That Girl Diagnosed with C-PTSD Who Transformed Into A Psychotherapist
- Tom O'Connor
- Sep 13
- 8 min read
September 16, 2025
Author Valerie Smith, Founder & Psychotherapist, Sugar Maple Counseling and Ecotherapy
Reviewed by Tom O'Connor, Subject Matter Expert
Author Valerie Smith is a psychotherapist in private practice and the founder of Sugar Maple Counseling and Ecotherapy, located in New York's Hudson Valley. As a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, she draws on advanced training in EMDR, IADC, and TF-CBT to support individuals navigating complex trauma, grief, and significant life transitions. Additionally, she uses her unique skill set as a Certified Forest Therapy Guide to lead clients through mindful, sensory-immersive experiences in nature.
Valerie grew up in a household characterized by abuse, neglect, and instability. She struggled with complex post-traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD) for many years. C-PTSD is a mental health condition that can develop from prolonged or repeated exposure to trauma, often in childhood.
Despite these challenges, she graduated with highest honors from the Fordham University Graduate School of Social Service, and now pairs her clinical knowledge with lived experience to foster understanding, empathy, and compassion for her clients.
According to Valerie Smith:
I came from a lower-middle-class family in an affluent Massachusetts community, where my peers were children of doctors, attorneys, and engineers. My mother was a secretary who used alcohol to cope with her trauma and insecurities. My father held a series of unstable, odd jobs and resorted to violence when he didn't get his way. You could tell which house was ours by the police cars outside when the incessant screaming shattered an otherwise quiet summer evening.
That Girl
I was always "that girl" — the intensely shy, overweight, unkempt one who found comfort in reading novels, too awkward to pick up on social cues. Occasionally, I would form a friendship, only to be quickly rejected when that girl realized her popularity was being negatively affected by associating with me. To cope, I sought refuge in the library or explored the woods behind my childhood home.
Due to my upbringing, for years I viewed myself as damaged goods, with the core beliefs that I was unlovable and that the world was unsafe. I learned behaviors that soothed me in the moment but never brought me peace.
It was only when I stopped avoiding the pain and forced myself to sit with it that I began my life anew, waiting to be fulfilled. Through psychotherapy, spirituality, and soulful connections with people I have chosen to define as family, I realize my goal isn't about fixing what's "wrong" with me. It's about a compassionate journey back to my true, raw self.
Through my experience, I found myself becoming a psychotherapist. It is an honor to partner with my clients as they work toward healing and wellness. Additionally, I use my lived experience to bring a level of empathy—the human element—that can't be matched by textbooks and professional training alone.
My Mother: Supermom versus Abuser-mom
My mother had a love affair with vodka. As an adult and a mental health professional, I recognize she had an addiction and a mental illness. However, that shadowed part of myself — that frightened, sad, neglected little girl — is convinced the liquor always meant more. She kept bottles in various places, including beneath the couch, in the back of a closet, tucked away in the cupboard, and even in the toilet tank. When she wasn't babbling incoherently at us, she often chose words that stung.
My most vivid memory of my mother dates back to when I was very young, probably around four years old. It was a warm, sunny afternoon. My brother Brian, about six at the time, wanted our mother to play with us in the yard. She was in a drunken stupor on the couch, drifting in and out of sleep. Brian shook her to try to wake her up, pleading for her to give us some attention. "Brian, promise me, promise me you will take care of Val when I'm gone; I won't be around much longer," she slurred.
Being a child himself, Brian couldn't understand that our mother was self-medicating with alcohol to cope with severe depression. He thought she was dying. Another time, she slipped on a crayon on my hardwood bedroom floor. I felt terrible. I immediately ran in to apologize, but she only shook her head as she stormed out of the room. For two whole weeks, she said nothing to me. My father could not get her to budge. Then, almost as I had become adjusted to the silence, she resumed speaking to me again in a pleasant tone, as if nothing had happened.
To outsiders, my mother appeared loving, devoted, and kindhearted. A supermom. She was a Cub Scout mother and a volunteer for an after-school art program. It was only when people truly got to know her and saw the chaos in my house that they understood my relationship with her. To cope, I learned to see my mother in parts — there was the woman I loved, but also the abuser.
"Unpredictable" is the perfect word to describe such a parent. In fact, as a clinician, I would say it should be considered a hallmark, universal trait for any parent who subjects their child to emotional abuse and neglect. All children have vulnerable, developing psyches. When their psyches are exposed to the push-and-pull mentality, the hugs followed by sudden rejections for touch, and praises, then met with callous remarks, those are the rains needed to create the hurricane known as complex post-traumatic stress disorder. Such a child does not know what to expect from their parent, leaving them to walk on eggshells.
My Father: Despicable, Violent, Deadbeat
My father was also abusive, but it manifested in ways obvious to outsiders. It was almost comedic — if my mother was the supermom in others' eyes, my father was the despicable, violent, deadbeat.
For many years, Brian and I were silent about the physical abuse our father inflicted on our mother and our dog, so no one knew. Both of our parents coerced us to keep it all secret. We were told, "If you say anything, they'll take you away," or "what happens in this house stays in this house."
When I was fourteen years old, I finally found the courage within myself to speak up. I confessed it all to the school social worker. That was the start of my father being arrested multiple times for domestic violence. I suppose my brother and I were allowed by the DCF to stay in the home because we were both adolescents by that point, so that the foster system would have been especially challenging. I will never know their reasoning.
My Most Defining Memory
My most defining memory - what therapists call the earliest experience that shapes a person's issues - goes back to when I was a toddler. I was two—maybe two and a half, but certainly not three—I witnessed my father strangling my mother over the kitchen sink. I stood there frozen, one hand clutching my pink rabbit stuffed animal, the other held tightly in my older brother's.
For years, I wondered if it had been a nightmare or a trick of a young child's imagination, but my brother later confirmed he had seen it too. It was not a dream. And it would be the first of many memories I carry of the violence that lived in our home. I do not know what I thought at that moment, but as I put it into adult words, I imagine it may have been: "I feel unsafe. I am unsafe. The world isn't safe."
My Recovery From Remaining Stuck
The realization struck me that I was headed toward repeating the vicious cycle of intergenerational trauma that had affected both sides of my family unless I learned to change. But it wasn't easy.
For 24 years, I had survived in trauma mode, operating from negative core beliefs. I didn't know how to be normal, whatever that means. Fundamental needs like safety, security, love, and trust felt like words in a foreign language, easy to pronounce, but their meanings were unknown to me.
I did not want to be just a statistic. Young women like me, who carry scars in their hearts, can grow into beautiful people full of empathy and compassion. Or they can remain stuck, never moving beyond trauma and hating themselves.
To become the best version of myself and avoid being another statistic, I needed to change my usual reactions and practice mindfulness. I realized that I could be loved without fear, and recognized that although my parents were imperfect, they did the best they could with the resources available to them. Over time, my anger softened and was replaced by mercy. I no longer saw my father as a violent narcissist, but as a man who perhaps was ashamed of his mistakes. I no longer viewed my mother as a negligent, emotionally abusive alcoholic, but as a woman fighting her unprocessed trauma.
My Own North Star
Most importantly, I saw myself as someone worthy of connection with others. I felt I had a place in the world. Finally, I attribute my most significant change to the loss of my parents—and the realization that I truly needed to rely on myself, to be my own North Star, to live a successful, fulfilling life.
I lost both my parents when they were young. It left a profound impact on me. I was 22 when my mother died from septic shock and cirrhosis, then 34 when my father lost his battle to adenocarcinoma.
There is a saying that losing one's parents means losing one's connection to the past, but I see it as losing one's sense of constancy. Our parents, whether good or bad, symbolize stability — the promise of an eternal force, an assurance that something will happen again and again. Just as we know the sun will always rise and set, we tend to believe our parents will always be there until death separates us. Losing my parents has taught me that each day is a precious gift to be treasured and an opportunity to start fresh.
I owe much of my recovery to psychotherapy, mindfulness, forest therapy, and routine. The first modality I found helpful was a year of dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), which is an intensive treatment that covers four domains: mindfulness, interpersonal effectiveness (communication and relationship skills), distress tolerance, and emotional regulation. After mastering DBT, I moved on to mindfulness and forest therapy. Mindfulness has given me a foundation for self-control. It has taught me to live in the present moment without judgment, experiencing it for what it is.
Meanwhile, forest therapy has taught me to feel a divine connection with nature based on reciprocity, where we can "give back" to one another. Finally, routine — just those daily things we take for granted, like getting up at the same time — has helped me. Many people who suffer from complex trauma lack a sense of routine because their daily lives have been disrupted. Thus, training myself to have a routine has brought more structure and predictability.
Achieved Accomplishments Despite C-PTSD
My proudest moments are graduating summa cum laude twice. I earned my Bachelor of Social Work from Adelphi University, followed by my Master of Social Work from Fordham University. Another achievement is passing my social work exam on the first attempt, then quickly leaving a low-paying, dead-end job to pursue psychotherapy. Later, it was me becoming an entrepreneur and beginning my thriving psychotherapy practice, where I specialize in bereavement and complex trauma.
However, among everything I will ever do in my lifetime, my greatest accomplishment will be becoming a mother to my two-year-old. It has taken me becoming a mother for me to feel my mother's presence again after 13 long years of absence — 13 years of her face and voice fading from my memory. Unfortunately, my parents were not present for any of these accomplishments, but their legacy lives within me through my memories.
I believe that, in some ways, my experiences and my determination to do right have healed me the most from my C-PTSD. My son will be raised with love. He will never know the effects of intergenerational trauma. Never smell vodka on my breath or witness domestic violence. I know that if I can nurture one life to blossom into a confident, independent, well-rounded human, then I know I have made my most magnificent contribution to the world. To know love, to feel love, to be loved.
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Valerie Smith can be reached through the form on her website.
Tom O'Connor, Adult Child Syndrome Subject Matter Expert, is the author of Discover Your Adult Child and publisher/editor of the Vital Voyage Blog.
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