Healthy Mind, Healthy Life

This episode discusses childhood trauma, grief, and emotional healing. If any part of this conversation touches something personal for you, please know that support is available. Reach out to a trusted adult, counsellor, or a mental health helpline.

 

What if the struggles we see in teenagers today are not just about school stress or social media, but echoes of stories that began much earlier in childhood? And what if the silence around those early experiences is precisely what shapes the anxiety, self-doubt, and emotional patterns we carry into adult life?

Stacy Schaffer, a licensed professional counselor with over two decades of experience working with children, teens, and young adults, joins Sayan on Healthy Mind, Healthy Life for a conversation that is raw, compassionate, and long overdue. Drawing on her book With Love from a Children's Therapist and her own lived journey through grief and healing, Stacy explores how unspoken childhood experiences shape identity, what parents and caregivers can watch for, and why the most powerful thing any adult can offer a struggling child is not advice, but space to be heard.

ABOUT THE GUEST:

Stacy Schaffer, MA, LPC is a licensed professional counselor, founder of Strong Hearts Counseling in Arvada, Colorado, and the author of With Love from a Children's Therapist: #lessonsihavelearnedalongtheway (2025). With over twenty years of experience specialising in childhood grief, trauma, and Synergetic Play Therapy, she also leads youth and family programs at The Refuge, a community healing center. Her book weaves together her personal story and professional insight into a guide for anyone navigating childhood wounds or supporting a young person through them.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• Childhood experiences do not disappear with time. What goes unprocessed tends to surface later, often sideways, in how people relate, connect, and feel about themselves.
• There is no universal checklist of warning signs in children. The most important thing a parent or caregiver can do is deeply know their child's baseline, so they can recognise what is different.
• The concept of masking matters. Children who appear high-performing or "fine on the outside" may be carrying significant emotional weight that simply has not surfaced yet.
• Play is not trivial. For children, play is language. Modalities like Sand Tray therapy offer a way to express what words cannot reach.
• Doing your own inner work is the best gift you can give the young people in your life. Unhealed experiences in caregivers directly affect their capacity to hold space for a child's pain.
• What struggling children and adults need most is not to be fixed. They need space to be heard, without interruption, without feedback, without advice, unless they ask.

CONNECT WITH THE GUEST:

Website: https://authorstacyschaffer.com/ 

Therapy practice: https://stacyschaffer.com/ 

Instagram: @HOPERESTORED Book: With Love from a Children's Therapist by Stacy Schaffer, available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Spotify (audiobook), and Audible. First chapter free at https://authorstacyschaffer.com/ .

EPISODE CHAPTERS:

[00:00] Cold Open: What If the Silence Around Childhood Is What Shapes Us?

[06:30] Welcome & Introducing Stacy Schaffer

[08:30] What Called Stacy to This Work: Grief, Loss, and Finding a Safe Place

[10:30] Do Childhood Experiences Really Shape Who We Become?

[12:00] What Happens When Families Stay Silent: Masking and Leaking

[15:00] How Caregivers Can Recognise Emotional Struggles in Children

[21:30] Synergetic Play Therapy and the Sand Tray: When Play Becomes Language

[25:00] Breaking Generational Patterns: The Grief of Facing Childhood Honestly

[30:00] The Most Important Thing Any Adult Can Offer: Space to Be Heard

 

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