The night is where trauma keeps working long after the day has stopped. The dream that ends the same way every time. The body that will not settle when the lights go off, as if the room needs watching. The jolt awake at three, heart going, for no reason the clock can explain. Most people who reach this page did not come looking for a trauma therapist; they came looking for sleep, and found this underneath it. That is the order we work in too.
Book An AppointmentTrauma is not the event; it is what the nervous system does with the event afterwards. For a lot of people the first sign that something has not resolved is that sleep has changed shape.
Nightmares that repeat, or that are not about the event at all but carry the same feeling. Hypervigilance at bedtime — checking locks twice, sleeping facing the door, needing a light on. The startlethat wakes you already braced. Avoiding sleep because sleep is where the dreams are, then paying for it the next afternoon.
The daytime pieces are the ones people expect: flashes of memory triggered by a smell or a sound, steering around places and people, a flatness that makes it hard to feel close to anyone, being on edge or irritable in a way that does not match the situation. Some people carry a persistent sense that they are to blame, or that the world is now simply unsafe. When these have lasted more than a month and are getting in the way of work, relationships or sleep, that pattern has a name — post-traumatic stress — and it is treatable. It is also not the only outcome: plenty of people have several of these symptoms without meeting criteria for PTSD, and they deserve help just the same.
We will be specific rather than grand about this. Trauma work at North Carolina Sleep Center is cognitive behavioral therapy delivered by a clinician who lists trauma among the problems she treats, paced by you, with the sleep piece handled in the same room. We do not run a trauma program and we do not offer EMDR. What we do offer looks like this:
The early sessions build footing — a way to bring the body down when it spikes, a sleep routine that gives the nights some structure, and an honest map of what sets you off. Nothing about the event itself has to be discussed until you have that.
Trauma-related insomnia does not fix itself once the memories are processed; it usually needs its own treatment, and here that is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia — rebuilding the association between bed and sleep that hypervigilance has broken — with rehearsal-based work on the recurring dreams where that fits.
Trauma leaves conclusions behind: that it was your fault, that you cannot trust your own judgment, that it will happen again. The cognitive work examines those the way CBT examines any belief — against the evidence — and it is done at whatever depth and speed you choose.
The last sessions turn what worked into a plan you can run without us: what to do on an anniversary, after a bad night, when something in the news lands too close.
We see most patients via telehealth with North Carolina-licensed clinicians, and a limited number of clinicians also see patients in person. For trauma work, video from your own home has a real advantage: you are in the one place you control.
Trauma is one of several things we treat alongside sleep — the full picture, and how the pages fit together, is on our therapy and counseling page.
Trauma work here is done by one clinician rather than a department, and we think you should know that before you book. Kalia is based in Raleigh, is licensed in North Carolina, and lists trauma and PTSD among the problems she treats, working with cognitive behavioral therapy, motivational interviewing and solution-focused. She is also trained in CBT-I, which is why the nightmares and the nights are handled in the same plan.
Kalia Lapomarel is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) and Licensed Clinical Addiction Specialist Associate (LCASA) with expertise in mental health and substance use disorders. She takes an integrative, evidence-based approach, drawing on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), person-centered therapy, and motivational interviewing, to help clients challenge unhelpful thought patterns and develop lasting coping strategies. Kalia has specialized training in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I), equipping her to address the sleep-related concerns that often intersect with mental health and addiction recovery. She is committed to providing a compassionate, judgment-free environment where clients feel heard, understood, and supported at every stage of their journey.
For the sleep side, every one of the 5 North Carolina clinicians currently taking new patients is trained in CBT-I, and if your nights are the most urgent part of the picture you can start there with any of them. Thefull roster lists licenses, credentials and locations.
Trauma-focused therapy is billed as outpatient behavioral health, which most North Carolina plans cover on the same terms as any specialist visit. We are currently in network with Aetna, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Cigna / Evernorth, Medicare, UnitedHealthcare / Optum, UnitedHealthcare Medicare Advantage and Veterans Affairs Community Care Network. If you are covered through the Veterans Affairs Community Care Network the authorization has to exist before the first session, so raise it when you book. Not sure what your plan does with therapy? Tell usand we will find out before you are charged anything.
Not to start, and not on any schedule but your own. The first sessions are about what your days and nights look like now — the sleep, the startle, the places you avoid — and about building enough steadiness that talking about the event, if and when you choose to, does not knock you flat. Some people never go through the details in full and still get well; the goal is to change what the memory does to you, not to make you relive it.
No, not currently. Our North Carolina clinicians work with cognitive behavioral approaches, and we would rather say that plainly than list a method nobody here delivers. If EMDR specifically is what you are looking for, we will tell you so at the first appointment instead of keeping you in the wrong kind of therapy.
Yes, and here they usually do. Every clinician on our roster is trained in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia, so the nightmare and sleep work is part of the same plan rather than a separate referral. In practice the sleep techniques often go first, because a person who is getting five broken hours a night has very little left over for the harder work.
We are in network with the Veterans Affairs Community Care Network, which is the program that lets eligible veterans see a community provider with VA authorization. Whether your particular care is covered is a VA decision, so the referral needs to be in place before the first session; tell us when you book and we will check it with you rather than bill you for something the VA was supposed to cover.