Healing from Trauma: Following the Compass of Desire

Trauma Therapy in NYC: Following the Compass of Desire

When you’ve lived through trauma, life can feel small. The body and mind stay on guard, focused on survival, making it hard to imagine more than just getting through the day. Dreams and desires may feel far away—or even out of reach.

Yet within every person is a quiet pull toward life: desire. In trauma therapy, listening to that pull can be transformative. Healing is not only about processing the past, but also about moving toward a future that feels alive and meaningful.

If you are searching for trauma therapy in NYC or Brooklyn, you may already sense that part of your healing involves reconnecting with your inner desires.

Trauma Narrows Life

Trauma often leaves people feeling stuck. The nervous system holds on tightly, keeping you alert, vigilant, or numb. While this is the body’s way of protecting you, it can also keep life feeling narrow, like there’s no room to grow. A body-based therapy approach helps create safety so there’s space for new possibilities to unfold.

Desire Brings Expansion

Even a small desire—a longing for deeper connection, a wish for rest, a spark of creativity—creates room for healing. Desire softens the body and opens the mind to possibility. It can be the first step out of survival mode, expanding life in a way that feels both hopeful and real.

In my work providing somatic therapy in Brooklyn and New York City, I often see how reconnecting with desire helps clients move from surviving toward a fuller sense of living.

Desire as a Light Within

In my experience as a trauma therapist, desire taps into a light within. It’s not about chasing external achievements. It’s about reconnecting with an inner spark that may have felt dimmed by trauma. In therapy, that light becomes a guide, reminding you that there is more to you than what happened to you.

Desire Expands Time

Trauma collapses time—it can keep you locked in the past or stuck in a tense present. Desire stretches time back out. When you listen to your longings, you can imagine a future again. You begin to feel space for possibility, for new rhythms and ways of living.

Desire as a Compass (vs. Goals)

Desire can be distinguished from goals. Goals are held in the mind—planned, measured, often shaped by “shoulds.” Desire is embodied. It arises from within, felt in the body as a pull toward something meaningful.

In somatic trauma therapy, desire becomes a compass. It helps orient you not only toward healing, but toward a life that feels authentic and whole.

Creativity as Survival and Desire

In my many years of working with creative people who carry histories of neglect or abuse, I’ve seen how creativity often keeps the soul alive. For some, drawing, writing, music, or imagination became a lifeline in childhood—a way to preserve a sense of self when their environment felt unsafe or unresponsive.

The desire for creativity isn’t only about producing art. It’s about keeping the ego intact, holding onto a thread of aliveness, and saying “I am here. I am different. I matter.”

Often, these individuals stood out as children—sensitive, imaginative, or simply different in ways their parents could not understand. Creativity became both shield and compass, helping them survive and later offering a pathway toward healing.

Growth Through Desire

As the nervous system begins to heal through trauma and somatic therapy, the body is no longer organized solely around survival. This shift creates an opening—an internal flexibility that allows desire to emerge as a trustworthy guide.

Rather than pushing toward externally defined goals, clients often find themselves drawn toward what feels most alive, authentic, and sustaining. In somatic psychology, this is sometimes called emergent motivation—a movement that arises naturally once defensive states no longer dominate (Ogden, Minton, & Pain, Trauma and the Body, 2006).

Desire, in this sense, is not indulgence. It is orientation. It points toward growth, connection, and creativity. And when clients learn to follow that embodied compass, they often discover that healing does not unfold in small increments alone—it can expand in leaps and bounds.

✨ If you’re looking for trauma therapy in NYC or somatic therapy in Brooklyn, know that healing is possible. Together, we can work not only to process the pain of the past, but to reconnect you with your deepest desires and dreams.

In-person appointments available in Brooklyn, NY. Virtual appointments throughout NY, Fl and VA.