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Trauma Therapy for Survivors in
New Jersey
You may have made it through a difficult experience, yet its impact continues to shape how you feel, connect with others, or understand yourself. Trauma can affect your sense of safety, relationships, trust, identity, and even how you experience the world around you.
Whether you've experienced sexual assault, interpersonal violence, abuse, or betrayal by someone or something you once trusted, therapy can offer space to explore what happened and how it continues to affect your life.
At Storia Therapy, I provide virtual trauma therapy for survivors throughout New Jersey. My approach is grounded in years of clinical experience, survivor advocacy, and research, with an emphasis on collaboration, autonomy, and understanding your experiences within the broader context of your life.
Understanding Trauma and Its Impact
Trauma doesn't look the same for everyone. Some people experience flashbacks, nightmares, anxiety, or hypervigilance. Others notice changes in their relationships, difficulty trusting, emotional numbness, shame, anger, or a sense of disconnection from themselves.
According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, approximately 6% of Americans experience post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) at some point in their lives. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also reports that nearly half of women and more than one in six men have experienced some form of contact sexual violence during their lifetimes.
These numbers remind us that traumatic experiences are widespread, even when conversations remain difficult or hidden. Not everyone who experiences trauma develops PTSD, and you don't need a diagnosis to seek support. Your experiences and their impact deserve attention regardless of whether they fit a particular clinical label.
My Experience Supporting Survivors
I'm William Zarillo, Ed.D., LCSW, founder of Storia Therapy. Since 2017, my professional work has centered on trauma response, survivor advocacy, violence prevention, and supporting individuals navigating the aftermath of interpersonal harm.
Much of this experience developed through my work with the Rutgers University Office for Violence Prevention and Victim Assistance (VPVA), where I supported survivors through crisis response, advocacy, counseling, and group programming. Beginning in 2019, my work expanded into individual psychotherapy for survivors navigating sexual violence, trauma, and related mental health concerns.
My work has also included developing experiential approaches to survivor support, including helping pilot a scuba-based therapeutic experience intended to create opportunities for survivors to reconnect with their bodies and sense of agency.
Beyond my clinical experience, I completed a Doctor of Education (Ed.D.), with dissertation research examining sexual violence activism, institutional betrayal, and student mobilization at Rutgers University between 1970 and 2000. This research explored how survivors and student activists challenged institutional responses to sexual violence, demanded accountability, and advocated for meaningful change.
Together, my clinical, advocacy, and academic experiences inform a perspective that recognizes trauma as shaped by relationships, communities, institutions, and the responses people receive when they seek support.
Common Reasons Survivors Seek Therapy
Survivors enter therapy for many different reasons. Some are processing recent experiences, while others are beginning to explore events that occurred years or decades earlier.
Sexual assault and sexual abuse: Processing sexual violence, coercion, harassment, or unwanted sexual contact.
Interpersonal and relationship trauma: Navigating emotional, physical, or psychological abuse, manipulation, and violations of trust.
PTSD and trauma-related symptoms: Addressing intrusive memories, hypervigilance, avoidance, nightmares, anxiety, or emotional distress.
Institutional betrayal: Exploring experiences of being dismissed, silenced, unsupported, or harmed by institutions expected to provide safety and care.
Shame, guilt, and self-blame: Examining beliefs about yourself that may have developed following traumatic experiences.
Trust, intimacy, and relationships: Understanding how trauma influences connection, vulnerability, boundaries, and safety.
Identity and self-understanding: Making sense of how difficult experiences have influenced your relationship with yourself and the world.
Disconnection from your body: Exploring physical tension, emotional numbness, or difficulty feeling present and grounded.
You don't need to identify as a survivor, remember every detail, or know exactly how an experience has affected you to begin exploring it in therapy.
What Is Institutional Betrayal?
Trauma doesn't always end with the original experience of harm. Sometimes, the response from people, organizations, or institutions expected to provide protection can become another source of distress.
Institutional betrayal describes ways institutions may contribute to harm through their actions, inaction, or failures to respond appropriately. This can occur within universities, workplaces, healthcare systems, religious organizations, athletic programs, and other institutions.
For survivors, these experiences may complicate trust, belonging, identity, and seeking support. They can raise difficult questions about accountability, justice, and moving forward when systems you depended on have let you down. My doctoral research and professional experience inform my interest in these experiences.
Therapy can offer space to explore them without requiring you to minimize what happened, reconcile with an institution, forgive someone, or arrive at a particular understanding of healing.
Working With a Male Therapist as a Survivor
For some survivors, working with a male therapist may bring hesitation, uncertainty, or discomfort. These feelings may connect to previous experiences, concerns about trust, or personal preferences about who feels safest.
I recognize that trust is not something a therapist is entitled to. It develops through consistency, collaboration, transparency, and respect for boundaries. My role isn't to tell you how you should feel or assume what safety and healing mean to you.
Men who have experienced sexual violence, abuse, or trauma may encounter additional barriers, including stigma and expectations surrounding masculinity. My experience working with male survivors and facilitating men's support programming informs these conversations.
Regardless of your gender or identity, you deserve to explore difficult experiences with a therapist who respects your autonomy, perspective, and pace.
What Does Trauma-Informed Therapy Look Like?
Trauma-informed therapy begins with the understanding that difficult experiences can influence how we experience safety, relationships, emotions, and ourselves.Â
Together, we may explore developing ways to respond to anxiety, distress, and trauma reminders; understanding how trauma has influenced beliefs about yourself and others; reconnecting with values, identity, and agency; exploring boundaries, relationships, and trust; challenging shame, self-blame, and stories that reduce your identity to what happened; and creating space for grief, anger, uncertainty, and other responses.
There is no single timeline or universal definition of healing. Our work is collaborative, with attention to your goals, comfort, and readiness.
Therapy Beyond the Trauma
Your experiences matter, but they do not have to become the only story through which you understand yourself. Therapy may involve processing painful memories or PTSD symptoms, exploring relationships, reclaiming interests, reconnecting with your body, or making room for parts of yourself that have felt overshadowed.
You may want to talk about what happened, focus on what's happening now, or still be figuring out what you need. All of these can be starting points.
Therapy isn't about prescribing what recovery should look like. It's about understanding your experiences, recognizing possibilities, and moving toward a life that reflects what matters to you.
Space to heal. Space to grow.
The Heart of Connection
At Storia Therapy, I believe that healing is fundamentally rooted in the power of connection. My philosophy is built on creating a secure, collaborative environment where your stories are heard with empathy and without judgment. Together, we navigate the complexities of your experiences, uncovering resilience and shaping a narrative that empowers you to move forward with clarity and purpose.
Virtual Trauma Therapy Throughout New Jersey
Storia Therapy provides online individual therapy for adults throughout New Jersey, including college students, young professionals, men, LGBTQ+ individuals, and people from diverse cultural and personal backgrounds.
Whether you're navigating recent trauma, longstanding experiences, institutional betrayal, or changes in your relationships and sense of self, therapy can provide a space to explore your experiences at your own pace.
You are more than what happened to you. Your story belongs to you, including the parts still being written.