Body-Based
Trauma lives in the body as much as the mind. Somatic Experiencing releases the survival energy stored in the nervous system, restoring a felt sense of safety that talk alone cannot reach.
Neuroregulation
Non-invasive brain training that helps calm an overactive nervous system, supporting steadier focus, better sleep, and more regulated mood while the deeper trauma work takes hold.
Mind-Body
Gentle, choice-based movement that helps you reconnect with your body safely and release the tension trauma leaves stored in it. Every posture is an invitation, never a demand.
Connection
Trauma isolates; healing happens in safe connection. Clinician-led groups and experiential work, equine, art, and mindfulness, rebuild trust in others at a pace your nervous system can hold.
Levels of Care · ASAM Criteria
Trauma care is not one size. After a comprehensive assessment, a licensed clinician recommends the least restrictive level that keeps you safe and supports real progress across our full continuum of outpatient care. As you stabilize, we step support down, and back up if you need more. Your trauma work is woven through whichever level fits your life.
Flagship
Three structured phases, fully customized, with trauma work woven through each one and mentoring stepping up as clinical steps down.
Most Structured
Full-day clinical structure while living at home, for when symptoms need serious stabilization before deeper trauma processing begins.
Mental Health First
Structured group and individual care built for trauma, depression, anxiety, and mood disorders, no substance use requirement.
After Hours
Full IOP intensity scheduled after work hours, built for professionals and parents who need a protected schedule while they heal.
Our Approach
We begin by helping you build stability and regulation before we ever ask you to approach the hardest memories, and we never push faster than your nervous system can tolerate. Because trauma rarely stands alone, our care is dual diagnosis-forward, treating co-occurring anxiety, depression, and substance use as part of the same plan, with medication management available when symptoms need support. Family involvement is offered when it helps, and the entire plan is customized around you and adjusted as you heal. Never rushed, never generic.
Guides and Resources
Articles on trauma treatment, betrayal trauma, and the therapies that help the nervous system heal.
Equine-Assisted Psychotherapy: What Actually Happens at the Ranch
High-Functioning Anxiety: What It Looks Like and Why It Deserves Care
Burnout or Depression? How to Tell the Difference
Ready When You Are
You set the pace here, always. One conversation with admissions tells you what the next step looks like. No pressure, no obligation, and nothing you are not ready for.
Start Confidentially
Tell us a little about what is going on and the best way to reach you. A member of our admissions team will follow up personally and walk you through next steps. Please do not include sensitive medical details in the form.
Common Questions
If you do not see your question here, call our admissions team at (877) 549-5102 and we will walk you through it.
Post-traumatic stress disorder is what happens when the nervous system’s survival response gets stuck after a traumatic experience: the brain keeps sounding an alarm the danger no longer justifies, producing flashbacks, hypervigilance, avoidance, and mood changes. It is a recognized, treatable condition, not a weakness.
Common signs include feeling constantly on edge, nightmares or intrusive memories, avoiding reminders, emotional numbness or detachment, startling easily, poor sleep, irritability, shame or self-blame, and unexplained physical tension. Many people carry these for years without connecting them to what happened.
Complex trauma comes from prolonged or repeated experiences, often beginning in childhood, rather than a single event. Alongside classic PTSD symptoms, it shapes self-worth, emotion regulation, and relationships. It responds to the same specialized therapies, with extra attention to safety, pacing, and attachment.
Our clinicians are trained in leading trauma modalities including Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), EMDR, Somatic Experiencing, neurofeedback, and trauma-informed yoga, often used in combination and always at your pace.
No. We prioritize safety and stabilization first, and several of our approaches, including EMDR and Somatic Experiencing, do not require you to recount every detail aloud. We never move faster than you can tolerate.
EMDR is one of the most researched trauma treatments in existence and is recommended in major clinical guidelines for PTSD. Many people notice traumatic memories losing their emotional charge over a course of sessions, though pace and response vary by person.
Yes. Our care is dual diagnosis-forward, so co-occurring anxiety, depression, and substance use are treated together with trauma in one individualized plan, by one team.
It depends on the trauma and the person. Single-incident PTSD often responds within months of structured treatment; complex trauma is a longer arc. There is no fixed timeline here, and support steps down as you stabilize.
Call (877) 549-5102 or send a confidential message. Admissions listens, answers your questions, and schedules a confidential assessment, often within days. From there a licensed clinician recommends the right level of care and you begin.
We are private pay and also work with out-of-network benefits. We provide detailed superbills to submit to your insurer, and we will explain costs and verify your specific benefits before you commit to anything.
Trauma therapy is treatment designed to help you process traumatic experiences safely and reduce symptoms such as flashbacks, hypervigilance, avoidance, and numbness. At Heights, clinicians trained in EMDR, Cognitive Processing Therapy, and Somatic Experiencing pace the work carefully and build stability first.
Our admissions team answers seven days a week, from 8:00 am to 7:30 pm Central Time. Call (877) 549-5102 to talk with a real person about what is going on, your schedule, and whether our programs are the right fit. If you reach out after hours, leave a message or send the consultation form and we will return your call as soon as we open. If this is an emergency, call 911. If you or someone you love is in a mental health crisis, call or text 988.
Clinical Review
Written by Joni Ogle, LCSW, CSAT, CEO of Heights Behavioral Health, and clinically reviewed by Deborah Darnell-Drake, LCSW-S, ACSW, LMFT, Chief Clinical Officer. Heights Behavioral Health provides licensed outpatient behavioral health care for adults in Houston, Texas, delivered by master’s-level clinicians and licensed professionals. This page is intended to explain HBH services and does not replace an individualized clinical assessment. Last reviewed October 2026.
Explore Heights
Every program, condition, and specialty at Heights connects to one coordinated outpatient team in the Houston Heights. Start wherever fits your situation, or call admissions and we will point you to the right place.
Verified reviews from clients and families who have been through our programs. Read them in full on Google, or add your own.
“From my very first interaction, I felt welcomed, respected, and genuinely cared for. The staff took the time to listen, answer my questions, and create a treatment plan that fit my needs.”
“Heights offered treatment three evenings a week, which made it possible for them to work during the day and still get consistent support.”
“Our family was scared and unsure where to turn. From the first conversation with Jeff and Beckie to walking through the doors, we felt genuinely cared for.”
Contact Admissions
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Crisis Notice
Heights Behavioral Health provides scheduled outpatient care and is not an emergency or crisis service. This page is general information, not medical advice. If you are in crisis, call or text 988, or call 911 if someone is in immediate danger.
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