I thought I had healed until my past came looking for me

Relapse After Long Recovery: why survival patterns persist beneath professional knowledge

After 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.

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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448 How To Come Back After A Relapse
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The One Day At A Time Recovery Podcast· Listen to Lisa Arrigo on air