Trauma Isn't About What Happened to You — It's About How Your Brain Is Still Responding

The Advisor with Stacey Chillemi · Dec 18, 2025 · 46m

You keep minimizing it. Telling yourself it was not that bad, that other people have been through worse, that you should be over it by now. But trauma is not a measure of the severity of what happened. It is a measure of how your nervous system encoded the experience — and a small moment can create a lasting response just as powerfully as a large one. Michelle Smith is a trauma-informed therapist who works specifically with debunking the myths that keep people from getting the help they need and rebuilding the nervous system regulation that trauma disrupts. What she shares about how triggers…