Adult Child

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You’re not needy. You’re not detached. You’re just wired for survival. This episode reveals how your nervous system learned to love — and what it takes to rewire safety.

Heidi Priebe is a YouTuber, writer, and educator with a master’s degree in attachment theory who’s built a massive following for her honest, body-based approach to healing. She grew up being labeled the “difficult child,” internalizing the belief that something was wrong with her long before anyone recognized the impact of emotional neglect. Her lifelong effort to make sense of that pain led her to study how att...

⚓JOIN THE SHITSHOW — The Adult Child Healing Community

6 weekly Zoom support groups · Discussion boards · Peer connection

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Get the newsletter for community updates, healing insights & early access to workshops.

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Every argument has an audience you can’t see — the ghosts of the past. This episode unpacks how unhealed trauma sneaks into our relationships and how to finally stop fighting the wrong person.

Dr. Tian Dayton is a clinical psychologist, Senior Fellow at The Meadows, and author of 15 books including The ACoA Trauma Syndrome and Emotional Sobriety. In this conversation, she revisits the moment that changed everything — standing in her living room, locked in a fight with her husband, and realizing they weren’t two adults arguing, but two wounded children replaying their pasts.

✨ What this episod...

⚓JOIN THE SHITSHOW — The Adult Child Healing Community

6 weekly Zoom support groups · Discussion boards · Peer connection

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Ever wonder what happens when the host of a trauma podcast finds herself right back in the trenches?

A story about what happens when healing collides with old survival patterns — and how the body can pull you back into the past, even when your mind knows better. This isn’t a “how-to.” It’s truth-telling about the gap between understanding your trauma and actually feeling safe inside your own skin.

✨ What this episode explores:

Childhood relational trauma wires us for trauma bonds — When love and pain come from the same person, the nervous system fuses at...

⚓JOIN THE SHITSHOW — The Adult Child Healing Community

6 weekly Zoom support groups · Discussion boards · Peer connection

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Get the newsletter for community updates, healing insights & early access to workshops.

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SPONSORS

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After an eleven-month hiatus, Adult Child is back... messier, deeper, and more honest than ever.

Host Andrea Ashley returns to revisit what it really means to heal from a dysfunctional family, through brutal honesty, emotional truth, and humor (of course).

This season kicks off with vulnerability and chaos — trauma bonds, repetition compulsion, and a story she’s never told before.

Buckle the hell up. Healing’s not linear, and it’s about to get real.

— — —

⚓JOIN THE SHITSHOW — The Adult Child Healing Community

6 weekly Zoom support groups · Discussion boards ·...

After an eleven-month hiatus, Adult Child is back... messier, deeper, and more honest than ever.

Host Andrea Ashley returns to revisit what it really means to heal from a dysfunctional family, through brutal honesty, emotional truth, and humor (of course).

This season kicks off with vulnerability and chaos — trauma bonds, repetition compulsion, and a story she’s never told before.

Buckle the hell up. Healing’s not linear, and it’s about to get real.

— — —

⚓JOIN THE SHITSHOW — The Adult Child Healing Community

6 weekly Zoom support groups · Discussion boards ·...

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How I learned I was an Adult Child - The Tale of 2 Brians

THE LAUNDRY LIST - Common Characteristics of an Adult Child

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How I learned I was an Adult Child - The Tale of 2 Brians

THE LAUNDRY LIST - Common Characteristics of an Adult Child

What happens when the very people who were supposed to teach you love taught you pain instead? When you’ve been wired for abandonment and neglect, it’s no wonder your nervous system confuses chaos for connection.

Lisa A. Romano is a certified life coach, bestselling author, and leading voice in codependency and inner child recovery. After growing up in a home defined by addiction, denial, and emotional neglect, Lisa spent years chasing love in all the wrong places before realizing her patterns were rooted in unresolved childhood wounds.

🔑 Mother Hunger & Emotional Neglect – How unmet childhood...

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How I learned I was an Adult Child - The Tale of 2 Brians

THE LAUNDRY LIST - Common Characteristics of an Adult Child

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How I learned I was an Adult Child - The Tale of 2 Brians

THE LAUNDRY LIST - Common Characteristics of an Adult Child

What if the pain you’re feeling today isn’t about the breakup, but about every wound that came before it? When abandonment gets triggered, it pulls you straight back into the shame and fear of childhood.

Susan Anderson is a psychotherapist and author known as the leading expert on abandonment and healing attachment wounds. Her groundbreaking work comes not only from clinical expertise, but from living through the pain of being suddenly abandoned after nearly two decades of marriage.

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How I learned I was an Adult Child - The Tale of 2 Brians

THE LAUNDRY LIST - Common Characteristics of an Adult Child

What happens when speaking your truth means losing the very people you’ve spent your whole life trying to please? For so many adult children, breaking the silence around abuse and dysfunction doesn’t bring closeness—it brings exile, denial, and the gut-punch of realizing love was always conditional.

Dr. Ingrid Clayton is a clinical psychologist, trauma therapist, and the author of Believing Me: Healing from Narcissistic Abuse and Complex Trauma and Fawning Why the Need to Please Makes Us Lose Ourselves–and How to Find Our Way Back. Beyond her professional expertise, Ingrid shares her deeply personal...

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How I learned I was an Adult Child - The Tale of 2 Brians

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What happens when the wounds you thought you’d healed—or didn’t even know were there—come roaring back? And it can feel like you’re back at square one, even though you’re not.

Erin Martin is a podcaster, mom, wife, and reality TV connoisseur. She grew up in a high-control religious group and in a home marked by addiction and dysfunction, carrying wounds she wouldn’t fully understand until much later in life. In this episode, she opens up about how those buried traumas resurfaced years into sobriety—through chronic pain, relapse, and the reckoning that c...

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...

What if the apology, the change, the parent you always wanted… never comes? This episode dives into the painful hope that keeps so many adult children of dysfunctional families stuck.

Alana Carvalho is a licensed mental health counselor, author, and speaker specializing in codependency, perfectionism, and relationships. Having grown up in a dysfunctional family herself, Alana knows firsthand the toll enmeshment and unhealthy dynamics can take — and she’s turned that lived experience into a mission to help others untangle from toxic patterns and build healthier, more authentic connections.

🔑 Key Takeaways

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How I learned I was an Adult Child - The Tale of 2 Brians

THE LAUNDRY LIST - Common Characteristics of an Adult Child

...

When the people who were supposed to protect you also hurt you, your nervous system learns: closeness is dangerous. This is a conversation about what it takes to finally let yourself receive the love you’ve been craving your whole life — without running from it when it shows up.

Paul Gilmartin is a comedian and writer best known as the host of The Mental Illness Happy Hour, a podcast that’s been exploring the messier side of the human mind for over a decade. He shares about his own path through addiction, recovery, and learning how to build...

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How I learned I was an Adult Child - The Tale of 2 Brians

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...

You don’t have to be hit, screamed at, or abandoned to grow up with deep emotional wounds. Sometimes the most lasting pain comes from parents who smiled on the outside — but couldn’t truly see, hold, or care for who you were.

Dr. Lindsay Gibson is a clinical psychologist and the author of five books, including the bestselling Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. Her work has helped put a name to the pain so many of us spent years minimizing or couldn’t quite explain.

🔑 Key takeaways from this episode:

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...

Why do I feel like I’m dying just because someone didn’t text me back? If you've asked yourself this, you’re not crazy — and this episode is for you.

Andrea is riding solo in today’s deep dive into emotional flashbacks, the hallmark symptom of Complex PTSD. These aren’t your typical flashbacks — there’s no visual replays, just an overwhelming flood of emotions from your childhood that hijack your present. If you’ve ever spiraled over something that seemed way too small to cause that much pain, this episode will hit home.

Key Takeaways:

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Leaving a toxic relationship isn’t just hard — it can feel impossible when trauma bonds, guilt, and confusion are running the show. This episode breaks down exactly why that happens and how to finally break free.

Darlene Lancer is a licensed marriage and family therapist and the author of Conquering Shame and Codependency and Dating, Loving, and Leaving a Narcissist. After surviving her own painful relationship with a narcissist, Darlene spent decades researching, writing, and guiding others through the complex terrain of codependency and narcissistic abuse.

Key Takeaways:

🔹 The Trauma Bond Trap: Understand how the...

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...

Recovery isn’t always a clean, upward trajectory — and most people don’t talk about what happens when it isn’t. This episode cracks open the shame, stigma, and complexity that surface when long-term sobriety takes a detour.

William C. Moyers is the Vice President of Public Affairs at Hazelden Betty Ford and the author of Broken: My Story of Addiction and Redemption. In this conversation, he opens up about a rarely shared chapter of his recovery — one that tested his identity, sparked unexpected shame, and forced him to reexamine what long-term sobriety really looks like.

Key Take...

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How I learned I was an Adult Child - The Tale of 2 Brians

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You ever find yourself wondering, “Was it really that bad?” even while your life still carries the scars of a childhood you can’t fully name? That’s the fog of emotional neglect — the kind of trauma that doesn’t leave bruises, just a lifelong ache of being unseen.

Laura K. Connell is a trauma-informed author, coach, and the creator of The Self-Parenting Solution.

She grew up in a deeply chaotic and emotionally neglectful home, spent decades trying to earn her parents’ love, and eventually went no contact after one final, brutal conversation with her father.

...

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How I learned I was an Adult Child - The Tale of 2 Brians

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...

What happens when the version of you that earned love was never the real you to begin with? This episode is a deep dive into the grief, rage, and liberation that comes from unlearning the worthlessness you were taught to feel.

Nate Postlethwait is a trauma educator, writer, and creator of The Other Side of Saved. He grew up in the deep South, survived years of childhood sexual abuse, entered conversion therapy at 18, and spent over a decade trying to pray and perform his pain away. At 30, a full-blown nervous system collapse forced him to finally face...

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How I learned I was an Adult Child - The Tale of 2 Brians

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So often the moment we finally started healing is also the moment everything falls apart.

For so many trauma survivors, healing doesn’t feel like light and liberation at first—it feels like chaos, confusion, and losing your grip on reality. This episode dives into what it actually looks like when the nervous system starts to thaw.

Cory Scott is trauma-integration coach, an EMDR-certified therapist, and Somatic Experiencing practitioner who brings deep nervous system wisdom to her work. But before she became a trauma specialist, she was a young woman clawing her way out of an e...

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How I learned I was an Adult Child - The Tale of 2 Brians

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You think you’re being helpful. Supportive. Loyal. But what if you’re actually just terrified of being abandoned? Codependency isn’t about caring too much — it’s about losing yourself to survive.

Dr. Sarah Michaud is a psychologist and author of Co-Crazy. Despite years of sobriety and a successful therapy practice, Sarah found herself trapped in a toxic relationship in recovery — a painful experience that finally forced her to confront the deep, unhealed trauma she didn’t even realize was still running the show.

🔑 Key Takeaways:

TRIGGER WARNING - This episode discusses childhood sexual and physical abuse.

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How I learned I was an Adult Child - Th...