246 - Finding a Trauma Therapist Who Won't Harm You: Red Flags, Self-Disclosure & What to Ask w/ Amber Trejo & Megan Walsh246 - Finding a Trauma Therapist Who Won't Harm You: Red Flags, Self-Disclosure & What to Ask w/ Amber Trejo & Megan Walsh
Adult Child
Andrea talks with trauma therapists and survivors Amber Trejo and Megan Walsh about their own histories, harmful therapy experiences, and how to spot red flags in trauma care. They share practical questions to ask potential therapists and stress the importance of relational safety, boundaries and real lived experience in complex trauma work.
1:02:01•2 Sept 2026
Finding a Safe Trauma Therapist Without Losing Your Mind
Episode Overview
- Not every practitioner who claims to be trauma informed understands complex PTSD or has ever been a client themselves.
- Therapist self-disclosure can be helpful only when it genuinely serves the client rather than meeting the therapist’s own needs.
- Red flags include lack of personal therapy, dismissing a client’s sense of dysregulation as “resistance,” and pushing trauma content every session.
- Relational safety and attunement – noticing body cues, pacing, and titration – are essential to avoid re-traumatisation in therapy.
- Clients are encouraged to ask direct questions about a therapist’s experience with complex trauma, supervision, and personal healing work.
“There are just so many helpers out there who have no fucking clue what they're doing, and it really irks me.”
Curious about how others manage their trauma healing while keeping their lives (mostly) together? This conversation on Adult Child brings a frank, funny and very real look at what it actually takes to find a trauma therapist who helps rather than harms. Andrea chats with Midwest trauma therapists – and complex trauma survivors – Amber Trejo and Megan Walsh, who also co-host We Should Talk.
Megan shares her own history first: a childhood marked by “seven years of silence” after her parents separated, a father who later came out as a transgender woman, and the long-term fallout of never talking about any of it.
She describes the years of people-pleasing, extreme difficulty having hard conversations, and shame-soaked relationships, saying, “I couldn’t talk about anything to save my life in relationships.” From there, they move into the nitty-gritty of therapy itself: therapist horror stories, boundary issues, over-sharing practitioners, and so-called "trauma informed" providers who’ve never sat in the client chair.
Amber recounts working with a therapist who used her own custody battle as a reference point during EMDR and later asked Amber to go on her podcast – a clear example of self-disclosure used for the therapist, not the client. The trio walk through what to ask a potential therapist: Have they been to therapy themselves? Do they understand complex PTSD specifically? How do they feel about self-disclosure? Are they actively supervised?
You’ll hear a strong emphasis on relational safety, titration with trauma work, and paying attention to bodily cues of dysregulation. This is aimed squarely at people with complex trauma, attachment wounds and messy family histories who are tired of getting re-triggered in therapy. Expect straight talk, swearing, and a lot of validation that you’re not “too much” for wanting a therapist who actually feels safe.
It might just get you asking: is my therapist truly helping me heal, or am I handing my heart to someone who hasn’t done their own work?
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