Lisa Arrigo · October 16, 2026

Psychotherapist and Clinical Social Worker Specializing in Trauma, Attachment, and Addiction
25+ years Experience serving LGBTQ clients2 University degrees: BS & MSW4 Specialist certifications & training milestonesLicensed Clinical Social Worker New York
Lisa Arrigo has spent more than three decades helping people understand what trauma leaves behind long after the original danger has passed. A New York Licensed Clinical Social Worker and psychotherapist, her work sits at the intersection of trauma, attachment, addiction, neurobiology, shame, and the deeply human ways people learn to survive.
Her perspective is powerful because it comes from both sides of the therapeutic relationship. Lisa has devoted her career to helping others heal, while also confronting the impact of trauma, addiction, relapse, and recovery in her own life. After more than 17 years of sobriety, she experienced a cocaine relapse that nearly cost her life and left her waking in a Manhattan hospital unable to remember how she had arrived there. That experience challenged everything she thought she understood about healing and forced her to confront a difficult truth: we can have insight, language, and years of recovery behind us and still carry survival patterns that remain active beneath the surface.
That lived experience now sits alongside decades of clinical training. Lisa earned her BS from Trinity University and her MSW from Fordham University School of Social Work, followed by post-graduate study at the Westchester Institute for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy.
Lyn is joined by trauma specialist and therapistLisa Arrigoto understand how curiosity serves as the true catalyst for healing. Sharing her own raw journey through perfectionism, addiction, and personal awakening, Lisa reframes addictive habits and emotional triggers not as moral flaws, but as deeply conditioned survival adaptations rooted in unresolved wounds.
Together, they explore why knowledge alone isn't enough to recover, how relational safety and somatic awareness de-pathologise our struggles, and why simple, compassionate daily practices can ultimately rewire our nervous system toward lasting self-love.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Intellectual knowledge alone cannot heal trauma; lasting recovery requires deep curiosity and attunement to what our bodies are experiencing beneath conscious thought.
Addictive behaviours, perfectionism, and unhealthy habits originate as natural survival adaptations designed to regulate an overwhelmed nervous system.
Healing cannot occur in isolation, as genuine recovery depends on cultivating safe, empathetic relationships with others and compassionate self-love from within.
Triggers are not evidence of personal failure, but rather essential alarm systems pointing to wounded parts of ourselves that require attention and care.
BEST MOMENTS
"Knowledge in and of itself is not enough to heal. We need to get curious about what's happening in our bodies and what those patterns were before we even had consciousness and as we grow."
"Every addiction starts as a coping strategy. Every addiction or unhealthy habit starts as a way of coping, attempting to regulate the nervous system..."
"Because if we don't have safety in our relationships, we cannot heal in isolation. I tried that... but we need other people to heal. We're wired for relationships, and we cannot do it alone."
"Our triggers are really just red flags to let us know that something within us needs attention or healing."
ABOUT THE GUEST - Lisa Arrigo - Psychotherapist/ Trauma Specialist
Lisa Arrigo’s twenty-year journey as a psychotherapist has been extraordinary. Her personal and professional experiences have given her a
profound appreciation for our innate capacity not simply to survive, but to
transform difficult and often traumatic life events in ways that foster
understanding, a deeper sense of connection with oneself and others and,
hopefully, healing.Website - https://lisaarrigo.com
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/lisa.arrigo.therapy
ABOUT THE HOST
Lyn Smith – (The Queen of HEARTS) – Love, Dating & Relationship Expert
Lyn’s personal story is a very inspirational and harrowing one of how she went from having unhealthy and unfulfilling relationships with men (on the back of several serious traumatic sexual assaults in her teens) to now feeling safe, fulfilled, alive, full of passion and having inner peace.
She has a proven track record as a Love Solutions - Relationship Expert/ Trainer/ Inspirational Speaker and Best-Selling Author based upon her own vast personal research, experiential learning and training with the world’s leading industry experts. Lyn makes a difference by helping you make a difference; she has a vision of contributing back on a global scale.
Contact Method lyn@hearts-entwined.com
This Podcast has been brought to you by Disruptive Media. https://disruptivemedia.co.uk/
Guest: Lisa Arrigo
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