Have you ever tried to support someone you love through something heavy, and felt like what you offered kept sliding past them? Or wondered whether the patterns in your own relationships trace back to something you’ve never quite had a name for?
Trauma doesn’t look one way. It varies from person to person and experience to experience, and that’s exactly why so much well-meaning support misses. What overwhelms one nervous system may leave another untouched, and what you’ve never thought to call “trauma” may still be quietly running your closest relationships.
That’s why I loved this conversation with Scott Stolarick, a trauma-informed psychotherapist who has been practicing for 33 years. Scott thinks of trauma, and of people, as a mosaic: many small pieces, each with its own story, forming a picture that’s unique to every one of us. When you understand how complex and personal trauma really is, you stop trying to support healing with a one-size-fits-all approach, and you start offering the kind of support that actually reaches the person in front of you.
Here’s what you’ll get out of listening:
– The journey that drew Scott to this work
– How to recognize what you might be carrying, even if you’ve never called it “trauma”
– Scott’s “mosaic” way of understanding trauma and human beings
– How unresolved childhood trauma tends to show up in adult romantic relationships
– The nuances of dealing with sexual trauma
– What’s genuinely supportive when your partner is dealing with unprocessed trauma, and what can make things harder without meaning to
– Why healing trauma isn’t just personal work, it’s relationship work too
– The broad strokes of the healing path: what the first steps toward healing actually look like
You can learn more about Scott at mosaicpathwaycounseling.org, and read the article he mentioned, “Trauma: The Complexity Within” (Huffington Post, 2017), here: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trauma-the-complexity-within_b_58d55828e4b0c0980ac0e591
More about Scott Stolarick:
Scott is a licensed, trauma-informed psychotherapist who has been practicing in Illinois for 33 years. He is a seasoned clinician as well as an experienced administrator and clinical supervisor, with Management and Leadership Certifications from the University of Notre Dame and Cornell University. Scott is the owner of Mosaic Pathway Counseling in Gurnee, Illinois.
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