01 — Overview
Overview
Trauma reshapes the body, recalibrates the nervous system, and redefines the way a person relates to themselves and others. Eric Bergemann, PhD, is a licensed clinical psychologist whose practice in Atwater Village, Los Angeles is built around an integrative model of trauma recovery that joins depth psychology, sensorimotor psychotherapy, and mindfulness. As a trauma specialist, Dr. Eric Bergemann works with clients whose symptoms have not fully resolved through talk therapy alone — clients who need an approach that listens to the body as carefully as it listens to the story.
His clinical philosophy is grounded in the conviction that healing trauma requires more than insight. It requires a felt sense of safety, the slow restoration of nervous system regulation, and the gradual integration of experiences that the body has held outside of conscious awareness. With doctoral training in clinical psychology and an MBA that informs his work with executives and high-performing professionals, Eric Bergemann Psychologist brings both rigor and warmth to a practice that respects the complexity of the human nervous system.
02 — Nervous System
Understanding Trauma and the Nervous System
Trauma is not defined by the event itself but by the nervous system's response to it. When an experience overwhelms a person's capacity to cope, the autonomic nervous system shifts into protective states — hyperarousal, hypoarousal, or a combination of both — that can persist long after the original threat has passed. Dr. Bergemann educates clients on how the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches of the nervous system shape mood, attention, sleep, digestion, and relational capacity.
Drawing on polyvagal theory and contemporary trauma neuroscience, his work helps clients recognize the signals of dysregulation — the racing heart, the collapse, the freeze, the chronic vigilance — and learn to influence those states through breath, movement, attention, and relational attunement. This psychoeducation is not abstract; it becomes a practical map clients use between sessions to understand what is happening inside them and respond with more agency.
03 — Somatic
Sensorimotor Psychotherapy and Body-Based Healing
As a clinician listed in the official Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute directory, Eric Bergemann, PhD integrates body-based interventions developed by Pat Ogden and refined over decades of clinical research. Sensorimotor psychotherapy treats the body as an active participant in healing — tracking posture, gesture, breath, and micro-movements as carriers of unprocessed experience. Rather than analyzing trauma exclusively from the top down, this approach allows the body's organizing wisdom to guide the therapeutic process from the bottom up.
In session, this might look like noticing a subtle bracing in the shoulders, gently exploring an impulse to push away, or completing a defensive movement that was interrupted at the moment of overwhelm. These small, deliberate interventions help the nervous system discharge stored survival energy and cultivate new patterns of safety, boundary, and connection.
04 — Embodiment
How Trauma Lives in the Body
Chronic tension, unexplained pain, digestive issues, sleep disruption, and a persistent sense of unease are often the body's continued reporting of unresolved experience. Trauma imprints itself in implicit memory — the procedural, non-verbal layer of memory that operates outside conscious recall. This is why a person can intellectually know they are safe and still feel braced for danger.
Dr. Bergemann's somatic work helps clients translate these bodily messages into coherent meaning. By cultivating interoceptive awareness — the capacity to sense the internal state of the body — clients develop a more accurate relationship with their own signals and can intervene earlier, with more compassion, when activation arises.
05 — Mindfulness
Mindfulness as a Tool for Regulation and Awareness
Mindfulness is the connective tissue of this work. In a trauma context, mindfulness is not a relaxation technique — it is a precise practice of present-moment awareness that allows clients to stay in contact with their experience without being flooded by it. Eric Bergemann, PhD incorporates mindfulness as a clinical instrument: a way to widen the window of tolerance, observe internal states without judgment, and choose responses rather than be driven by reflexive patterns.
Over time, this practice cultivates a steadier inner witness, a quality of attention that can hold difficult material with curiosity rather than collapse. For trauma survivors, this shift is profound. It restores authorship over inner experience and lays the foundation for sustainable change.
06 — Integration
Integrating Somatic Therapy with Traditional Psychology
Dr. Bergemann's training spans psychodynamic theory, attachment-based therapy, cognitive frameworks, and contemplative traditions. Rather than choosing one lens, he integrates them — using cognitive insight to make meaning, psychodynamic exploration to understand origins, and somatic work to metabolize what the body still holds. This integration ensures that clients receive a thorough, evidence-informed treatment that respects both the mind and the body as co-authors of recovery.
You can read more about his background and approach on drericbergemann.org, ericbergemann.me, and ericbergemann.info.
07 — Attachment
Trauma in Relationships and Attachment Patterns
Many of the wounds clients bring into therapy were formed in relationship, and so they must also be repaired in relationship. Early attachment experiences shape the nervous system's expectations of closeness, conflict, and repair. Adults who grew up with inconsistent attunement, emotional neglect, or relational rupture often carry implicit beliefs about safety and connection that surface in current partnerships, friendships, and work dynamics.
Through a relational, attachment-informed approach, Dr. Bergemann helps clients understand the protective strategies they developed, grieve what was missing, and gradually experience new patterns of safe contact within the therapy relationship itself. This corrective experience becomes a template clients can carry into the relationships that matter most to them.
08 — Who It Helps
Who This Work Helps
This specialized work is well suited to adults navigating:
- Single-incident trauma such as accidents, assaults, medical events, or sudden loss
- Developmental and complex trauma rooted in childhood attachment experiences
- Chronic anxiety, hypervigilance, or a persistent sense of being unsafe
- Depression, numbness, or shutdown that has not responded to talk therapy alone
- Relationship difficulties, intimacy challenges, and attachment ruptures
- High-functioning professionals and executives whose internal experience does not match their external success
- Practitioners and helpers seeking deeper somatic and mindfulness-based work for their own healing
09 — Accessing Care
Accessing Care
Dr. Bergemann's practice is based in Atwater Village, Los Angeles, with virtual sessions available throughout California. New clients can learn more, read about his approach, and reach out through drericbergemann.com or his Psychology Today profile. Additional writing, talks, and professional context can be found on SpeakerHub, about.me, and Issuu.