Integrative Complex Trauma & Somatic Psychotherapy
Haritha Jonnalagadda offers specialist trauma therapy for adults, couples and families with complex and developmental trauma. She provides confidential psychotherapeutic services in Brisbane and Australia. She specialise in working trauma recovery from childhood attachment trauma (abuse & neglect), dissociation and chronic pain and related somatic symptoms.
Brisbane (Ashgrove | Mt Gravatt) & Telehealth
Trauma not only conditions our mind into having protective belief systems that keep us safe from threat…it also conditions our body into patterned responses that reflect the traumas.
By tuning into the wisdom of the body, we can understand the inherent intelligent processes of the body and mind to discover the habitual, automatic attitudes (both physical and psychological).
This gentle and empowering approach is particularly helpful in working with the effects of trauma, relational trauma, and difficult past attachment relationships.
So why do nervous system focussed, movement & other somatic approaches work for trauma…?
Trauma permeates our physiology affecting more than just our core beliefs around how safe the world is. It disrupts our body functions, our ability to regulate our nervous system states and the deeper parts of our brain that control our emotional and survival responses.
Nervous System Regulation, Somatic Movement and somatic interventions directly increase our nervous system’s capacity to recognize and distinguish between past and present threat and engage the appropriate defense responses to manage the experience of the threat.
They support conditions within our body that allow natural healing processes to reorganize and facilitate resolution of the stuck or buried trauma energy.
Trauma imprints our physiology. A Nervous System approach and somatic healing is the pathway…
Does this sound familiar?
Feel chronically stressed and exhausted?
Experience unexplained pains in your body?
Oscillate from overwhelming flooding of emotions to numbing?
Engage in the same reactions to situations despite trying to change?
Feel disconnected from your own body?
Unresolved trauma memories showing up in the present?
Unable to move on from hurtful experiences as if you had no control over it?
Feel stuck in the way you feel despite trying lots of therapy
Meet Haritha
I am an Integrative Complex Trauma & Somatic Psychotherapist for adults with Childhood Attachment Trauma, Dissociation & Chronic Pain.
Finding the right therapist can be overwhelming, especially if you experience complex trauma and haven’t found a therapist who is able to work with the multiple ways in which trauma maybe impacting you.
Here is a little about me to help you get a sense of who I am and what it might be like to work with me.
About Me
Credentials & Qualifications
As a therapist, I have 10 years experience working with children, young people and adults with childhood trauma experiences. I have worked in multiple community and not-for-profit mental health settings and multidisciplinary therapy teams, offering long term trauma and attachment therapy to support individuals dealing with childhood trauma.
I am also a somatic movement practitioner and facilitate trauma-informed movement practices to help with trauma recovery and embodiment. I honor the embodied knowledge and wisdom of our body in its capacity to use its innate resources to heal from traumatic wounds.
My practice is grounded in the interpersonal neurobiology of trauma where relational and nervous system healing is at the heart of recovery.
Therapeutic relationship and safety are at the heart of successful therapy when it comes to trauma recovery. We now know that our neurobiology is heavily influenced by our psychology as well as our relational & attachment environments. Ones that we grew up in and ones that we are still in.
I bring both lived experience and clinical specialty into my therapy practice. Using the same therapeutic approaches that I offer my clients, I have also benefitted from them as a client. Processing my own early childhood traumas that were impacting my adulthood in a somatic way and with movement has been life changing! It is an incredible honour to bare witness to this work changing my clients’ lives too.
Having my own history of attachment & developmental trauma, I spent years experiencing disconnection and dissociation. Feeling alienated and fragmented from the wisdom and intuition my body had to offer, my relationships struggled. My capacity to draw boundaries were disembodied and I was chronically stuck feeling shut down.
Finding myself engaging in the same unhelpful repetitive patterns in attachment relationships, workplaces & emotional regulation despite receiving talk based therapy, was the last straw.
Most of my clients too come to me following years of engaging in talk based therapies and experiencing frustration that it has not helped them in changing the way they feel in their body.
Learning that these responses were my body’s wonderful way of protecting me from connecting with overwhelming pain…was transformative!
It was then that I found somatic therapies and nervous system focussed therapies to experience effective trauma recovery that helped me heal from childhood trauma in my body and relationships, heal from chronic pain and feel like a whole person.
As I learnt to listen to my body, my relationships changed. My felt sense of safety became stronger and my capacity to regulate increased. This work is by no means a miracle pill!
While I am still on my own journey and my relationship with my healing unfolds, I now have more tools to lean into the wisdom of my own soma and a life full of vitality.
It is a painstakingly frustrating and non linear path. As I was held by other safe capable nervous systems in my own healing, my hope is to offer you my safe capable nervous system as you travel through your healing journey.
I firmly believe that Praxis (Practice & Theory) is the essence of my life. So outside of my work, I love spending my time enriching my life with safer and meaningful relationships, regulating through nature, books, travel, movement, art, food, play with my beautiful Australian Shepherd girl and feeling all the glimmers and the simple but significant joys this world.
Psychology & Counselling Credentials
Bachelor of Psychology & Master of Psychological Counselling (Psychologist Registration, India)
Master of Counselling (UQ)
Australian Counselling Association Level 4 (Professional Registration No: 14038)
Certifications & Training
Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy Lv.1
Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Lv.1
Circle of Security- Parent Facilitator
Trauma Informed Stabilisation Treatment ( Parts Work for Structural Dissociation)
Advanced Skills in Working with Dissociations & Parts Work
Somatic Experiencing ( enrolled 2026)
Somatics & Movement Training
Interdisciplinary Movement & Somatics ( ISMETA Accredited Course)
Cert III & Cert IV Personal Training
Master Functional Trainer
Movement Restoration Coach
R.E.H.AB Trainer
What You Can Expect In Sessions
Whether you are engaging in therapy or movement, my work follows a phase- based approach which is considered the gold standard in trauma informed practice for individuals with trauma.
The first phase of trauma related healing is to establish deep levels of safety and stabilization across all layers. Without safety our nervous system cannot allow for protective responses to be replaced. We cant break down walls without knowing what built them in the first place.
The second phase is identifying resources. Once we recognize the many resources that are in place to help us with survival through those traumatic times, we can start to support alternate resources that are more adaptive to the present time.
Once we have spent time creating safe, grounding and soothing resources to manage trauma triggers, we can use those resources to support processing trauma memories and experiences within the body.
True transformation and integration of resolving unresolved traumas can occur once the energy and the arousal of old memories have been processed. This is the time we spend in embodying healing and recovery.
To support the therapeutic process, I incorporate different body-based elements into our work:
Body-based practices and Neuroceptive Awareness
Nervous system regulation techniques
Parts work to support healing from trauma related dissociation
Active Mindfulness and Psychoeducation
Somatic Practices
A Peek Into My Practice
Therapeutic Approach
An interdisciplinary practice of Attachment Therapy, Parts Work, Trauma related Structural Dissociation therapy, Nervous System focussed therapies like Polyvagal Therapies, Somatics, Movement & Trauma Therapy...
You might have heard of the phrase “ talking helps”… it does help! Until it doesn’t as you find yourself talking about the same issue over and over again with no resolution. You find yourself engaging in the same pattern despite trying Trauma disrupts the myriad of layers of our development and well being and therefore healing from trauma demands a myriad of interventions and supports. It impacts our body at a more primal physiological level.
A stand alone talk based therapeutic approach that facilitates recovery from top- down ( brain to the body) is not only insufficient or ineffective- it is no longer evidence based for trauma recovery!
After recognizing the gaps in traditional talk therapies both as a client and practitioner, I hoped to create a more integrated & holistic therapy practice that intervened the impacts of trauma from a bottom to top (body to brain) approach.
My practice is grounded in the interpersonal neurobiology of trauma where relational and nervous system healing is at the heart of recovery.
Bottom to Top or Body Based or Somatic approaches appreciate the significant role of our internal body world in helping us resolve our unresolved traumas. The way we experience ourselves, our relationships and our life experiences are not limited to our thoughts, feelings and perceptions that then dictate our behaviors.
We experience them deep within our body in the form of sensations, movements, habitual postures, breath, heart rate, pain & inflammation, muscle preparation & arousal energy states created by our nervous system.
Trauma further impacts us at a cellular and systemic level- digestion, immunity, endocrinology, reproductive, respiratory & pulmonary, cardiovascular & lymphatic systems.
The cost of traumatic stress is paid by our whole body.
Somatic Psychotherapy interventions help reorganize and integrate our internal experiences of the external or our relational world. It works safely with the way our nervous system reacts in the present moment as informed by our past unresolved traumas that show up as body memories.
The word “Somatic” means “ of the body''. My approach combines movement interventions and somatic therapies, to create a deep understanding of your nervous system and offer it opportunities to develop skills to regulate through the shifting impacts of trauma.
I use a unique blend of attachment and trauma specific therapist with somatic psychotherapy and movement based practices to help support nervous system regulation, trauma processing and creating opportunities for deeper healing.
