Table of Contents
Medical Reviewer
Marjorie Gies, M.D. Psychiatrist & Medical Director
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Women’s Trauma Residential Treatment Center
Trauma can affect how a woman feels in her body, relates to others, manages emotions, and moves through daily life. For some women, trauma also becomes connected to substance use, eating disorder behaviors, anxiety, depression, or patterns of self-protection that once helped them survive but now keep them feeling stuck.
Casa Serena offers trauma treatment in Santa Barbara for women who need safety, structure, and compassionate support as they begin to heal. As a women-only residential treatment center, Casa Serena provides a trauma-informed community where women can slow down, feel understood, and learn new ways to care for themselves.
This page will cover:
- What trauma is and who trauma treatment is for
- How trauma treatment differs from PTSD and dual diagnosis care
- What day-to-day residential treatment may include
- Trauma-informed therapies offered at Casa Serena
- Why a women-only environment can support healing
Community and Care
A Trusted Women’s Trauma Treatment Center
Casa Serena is a licensed women’s residential treatment center with decades of experience supporting women through trauma recovery. Since 1959, Casa Serena has remained rooted in its original Santa Barbara home, offering a community-centered model of care built on safety, honesty, and women supporting women.
What sets Casa Serena apart:
- Women-only trauma-informed residential care
- A nonprofit, women-owned and operated treatment program
- Licensed and accredited care
- Individualized treatment planning
- Experienced psychiatrists, therapists, and trauma-trained staff
- A peaceful Santa Barbara setting minutes from the beach
- A full continuum of care, including detox, residential treatment, outpatient care, and sober living
- Community-based healing through shared routines, peer support, and connection
Casa Serena’s trauma treatment program supports emotional safety, nervous system regulation, and long-term healing. Our team understands that many women don’t turn to substances, disordered eating, isolation, or emotional shutdown for no reason. These behaviors often develop in response to pain, fear, loss, or trauma.
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What Is Trauma?
Trauma is the body and mind’s response to an event, relationship, or ongoing experience that feels physically or emotionally harmful. It can happen after one frightening event, or it can build over time through repeated exposure to stress, instability, neglect, abuse, or unsafe relationships.1
Trauma may be connected to experiences such as:
- Domestic violence
- Physical, emotional, or sexual abuse
- Childhood neglect
- Severe illness or injury
- The death of a loved one
- Witnessing violence
- Natural disasters
- Medical trauma
- Loss of safety, stability, or control
- Long-term relational harm
Every woman’s experience is different. What matters most is not whether someone else would define an experience as “serious enough,” but how that experience continues to affect your life, body, relationships, and sense of self.
You are not alone
Who Is Trauma Treatment For?
Trauma treatment is for women whose past experiences continue to affect their present-day well-being. Some women come to Casa Serena with a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Others may not identify with PTSD, but they know they feel stuck in fear, shame, avoidance, emotional overwhelm, or disconnection.
Trauma treatment may be appropriate for women who:
- Feel unable to manage daily life because of trauma symptoms
- Use alcohol, drugs, food, restriction, isolation, or control to cope
- Have tried outpatient therapy but need more support
- Feel unsafe, dysregulated, or overwhelmed in their current environment
- Have experienced repeated relational trauma
- Struggle with co-occurring mental health concerns
- Need a structured, supportive place to stabilize and begin deeper healing
Trauma treatment is not only for women with PTSD. PTSD is one possible response to trauma, but trauma can also contribute to anxiety, depression, substance use disorders, eating disorders, relationship difficulties, and emotional dysregulation. At Casa Serena, treatment looks at the whole woman, not just one diagnosis.
Casa Serena Trauma Treatment
Trauma Treatment, PTSD Treatment, and Dual Diagnosis Care
Trauma treatment, PTSD treatment, and dual diagnosis care often overlap, but they’re not the same.
Trauma treatment
Trauma treatment focuses on the impact of painful or overwhelming experiences. This may include:
- Acute trauma
- Complex trauma
- Childhood trauma
- Relational trauma
- Chronic stress
The goal is to help women build safety, understand trauma responses, regulate the nervous system, and reconnect with themselves.
PTSD treatment
PTSD treatment focuses more specifically on symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. These may include flashbacks, nightmares, avoidance, intrusive memories, hypervigilance, or intense emotional reactions connected to a traumatic event.
Dual diagnosis treatment
Dual diagnosis treatment supports women who are experiencing both mental health concerns and substance use. Many women use substances to cope with trauma symptoms, numb painful emotions, sleep, manage anxiety, or feel more in control. Dual diagnosis care addresses both the substance use and the underlying emotional pain.
Our Trauma Treatment
What to Expect Day to Day in Our Trauma Treatment
Trauma treatment at Casa Serena is structured around safety, support, and steady progress. The exact schedule depends on each woman’s level of care, whether she is in detox, residential treatment, outpatient care, or sober living. However, every level is designed to help women build emotional stability, strengthen coping skills, and feel less alone in their healing.
Depending on the level of care, treatment may include:
- Individual therapy
- Group therapy
- Trauma-informed skills work
- Psychiatric support when appropriate
- Substance use and relapse prevention support
- Wellness and mindfulness practices
- Shared community time
- Holistic activities such as garden therapy, ecotherapy, yoga, Tai Chi, or equine-assisted therapy
- Time for reflection, rest, and grounding
- Aftercare planning and ongoing recovery support
Across all levels of care, Casa Serena’s communal model helps women experience healthy connection in real time. Healing doesn’t happen only in a therapy room. It can also happen while sharing a meal, asking for help, completing a household task, participating in a group, or realizing you’re not alone.
Treatment Options
Trauma Treatment Modalities at Casa Serena
Casa Serena uses a trauma-informed approach that supports the mind, body, and nervous system. Each woman’s treatment plan is personalized based on her history, symptoms, goals, and readiness for different types of therapeutic work.
Trauma Resiliency Model
The Trauma Resiliency Model (TRM) helps women understand how trauma affects the nervous system.2 Trauma can leave the body stuck in survival responses, such as fight, flight, freeze, or shutdown. TRM gives women practical skills for noticing body sensations, tracking emotional activation, and returning to a greater sense of balance.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a trauma therapy that uses bilateral stimulation, such as eye movements, tones, or taps, to help the brain reprocess distressing memories.3 EMDR can help reduce the emotional intensity connected to traumatic experiences and support more adaptive beliefs about the self.
Cognitive Processing Therapy
Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) helps women identify and challenge painful beliefs that can develop after trauma.4 These beliefs may include thoughts such as “It was my fault,” “I should have stopped it,” “I cannot trust anyone,” or “I am permanently broken.”
CPT supports women in examining those beliefs with compassion and clarity. The goal is not to erase what happened, but to reduce the grip trauma has on identity, relationships, and the future.
CBT, DBT, and somatic therapies
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) helps women understand the connection between thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) can support emotional regulation, distress tolerance, mindfulness, and healthier relationships.
Because trauma can live in the body as well as the mind, Casa Serena also incorporates body-centered and holistic therapies. Together, these therapies help women feel more present, more connected to their bodies, and more capable of soothing the nervous system.
Casa Serena
How Long Does Trauma Treatment Last?
The length of trauma treatment depends on each woman’s needs, goals, clinical history, and progress. Casa Serena offers 30-, 60-, and 90-day lengths of stay, with flexibility to design care around each client’s individual needs.
Some women begin with detox before stepping into residential trauma treatment. Others may enter residential care directly. After residential treatment, many women continue healing through outpatient care, sober living, aftercare, or alumni support.
Trauma recovery doesn’t follow a rigid timeline. Some women need short-term stabilization, while others benefit from more time to address complex trauma, substance use, eating disorder symptoms, or long-standing patterns of emotional distress. Casa Serena’s continuum of care allows women to receive support at different stages of healing, rather than feeling rushed through a single level of treatment.
Women's-Only Trauma Treatment
Why a Women-Only Environment Matters
For many women, trauma has happened in relationships where safety, trust, and boundaries were broken.5 A women-only treatment environment can create a greater sense of emotional safety, especially for those who have experienced interpersonal violence, sexual trauma, domestic abuse, or gender-specific shame.
In a women-only space, clients may feel more comfortable speaking openly about their experiences. They may also find it easier to connect with others who understand the layered ways trauma can affect womanhood, motherhood, relationships, sexuality, body image, caregiving roles, and self-worth.
Casa Serena’s model is built around women supporting women. This doesn’t mean every woman has the same story. It means each woman enters a community where she can be seen, heard, and supported without judgment.
Insurance Plans We Accept
Casa Serena Treatment Center is proud to work with most major insurance plans. Typically, most PPO, EPO, POS, and HMO plans will help cover most of the costs associated with treatment at our facility. To find out your benefits and coverage options, please fill out the form below and one of our caring admissions advisors will contact you as soon as possible.
At the current time, we are unable to accept Medi-Cal, Medicaid, or Medicare policies. We suggest contacting the number on the back of your insurance card or call 211 for a list of local Medicaid resources near you.
References:
- SAMHSA. (2026, May 8). Trauma and violence: What is trauma and its effects? https://www.samhsa.gov/mental-health/trauma-violence
- Grabbe, L., & Miller-Karas, E. (2017). The Trauma Resiliency Model: a “Bottom-Up” intervention for trauma psychotherapy. Journal of the American Psychiatric Nurses Association, 24(1), 76–84. https://doi.org/10.1177/1078390317745133
- EMDR Institute, Inc. (2024, December 3). What is EMDR? – EMDR Institute – EYE MOVEMENT DESENSITIZATION AND REPROCESSING THERAPY. https://www.emdr.com/what-is-emdr/
- American Psychological Association. (2017, July 31). Cognitive processing therapy (CPT). https://www.apa.org/ptsd-guideline/treatments/cognitive-processing-therapy
- Iverson, K. M., Dick, A., McLaughlin, K. A., Smith, B. N., Bell, M. E., Gerber, M. R., Cook, N., & Mitchell, K. S. (2012). Exposure to interpersonal violence and its associations with psychiatric morbidity in a U.S. national sample: A gender comparison. Psychology of Violence, 3(3), 273–287. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0030956
Begin Trauma Treatment at Casa Serena
You don’t have to carry trauma alone. Whether you’re struggling with PTSD, substance use, emotional numbness, anxiety, shame, or patterns you no longer want to repeat, healing is possible with the right support.
Casa Serena offers women’s trauma treatment in Santa Barbara through a compassionate, community-centered program designed to meet women where they are. Our team provides evidence-based therapy, holistic care, and a full continuum of support so women can begin building safety from the inside out.
If you or someone you love is ready to learn more, contact Casa Serena today. We are here to walk beside you with care, respect, and hope.