In this episode of Deeply Functional, Todd Schmenk explores how to work with trauma through a functional contextualist lens without getting stuck in the story or losing momentum toward change.

Rather than focusing on trauma as an event or diagnosis, this episode reframes trauma as what gets shaped over time, including avoidance patterns, fusion with fear based rules, narrowed identities, emotional numbing, and the quiet loss of values driven living. Todd examines a common challenge in trauma work, where clinicians hold space with care and compassion yet unintentionally stop shaping movement toward flexibility.

Listeners are guided through the core functional targets that often show up in trauma focused work, including fusion with the trauma narrative, experiential avoidance and hyper control, and values collapse into safety seeking. Through clear clinical framing and a brief case illustration, the episode demonstrates how therapists can validate suffering while still reinforcing defusion, willingness, self as context, and values based direction.

This episode is for clinicians who want to honor survival strategies without letting them define the limits of a client’s life, and who are looking for a process sensitive, context aware way to help trauma survivors build something larger than what happened to them.

Holding space matters.
Shaping flexibility matters too.