Trauma-Informed · EMDR-Credentialed · Women's Only
Trauma is a core orientation at Anchored Tides — not an add-on. Our clinicians are credentialed in EMDR and integrate it with DBT, CBT, and somatic approaches to address the root, not just the symptoms.
“Anchored tides saved my life. I had been to an inpantient facility before and my sobriety wasn't lasting, until I found this place. I enjoyed the different groups and the staff and women are so welcoming. I felt so comfortable here, which I hadn't felt before. I now have the confidence to succeed in life. Very thankful for this place.”
Trauma-informed care is a clinical orientation — running through every level of care we offer — PHP, IOP, and outpatient — not a workshop or a separate track.
Our clinicians are credentialed in EMDR — one of the most evidence-based protocols for trauma, recommended by the WHO, APA, and the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Integrated with the rest of treatment — trauma work alongside substance use, mental health conditions, disordered eating, and dual-diagnosis care — one picture, one team.
Groups are designed to avoid retraumatization — no forced disclosure. The room is structured to make safety the default and disclosure the choice.
Covered by most major commercial PPO plans — we verify each woman's benefits before her first session and don't push processing faster than her nervous system can integrate.
What trauma-informed care actually looks like
“Trauma-informed” gets used loosely in behavioral health. We treat it as a set of specific practices: every clinician understands how trauma shapes substance use and mental health. Groups are designed to avoid retraumatization. Treatment plans address what happened, not just what's showing up now. Modalities are chosen for what trauma actually responds to.
See the modalities we use
Who Trauma-Informed Care Is For
Most of the women in our trauma-informed care don't arrive with a tidy diagnostic picture. They arrive with a story:
When this isn't the right starting point
We don't rush women into EMDR when the clinical picture calls for something else first.
Trauma-informed across every level of care
It's how the entire program is built — and it follows a woman through every level of care she moves through.
Intensive trauma-informed individual and group work, with EMDR available when clinically appropriate.
Often where the foundation gets laid — stabilization, safety, and the early phases of processing.
Read about PHPStructured trauma work at a pace that fits real life. Many women begin EMDR here after foundational stabilization.
The structure to support deeper processing without full-time treatment.
Read about IOPLong-term trauma processing and maintenance — with continuity of clinician from earlier levels of care.
The relationship doesn't reset when the cadence lightens.
Read about OPThe modalities we use
No single modality is the whole answer for every woman. The right combination is determined clinically — by history, readiness, current stability, and what we're seeing in session.
Works on the body's stored response to trauma, not just the cognitive memory of it. Our clinicians are credentialed.
Foundational for emotional regulation, distress tolerance, and interpersonal patterns that track with complex trauma.
Addresses the avoidance, self-blame, and distorted self-perception that follow women out of the original event.
Adjunctive nervous-system regulation that supports the body's capacity to settle — expanding what's tolerable in deeper work.
Experience-based clinical work that supports grounding, agency, and embodied recovery — particularly meaningful when trauma involves bodily safety.
Woven through the program — nervous system regulation, craving management, and the slow rebuilding of presence.
How this connects to the rest of care
Most major commercial plans cover trauma-informed mental health and substance use treatment, including EMDR.
We are happy to verify your benefits prior to any commitment and let you know what your plan covers. Please note: we do not accept Medi-Cal or Medicaid.
PPO, HMO, and EPO accepted
Out-of-network
Not sure if you’re covered? Verify your insurance in 2 minutes
Why women choose Anchored Tides for trauma work
Trauma-informed care is the lens through which every session is conducted — not a single training module bolted onto staff onboarding.
A credential we worked to earn. Not every program offering “trauma therapy” can claim it; we built the investment into our clinical model.
No forced disclosure. No pressure-cooker confrontation. Safety is the default; sharing is the choice.
Not what's easiest to deliver. EMDR is harder to provide than ordinary talk therapy — and more effective for many women.
We don't treat trauma as a category of patient. We treat it as the context that explains the rest of the story.
Stepping from PHP to IOP to outpatient doesn't reset the clinical relationship — the same team continues the work as the cadence lightens.
Our Huntington Beach location
Service areas
Most women travel in from Newport Beach, Costa Mesa, Huntington Beach, and the wider Southern California coast for trauma-informed care.
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is an evidence-based trauma therapy that uses bilateral stimulation — typically guided eye movements — to help the brain reprocess traumatic memories. It's one of the most well-researched trauma protocols available and is recommended by the World Health Organization, the American Psychiatric Association, and the Department of Veterans Affairs. Our clinicians are credentialed in EMDR.
Yes. PTSD is one of the most common conditions we treat, and we also work with complex PTSD (C-PTSD) and relational trauma — the kind of trauma that doesn't come from a single event but accumulates over years of unsafe relationships, family-of-origin dynamics, or chronic instability.
Yes. Our mental health track supports women working on trauma without an active substance use diagnosis. Many women come to us for trauma work first and discover the substance use connection in the process — and others have no substance use history at all.
No. Trauma-informed care explicitly avoids forced disclosure. Trauma work happens at your pace, in formats clinically designed for safety. You will not be put on the spot in group, and you will not be asked to share more than you're ready to share. The pacing is yours.
Yes. We have a dedicated Veterans and Military specialty track that integrates trauma-informed care, including combat trauma, military sexual trauma (MST), and the relational and identity-level work that often follows military service.
It varies. EMDR is often more time-efficient than traditional talk therapy for specific traumatic events, but complex trauma and relational trauma typically take longer to process. Length of care is clinical, not formulaic — and we don't push processing faster than a woman's nervous system can integrate.
That uncertainty is common, and it's part of what we work with. Many women minimize what happened to them because someone else “had it worse,” because they were told to be grateful, or because they've spent years telling themselves it wasn't a big deal. The clinical question isn't whether your experience fits a particular definition — it's whether it's still affecting you. If the answer is yes, that's enough.
It can be, with the right clinical pacing. Trauma processing requires a foundation of stability, which is why early treatment often focuses on safety, skills, and grounding before deeper processing begins. EMDR and other trauma modalities are introduced when a woman's clinical picture supports them — not before.
Evidence & accountability
This page was reviewed by Zoe Tambling, LMFT on . The references below informed the specific topics noted with each citation.
