🎙️ Episode 3: From Survival to Healing: Understanding the Adaptations That Shape Our Lives

Why do we respond to stress the way we do?

What if the behaviors we've spent years trying to "fix" were actually the very strategies that once helped us survive?

In this powerful episode of Inherited, host Jessica Sanchez sits down with Barb Varcl Smith, Trauma Recovery Educator, founder of Your Steps Counselling, and creator of The Ascendance Method. Together, they explore how childhood experiences shape our survival adaptations and continue to influence our mental health, relationships, parenting, and overall well-being throughout life.

Rather than asking, "What's wrong with me?", Barb invites us to ask a more compassionate question:

"How did I adapt to survive?"

This simple but profound shift replaces shame with self-understanding and creates space for lasting healing.

In This Episode

✔️ How childhood experiences shape adult behaviors

✔️ Understanding survival adaptations instead of self-blame

✔️ The connection between trauma, relationships, and parenting

✔️ Breaking generational cycles with compassion and awareness

✔️ Restoring balance between mind, body, and spirit

✔️ Supporting neurodiverse individuals and families through a trauma-informed lens

✔️ Building resilience and creating healthier legacies for future generations

Why This Conversation Matters

Barb shares how understanding our natural human adaptations empowers us to move beyond survival mode, reconnect with our authentic selves, and create meaningful change—not only for ourselves but for generations to come.

Whether you're on your own healing journey, raising children, supporting loved ones, or working in mental health, education, healthcare, or caregiving, this conversation offers practical insight, compassion, and hope.

About Our Guest

Barb Varcl Smith is a Trauma Recovery Educator and the founder of Your Steps Counselling. She is the creator of The Ascendance Method, an educational approach to trauma recovery that helps people understand how childhood experiences shape survival adaptations that influence mental health, relationships, parenting, and lifelong well-being.

Her work empowers individuals to replace shame with self-understanding, restore balance between mind, body, and spirit, and break generational cycles of trauma.

Connect with Barb Varcl Smith

🌐 Website: https://your-steps.co.uk

📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/barbsvarclova/

About Inherited

Inherited is hosted by Jessica Sanchez, Founder & CEO of Daughters of Both Suns & Dr. Valencia Henry VQS Access Health

Inherited explores the stories, trauma, resilience, healing, and hope passed from one generation to the next. Through honest conversations with experts, survivors, advocates, and changemakers, the podcast helps listeners better understand what we inherit—and how we can build healthier legacies for ourselves, our families, and future generations.

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💙 Learn more about Daughters of Both Suns and our mission to expand access to culturally responsive mental health care and community healing.

🌐 https://www.daughtersofbothsuns.org