Stefanie F SmithPsychologist, PhD

About

People learn ways to survive trauma that may become unhelpful to them after the trauma ends. But it can be so hard to identify what those things learned are, let alone know how to change them. And some things we learned to do to survive trauma are at the body level – our body changes when needing to survive, causing our body and emotions to respond as if it is always in survival. In the service of survival, both single incident trauma and prolonged childhood trauma can alter emotions, self-worth, behaviors, functioning, relationships, education, and work. Goals, dreams, spiritual direction, and life paths may be disrupted.