The parts of you that carry the most shame are the parts that most need to be seen.

Paul Gilmartin, host of the Mental Illness Happy Hour, is back on Adult Child for the third time, and this is the most vulnerable he's ever been. He shares the story of his recent relapse, how the covert incest he survived as a child shaped his sexuality in ways he's been ashamed of for most of his life, and what it took to finally get honest about all of it. This conversation is about what it takes to let people see the parts of you that you've been hiding the hardest.

✨ What this episode explores

▪️ Sexual Shame After Abuse — How childhood sexual abuse can rewire your arousal patterns so that what turns you on echoes the abuse itself

▪️ When Abuse Hides as Care — How to recognize covert incest when there was no single "event" to point to, just a parent whose love always felt like it was taking something from you.

▪️ The Inner Critic Is an Inner Abuser — Why your nervous system responds to your own self-talk the same way it would respond to an external threat, and what that means for how you talk to yourself in recovery.

▪️ The Corrective Relationship — How to identify whether a partner is loving you in spite of your darkest parts or actually loving all of you, and why that distinction changes everything.

▪️ Relapse as a Doorway — How to use a relapse to trace the thread back to the original wound instead of getting stuck in the shame spiral that keeps the cycle going.

▪️ Accessing Self-Compassion — What it actually looks like to be gentle with yourself while you're still in the mess, not after you've cleaned it up.

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🎧 If this episode resonated, you might also love:

▪️ Ep 124 | Intimacy Disorders & Childhood Trauma w/ Paul Gilmartin

▪️ Ep 160 | Betrayal Bonds, Enmeshment and Sex Addiction w/ Dr. Lara Dye

▪️ Ep 163 | Breaking The Shame: Adult Children of Sex Addicts w/ Dr. Kenneth Adams

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