Cassie McCarthy, LICSW

12/11/2025

Do you feel like you’re constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop? You might call it anxiety, or maybe you just think you’re a "worrier." But if that anxiety feels less like nervousness and more like a constant scan for danger, it might be an echo of the past.

Many women I work with don’t realize that their chronic anxiety, perfectionism, or people-pleasing are actually trauma responses. You’ve learned to be hyper-vigilant to keep yourself safe. But that safety mechanism is exhausting when you’re trying to live your normal life.

You don’t have to live in a state of high alert forever. Understanding the root of your symptoms is the first step toward relief. Let’s move you from surviving to actually living.

I offer trauma-focused therapy for women in Massachusetts, Virginia, Illinois, and Vermont.

Schedule your free consultation today to start making sense of your story.

12/11/2025

So many women spend years believing they’re “anxious,” “too sensitive,” or “overreacting”…
when in reality, they’re carrying trauma that no one ever named.

The truth is: trauma isn’t always loud.
It’s not always a single event.
And it doesn’t always look like what we’ve been taught to expect.

For many women, trauma was:
• Coercion that didn’t look like force
• Emotional manipulation disguised as “love”
• Walking on eggshells to keep the peace
• Chronic invalidation or betrayal
• Growing up responsible for other people’s emotions
• Quiet, persistent fear instead of one big moment

And because these experiences don’t match the traditional PTSD model — the one built around male, combat-style trauma — women often get misdiagnosed, misunderstood, or told their symptoms are “just anxiety.”

This carousel breaks down why trauma is missed so often
… and how to finally understand what your symptoms are trying to tell you.

If any part of this feels familiar, you’re not alone — and you’re not imagining it.
Naming trauma isn’t about blaming the past.
It’s about finally understanding yourself with compassion and clarity.

✨ Read the full article:
https://cassiemccarthy.com/why-trauma-gets-missed/

If you’re in MA, VT, VA, FL, or IL and want trauma-focused therapy that truly understands women’s experiences, I offer free consultations.

12/10/2025

When working with clients who’ve experienced sexual pressure or “complicated consent,” what do you find most challenging?

What I’d love to know:

What’s hardest to assess or name?

What feels under-trained or unclear?

What skills or frameworks do you wish you had?

If a CE training on treating the effects of sexual coercion existed, what would you want it to cover?

Thanks for sharing — your input helps me understand what clinicians actually need.

12/08/2025

If you’ve ever felt like you should be “over it by now,” I want you to know: trauma doesn’t follow a timeline. Especially not trauma that lives in silence.

You might have pushed through, buried it, or minimized it. But if it’s still showing up in your life—in anxiety, shame, or disconnection—it’s worth healing.

I specialize in working with women who’ve experienced sexual trauma, helping them recover using evidence-based therapy that honors both your story and your strength.

🌐 Online trauma therapy available in MA, VA, VT, IL, and FL. 📲 Message me or book a free consultation. Let’s begin.

12/08/2025

So many women go through life thinking, “This is just anxiety.” Or, “I’m overreacting.” Or, “It wasn’t bad enough to be trauma.”
But what if the symptoms you’ve been carrying for years—hypervigilance, exhaustion, feeling unsafe, shutting down, struggling to trust—aren’t personality flaws or overthinking…
What if they’re signs of trauma that no one ever named?

Trauma gets missed all the time—especially when it didn’t involve something dramatic, violent, or obvious.
Most women’s trauma comes from relationships, betrayal, coercion, emotional harm, or situations where they had to survive quietly. And because it didn’t “look like trauma,” no one ever connected the dots for them.

If you’ve ever wondered:
“Does what I went through actually count?”
…this blog might give you the clarity you’ve never been offered.

✨ Here’s why trauma often goes unseen—and how to finally understand what your symptoms are trying to tell you.
Read it here:
https://cassiemccarthy.com/why-trauma-gets-missed/

12/05/2025

Most therapists were taught about trauma…
but not how to identify it accurately or treat it effectively—especially in women.

And that gap shows up every day in clinical practice.

I meet women who have spent years being treated for:
• anxiety
• depression
• “relationship issues”
• emotional dysregulation
• shutdown or dissociation
• chronic people-pleasing

When, in reality, the root issue was unrecognized PTSD.

Not because their therapists didn’t care.
Not because the clients weren’t doing the work.
But because women’s trauma looks different than the models we were trained on.

Women show hypervigilance through relational scanning, not room scanning.
They avoid conflict, not reminders.
They numb through over-functioning, not substances.
Their trauma is often betrayal-based, chronic, and interpersonal—
and our traditional frameworks weren’t built for that.

This is why trauma-informed isn’t enough.
Clinicians need trauma-focused skills:
the ability to assess exposures clearly, diagnose accurately, document ethically, and choose the right treatment pathway—whether that means a referral to a trauma protocol or trauma-sensitive care for other presenting problems.

When we miss trauma, we misdirect treatment.
When we misdirect treatment, clients stay stuck.

If we want better outcomes, we need better assessment.
Better language.
Better frameworks.
Better alignment between symptom presentation and intervention.

And this part is crucial:
We can do better without pathologizing women for adapting to unsafe environments.

Trauma work isn’t just about helping clients heal—
it’s about helping clinicians see what was never named out loud.

👇 What trauma patterns do YOU see most often go unnoticed in clinical training?

12/04/2025

Your trauma might not be visible to others—but it’s real. It might show up in your relationships, in your body, or in how hard it is to trust yourself.

I help women recover from sexual trauma using therapy that works. You don’t have to relive every detail to heal. Cognitive Processing Therapy helps you work through the beliefs and symptoms that are keeping you stuck, and gently shift toward a version of you that feels whole, safe, and grounded.

💻 Online sessions available in MA, VA, VT, IL, and FL. 📞 Reach out and schedule your free consultation today.

12/01/2025

If you’ve been trying to find a therapist who works with sexual trauma, you probably already know how hard it is to feel safe enough to open up.

This work is deeply personal. And you deserve a space where you feel understood and supported, without pressure or judgment. My therapy approach is grounded in both compassion and clinical expertise. You don’t have to figure it all out alone. You just have to take the next step.

🧠 I use CPT, a proven method to help you reduce trauma symptoms and reclaim your life. 🌐 Online therapy in MA, VA, VT, IL, and FL. 📲 Schedule your free consultation today.

11/27/2025

Sometimes trauma shows up as perfectionism. Or people-pleasing. Or chronic anxiety. You may not even connect it to what happened years ago—but it’s there, underneath everything.

Sexual trauma can shape how you see yourself and how you move through the world. But it doesn’t have to define your future.

I help women unpack and reprocess trauma using Cognitive Processing Therapy—a method that helps you change the thoughts and beliefs trauma left behind.

💻 If you’re in MA, VA, VT, IL, or FL, I offer online sessions. 📞 Let’s talk. Free consults available.

11/24/2025

If your trauma wasn’t violent, it’s still trauma. If you didn’t fight back, it’s still trauma. If you’re still thinking about it, still feeling it in your body, still questioning yourself—it’s still trauma.

And you deserve support that takes your experience seriously.

I specialize in therapy for women recovering from sexual trauma. Whether you’re dealing with guilt, shame, confusion, or just feeling stuck, I help you move forward using a structured, science-backed approach.

🌐 Therapy available online in MA, VA, VT, IL, and FL. 📲 Schedule your free consultation now. You don’t have to do this alone.

11/21/2025

In trauma work, holiday stress isn’t “just stress.”
For many survivors, this season replicates the same conditions that conditioned their nervous system to stay in survival mode: disrupted routines, emotional labor, relational pressure, and unpredictable environments.

Yet many clinicians were trained to focus on trauma events, not these trauma-linked patterns.
And when we don’t understand these seasonal triggers, we risk misinterpreting symptom spikes as regression instead of what they truly are: the nervous system working overtime to stay safe.

This is why trauma-informed seasonal care matters — especially for women, whose trauma often stems from relationships, coercion, and emotional labor that intensify in December.

If we want to support survivors well, we need to name these patterns clearly, normalize them, and teach clients how to navigate them skillfully.

🔗 This week’s article breaks down exactly why holiday seasons amplify PTSD symptoms and what trauma-informed strategies actually help.

The holidays are marketed as joyful, connected, and warm — but for many people, especially those with trauma histories, this season brings pressure, emotional overload, and old relational wounds to the surface. If the holidays leave you feeling drained, anxious, or guilty for needing space… you....

11/20/2025

You’ve been carrying this for a long time. Maybe you’ve never told anyone. Maybe you’ve tried talking about it, but you didn’t feel heard—or worse, you were told to move on.

You don’t have to explain or justify your pain. Your trauma is valid. And your healing matters.

I work with women who are living with the effects of sexual trauma: difficulty trusting others, flashbacks, avoidance, anxiety, disconnection from their bodies, and more. Using Cognitive Processing Therapy, we create a clear plan for moving forward, not just rehashing the past.

📍 I offer online sessions in MA, VA, VT, IL, and FL. 📞 Reach out today. Let’s talk.