Hearts Entwined Podcast

Curiosity Is The Key To Healing Trauma - Lyn Smith & Lisa Arrigo

Lisa Arrigo · October 16, 2026

Author · Wellness · Life Coachin

Interview with Lisa Arrigo

Curiosity Is The Key To Healing Trauma - Lyn Smith & Lisa Arrigo

Podcast: Hearts Entwined Podcast

October 16, 2026 · 30 min

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Curiosity Is The Key To Healing Trauma - Lyn Smith & Lisa Arrigo
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Key topicsI thought I had healed until my past came looking for meAfter more than 17 years of sobriety and decades working as a trauma therapist, Lisa experienced a cocaine relapse that nearly cost her life and left her waking in a Manhattan hospital unable to remember how she got there. That experience forced her to confront something professional knowledge alone could not protect her from: survival patterns can remain quietly active long after we believe we have healed. In her forthcoming teachable memoir Fall Risk, Lisa explores the uncomfortable space where resilience and fragility coexist, and how recognising the patterns beneath our behaviour may allow us to intervene before a relationship, addiction or crisis becomes our wake-up call.Your body remembers what your mind has learned to forgetTrauma has become part of everyday language, yet Lisa believes much of the conversation still leaves people confused about why they react the way they do and risks pathologising normal adaptations to difficult experiences. Drawing together the neurobiology of trauma, human development, attachment, generational patterns and the story of her own life, Fall Risk explores how experiences beginning before we can consciously remember them can shape the way we attach, protect ourselves, manage emotion and move through relationships decades later. Lisa gives listeners a framework for becoming curious about those patterns rather than simply labelling them, and for asking a more useful question than “What is wrong with me?” - what did my mind and body learn to do in order to survive?The most dangerous thing I carried into that hospital was shameLisa knows both sides of shame: the clinician helping people understand trauma and addiction, and the woman staring into a hospital mirror after an overdose thinking she had destroyed everything she had spent decades rebuilding. Her own relapse challenged the idea that healing means reaching a point where we are somehow immune to old wounds, and showed her how secrecy and self-condemnation can deepen the very patterns we are trying to escape. Through Fall Risk, she opens a more human conversation about addiction, mental health and recovery -one that replaces judgement with curiosity and asks what becomes possible when we stop treating our most painful experiences as evidence that something is fundamentally wrong with us.View all topics →

About Lisa Arrigo

Lisa Arrigo, podcast guest

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.

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About this episode

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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