My guest this week is Dr. Edith Shiro, a clinical psychologist and author who has spent more than three decades working with trauma survivors, refugees, and communities navigating profound adversity. She is also the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors and Syrian refugees, and that lived experience sits at the heart of everything she does.
In this conversation, Dr. Shiro and Ash explore what trauma really means, how it shows up in perfectionism, people pleasing, dissociation, and addiction, and why so many people move through life not realising they are carrying wounds at all.
Dr. Shiro also touches on her five-stage framework for post-traumatic growth, including the science behind why spirituality changes the brain and how individuals can transform their pain into purpose.
We will all experience trauma in some form. This conversation is about what you choose to do with it, and whether you allow it to define you.
Episode chapters:
00:22 Introducing Dr. Edith Shiro
02:03 What Trauma Really Means
03:35 Trauma Responses: Fight, Flight, Freeze and Fawn
06:32 Minimizing Trauma: When You Don't Think You Qualify
07:56 Micro Traumas and How They Accumulate Over Time
10:22 Dissociation: The Protective Tool That Keeps Us Stuck
13:25 The Invisible Armor and the Emptiness Underneath
17:41 The Universal Wounds: Shame, Rejection, and Not Belonging
20:53 The Unexpected Gift of Trauma: The Book and the Title
23:06 Why Two People Can Experience the Same Trauma So Differently
27:47 Intergenerational Trauma and the Science of Epigenetics
29:29 Becoming the Intergenerational Alchemist
30:52 Radical Acceptance: The Hardest and Most Essential First Step
31:43 The Parallel Between Stage One and Step One
36:21 Why We Lie: Fear, Shame, and the Double Life
39:10 Why Spirituality Is Essential for Post-Traumatic Growth
41:45 Turning Pain into Purpose
45:55 Dr. Edith's Own Spiritual Practice
49:25 There Is Hope and There Is a Way Out
Connect with Dr. Edith below:
The Unexpected Gift of Trauma: The Path to Posttraumatic Growth by Dr. Edith Shiro
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