I am Dr. Smriti Vallath, PhD, a psychologist specialising in trauma care, research, advocacy, and training. I am the Founding Director of CHI for Trauma & Wellbeing, a social enterprise dedicated to advancing trauma-focused mental health care through therapy, research, training, advocacy, prevention, and systems change. My work is grounded in queer-affirmative, culturally responsive, and justice-oriented approaches that recognise trauma as both an individual experience and a systemic reality.
Having been in the field for over 15 years now, trauma focused care is something I feel not only passionately about, but continually learning and growing with. I continue to remain intrigued by how many conditions are treated when trauma is addressed, and mortified at how many conditions continue to go untreated because trauma not only remains untreated but undiagnosed!
I work with adolescents and adults experiencing PTSD, Complex PTSD (CPTSD), attachment and developmental trauma, dissociation, the impacts of adverse childhood experiences, relational trauma, grief, and other trauma-related difficulties. I also work with individuals navigating identity-related stress, burnout, life transitions, and the long-term effects of chronic adversity. In addition, a lot of my clients also experience diagnosed and undiagnosed anxiety, depression, personality disorders or related traits, adolescents struggling with the lack of autonomy and agency in the world; adults who feel disempowered. Most of my clients have had their feelings and emotions dismissed, rejected or abandoned creating a sense of disenfranchised grief.
My therapeutic approach is collaborative, strengths based, very much feedback informed, compassionate, and of course evidence-based. I integrate a range of modalities depending on each person’s needs (since I work with varied groups), including techniques of EMDR, Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (TF-CBT), Attachment-Based Therapy, Internal Family Systems (IFS) and Somatic interventions. I’m also trained in NET, CAT and Body work practices.
In my work, because trauma is never only about one individual, we also integrate systemic views and processes. My clients have often also been subject to discrimination, stigma, racism and more. But what brings most people to me and then have them stay is, as I understand, the value that I hold, no pain or suffering it too small to receive care, compassion and attention.
About sessions with me and at CHI
Sessions are of course serious affairs, we’re discussing some real issues, that have been inauthenticated that bringing it back to awareness, and then learning to hold is an intense process, bringing up quite a bit. But our sessions are also human. We laugh, we giggle, sometimes we even share surprises. My clients and I build a relationship together, not just remain clinical.
