Podcast
Adult Child
Hosted by Andrea Ashley · EN
Adult Child dives deep into the lasting effects of growing up in dysfunctional families—unpacking complex and relational trauma, codependency, toxic shame, and addiction patterns with raw vulnerability and unapologetic authenticity.
Hosted by Andrea Ashley, a recovering shitshow with 17 years sober, each episode shares unfiltered insights, expert conversations, and practical tools to heal your nervous system and break free from the cycles that hold you back.
Whether you’re an adult child of alcoholics or from a dysfunctional family, navigating toxic relationships, or healing your inner child, this is your no-BS space for healing. New episodes every Wednesday & Saturday.
And damn the join The Shitshow Healing Community for live support groups and connection with fellow cycle breakers.
107episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Shitshow Saturday #208 - Wanting to Be Chosen
Jun 600:33:46Tap to summarize⚓JOIN THE SHITSHOW — The Adult Child Healing Community6 weekly Zoom support groups · Discussion boards · Peer connection👉 theshitshow.mn.co🗞️ SIGN UP FOR SHITSHOW NATIONGet the newsletter for community updates, healing insights & early access to workshops.➡️ Join here💁♀️ SUPPORT THE POD☕ Buy Me a Coffee – help Andrea (and her cats) eat🛍️ Shop Shitshow Merch💬 CONNECT WITH ANDREAInstagram → @adultchildpodTikTok → @adultchildpodYouTube → @adultchildpodAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
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233 - The Gift of Grief: When Loss Becomes the Door You Couldn't Open On Your Own w/ Joe Ryan
Jun 301:15:00Tap to summarizeWaiting to be chosen is the slowest way to abandon yourself.Joe Ryan is a trauma recovery coach and host of The Joe Ryan Podcast — and today, he's speaking from the other side of the most profound grief of his life. After losing his best friend to cancer and facing his own cancer scare six weeks later, he chose to sit in the pain for a year and a half instead of running from it — and what surfaced wasn't just the grief, it was every abandonment wound underneath, including the lifelong, exhausting pattern of waiting to be chosen. This conversation is about what grief actually gives you when you stop running from it, and the moment you realize the only person you ever needed to choose you was yourself.✨ What this episode explores▪️ Why Grief Is the Price of Love — How the walls that protected you from being hurt are the same walls keeping out the connection you most want.▪️ The Lifelong Wait to Be Chosen — Why no amount of being picked by someone else fixes what only choosing yourself can, and what shifts when you finally stop performing for it.▪️ The Self-Abandonment Underneath the Abandonment Wound — Why the people who feel abandoned the most are often the ones abandoning themselves first, and how to recognize it in your own patterns.▪️ What Sitting in Grief Actually Looks Like — The body-level practice of staying with discomfort long enough for the rumination to quiet down and the real material underneath to surface.▪️ The Performance Mask — The shiny, no-cracks version of yourself you built so no one would see the needy little kid underneath, and what it costs to keep wearing it.▪️ Capacity Is the Whole Game — Why the work you do in the calm seasons becomes the difference between drowning and grieving when the next loss comes.-----------------------🎧 If this episode resonated, you might also love:▪️ Ep 39 — The Fear of Abandonment w/ Joe Ryan▪️ Ep 91 — Complex Trauma, Dating & Setting Boundaries w/ Joe Ryan▪️Ep 204 — The Deeper Truth About Fawning: How Survival Turns Into Self-Abandonment w/ Ingrid Clayton— — —⚓JOIN THE SHITSHOW — The Adult Child Healing Community6 weekly Zoom support groups · Discussion boards · Peer connection👉 theshitshow.mn.co🗞️ SIGN UP FOR SHITSHOW NATIONGet the newsletter for community updates, healing insights & early access to workshops.➡️ Join here💁♀️ SUPPORT THE POD☕ Buy Me a Coffee – help Andrea (and her cats) eat🛍️ Shop Shitshow Merch💬 CONNECT WITH ANDREAInstagram → @adultchildpodTikTok → @adultchildpodYouTube → @adultchildpodAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
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Shitshow Saturday #207 - How Do I Know I'm Healing?
May 3000:55:42Tap to summarize⚓JOIN THE SHITSHOW — The Adult Child Healing Community6 weekly Zoom support groups · Discussion boards · Peer connection👉 theshitshow.mn.co🗞️ SIGN UP FOR SHITSHOW NATIONGet the newsletter for community updates, healing insights & early access to workshops.➡️ Join here💁♀️ SUPPORT THE POD☕ Buy Me a Coffee – help Andrea (and her cats) eat🛍️ Shop Shitshow Merch💬 CONNECT WITH ANDREAInstagram → @adultchildpodTikTok → @adultchildpodYouTube → @adultchildpodAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
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232 - Healing Together: A Couple's Journey Through Repressed Trauma w/ Tarah & EJ Kerwin
May 2701:14:10Tap to summarizeWhat your partner does when you fall apart is what your relationship was actually built on.Tarah and EJ Kerwin are licensed therapists, co-founders of Relationship Renovation Counseling in Tucson, and hosts of the Relationship Renovation podcast who teach what they’ve lived inside their own marriage. They met as colleagues at a treatment center, got married, had twins on their honeymoon, and spent the early years of a blended family forced to do the work they'd spent their careers teaching. But the real test came years later, when Tarah's repressed childhood trauma surfaced and they had to figure out what healing trauma in a relationship actually looks like in real time. This is a conversation about what it means to be truly supported by your partner through your darkest moments.✨ What this episode explores▪️ Avoidance Disguised as Calm — Why the partner who seems unflappable is often more emotionally walled off than the one openly struggling.▪️ What Real Support in a Relationship Actually Looks Like — Why healing trauma in a relationship depends less on what your partner says and more on whether they've done their own work.▪️ The Body Remembers Before the Mind Does — Why repressed childhood trauma surfaces through symptoms, startle responses, and somatic flashbacks long before it surfaces as memory.▪️ Why It Feels Safer to Hate Them Than Feel the Hurt — How judging the people who hurt you as "just bad" protects you from the shame of having needed their love.▪️ The Specific Shame Underneath Childhood Sexual Abuse — Why survivors often feel dirty, blame themselves, and brace for rejection if anyone truly sees them.▪️ Why Pressure to Heal Faster Keeps You Stuck — How a partner's expectation around intimacy, progress, or recovery can be the exact thing keeping the other person frozen.-----------------------🎧 If this episode resonated, you might also love:▪️ Ep 203 | The Nervous System Side of Attachment w/ Heidi Priebe▪️ Ep 202 | When Relationships Become Battlefields w/ Tian Dayton: Relational Triggers, Inner Child Fights & Emotional Sobriety▪️Ep 161 | Abandonment Trauma Expert Susan Anderson on Rejection and Equating Love with Insecurity▪️ 204 | The Deeper Truth About Fawning: How Survival Turns Into Self-Abandonment w/ Ingrid Clayton— — —⚓JOIN THE SHITSHOW — The Adult Child Healing Community6 weekly Zoom support groups · Discussion boards · Peer connection👉 theshitshow.mn.co🗞️ SIGN UP FOR SHITSHOW NATIONGet the newsletter for community updates, healing insights & early access to workshops.➡️ Join here💁♀️ SUPPORT THE POD☕ Buy Me a Coffee – help Andrea (and her cats) eat🛍️ Shop Shitshow Merch💬 CONNECT WITH ANDREAInstagram → @adultchildpodTikTok → @adultchildpodYouTube → @adultchildpodAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
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Shitshow Saturday #206 - Impossible Self-Expectations
May 2300:27:46Tap to summarize⚓JOIN THE SHITSHOW — The Adult Child Healing Community6 weekly Zoom support groups · Discussion boards · Peer connection👉 theshitshow.mn.co🗞️ SIGN UP FOR SHITSHOW NATIONGet the newsletter for community updates, healing insights & early access to workshops.➡️ Join here💁♀️ SUPPORT THE POD☕ Buy Me a Coffee – help Andrea (and her cats) eat🛍️ Shop Shitshow Merch💬 CONNECT WITH ANDREAInstagram → @adultchildpodTikTok → @adultchildpodYouTube → @adultchildpodAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
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231 - Why Your Relationships Keep Triggering You Even After You've Done the Work w/ Patrick Teahan
May 2001:14:07Tap to summarizeDoing the work means you start picking healthier people. It doesn't mean stuff stops coming up when you do.Patrick Teahan is a psychotherapist, childhood trauma educator, and YouTube creator. In today's conversation, he shares about how he kept trying to save his alcoholic mother through the women he dated, the relationship in his mid-twenties that surfaced wounds he thought he'd already healed, and what's still getting revealed inside his marriage decades later.✨ What this episode explores▪️ More Will Always Be Revealed — Why long-term relationships keep pulling up wounds you swore were worked through, and what those triggers are actually for.▪️ Chasing Unavailable People — The unconscious pattern that turns every adult relationship into another attempt to get a parent to wake up.▪️ The Therapy-Resistant Partner — What's actually happening when someone close to you keeps asking "why aren't you better yet," and the projection running in both directions.▪️ The Self-Righteousness Trigger — How childhood trauma turns every trigger into a moral failing, and the self-righteousness hiding inside legitimate pain.▪️ Why Kids Choose Self-Blame — The protective mechanism that turns toward self-blame because the alternative is unsafe for a child to hold.▪️ The Open Family Secret — What it does to a kid to grow up where everyone knows what's happening, but no one is allowed to name it.-----------------------🎧 If this episode resonated, you might also love:▪️ Ep 107 - Unfinished Business From Childhood Trauma w/ Patrick Teahan▪️ Ep 202 | When Relationships Become Battlefields w/ Tian Dayton: Relational Triggers, Inner Child Fights & Emotional Sobriety▪️Ep 161 | Abandonment Trauma Expert Susan Anderson on Rejection and Equating Love with Insecurity-----------------------⚓JOIN THE SHITSHOW — The Adult Child Healing Community6 weekly Zoom support groups · Discussion boards · Peer connection👉 theshitshow.mn.co🗞️ SIGN UP FOR SHITSHOW NATIONGet the newsletter for community updates, healing insights & early access to workshops.➡️ Join here💁♀️ SUPPORT THE POD☕ Buy Me a Coffee – help Andrea (and her cats) eat🛍️ Shop Shitshow Merch💬 CONNECT WITH ANDREAInstagram → @adultchildpodTikTok → @adultchildpodYouTube → @adultchildpodAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
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Shitshow Saturday #205 - The Return of Sam B.
May 1600:34:25Tap to summarizeSHITSHOW SATURDAY #118 - Sam B.⚓JOIN THE SHITSHOW — The Adult Child Healing Community6 weekly Zoom support groups · Discussion boards · Peer connection👉 theshitshow.mn.co🗞️ SIGN UP FOR SHITSHOW NATIONGet the newsletter for community updates, healing insights & early access to workshops.➡️ Join here💁♀️ SUPPORT THE POD☕ Buy Me a Coffee – help Andrea (and her cats) eat🛍️ Shop Shitshow Merch💬 CONNECT WITH ANDREAInstagram → @adultchildpodTikTok → @adultchildpodYouTube → @adultchildpodSPONSORSCheck out Time4Learning: https://www.time4learning.comAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
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230 - The Shame Triangle: The Inner War That's Keeping You Stuck w/ Jessica Fern & David Cooley
May 1301:14:36Tap to summarizeThe voice beating you up, the shame absorbing it, the part that doesn't want you to feel it — that's the triangle you're trapped in.Jessica Fern is a certified clinical trauma therapist, David Cooley is a restorative justice practitioner, and together they co-authored Polywise. In their most recent book, Transforming the Shame Triangle, they take Karpman's classic drama triangle and flip it inward to capture the inner dynamic that keeps trauma survivors stuck. Through a parts work lens, they show how to work with the inner critic, shame, and escaper to find true healing. ✨ What this episode explores▪️How the Shame Triangle Starts — Why the cycle almost always kicks off with the inner critic firing first, even when what you notice is the escape behavior.▪️The Critic That's Still in the Room — Why people with parents, partners, or bosses actively criticizing them often feel pure shame instead of a strong inner voice.▪️The Hidden Shame of Under-Functioning — Why being the "lazy" one carries a layer of self-judgment that over-functioners never have to face▪️ The Symptoms That Aren't the Problem — Why the behaviors that get you diagnosed (perfecting, numbing, raging, zoning) are downstream of the part actually driving the cycle.▪️ Inner Critic to Inner Coach — What it actually takes to transform the voice tearing you down into something on your side▪️ Impact vs. Wrongdoing — Why telling a part of you "you wronged me" keeps the cycle alive, and the restorative justice reframe that breaks it.-----------------------🎧 If this episode resonated, you might also love:▪️ Ep 101 | The Neuroscience of Toxic Shame w/ Robyn Gobbel▪️ Ep 137 | Healing The Inner Child Through Parts Work w/ Michelle Chalfant▪️ Ep 215 | Repeat or Recover w/ Dr. Tian Dayton: The Cost of Relational Trauma-----------------------⚓JOIN THE SHITSHOW — The Adult Child Healing Community6 weekly Zoom support groups · Discussion boards · Peer connection👉 theshitshow.mn.co🗞️ SIGN UP FOR SHITSHOW NATIONGet the newsletter for community updates, healing insights & early access to workshops.➡️ Join here💁♀️ SUPPORT THE POD☕ Buy Me a Coffee – help Andrea (and her cats) eat🛍️ Shop Shitshow Merch💬 CONNECT WITH ANDREAInstagram → @adultchildpodTikTok → @adultchildpodYouTube → @adultchildpodAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
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Shitshow Saturday #204 - When Your Parent Shared Too Much or Not Enough
May 900:36:25Tap to summarize⚓JOIN THE SHITSHOW — The Adult Child Healing Community6 weekly Zoom support groups · Discussion boards · Peer connection👉 theshitshow.mn.co🗞️ SIGN UP FOR SHITSHOW NATIONGet the newsletter for community updates, healing insights & early access to workshops.➡️ Join here💁♀️ SUPPORT THE POD☕ Buy Me a Coffee – help Andrea (and her cats) eat🛍️ Shop Shitshow Merch💬 CONNECT WITH ANDREAInstagram → @adultchildpodTikTok → @adultchildpodYouTube → @adultchildpodSPONSORSCheck out Time4Learning: https://www.time4learning.comAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
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229 - The Codependency Bottom: When Sobriety Cracks Open the Trauma Underneath w/ David Deane Haskel
May 601:22:48Tap to summarizeThe most painful rock bottoms don't come from a relationship with a substance. They come from a relationship with a person. David Deane Haskel is an author of several fiction books, with his most recent being the memoir Wounded Angels. After losing his mother to suicide at the age of four, he spent the rest of his childhood navigating chaos at home and at school, while never feeling like he fit in. After finally finding sobriety, it was a codependent relationship that took him to new depths of pain and allowed him to embark on a journey to heal his unresolved trauma.✨ What this episode explores▪️ Hitting a Codependency Bottom — Why a codependent relationship hijacks the nervous system like a substance▪️ Why Trauma Surfaces in Sobriety — Why most addictions function as a way to regulate unresolved trauma, and why removing the substance forces that trauma to the surface.▪️ The Narcissistic Discard — Why a sudden, unilateral cutoff by someone you trusted reactivates the original abandonment wound in ways no other rupture can.▪️ The Unique Attachment Wound of Losing a Parent in Childhood — How losing a parent to death or childhood in childhood creates an imprint no other loss does▪️ The Repetition Compulsion of the Scapegoat — How scapegoats keep recreating the family system they grew up in by choosing partners who avoid accountability.▪️ The Childhood Origins of Shame Attacks — How a single moment of overwhelming shame can lock the body into the same response for decades.-----------------------🎧 If this episode resonated, you might also love:▪️ 201: Trauma-Bonded No More — My Journey Through Shame, Regression & Finding My Way Back▪️Ep 56 — The Truth About Codependency: It’s Not Empathy, It’s Survival w/ Dr. Sarah Michaud▪️Ep 158 - Stop People-Pleasing & Find Your Power w/ Hailey Magee-----------------------⚓JOIN THE SHITSHOW — The Adult Child Healing Community6 weekly Zoom support groups · Discussion boards · Peer connection👉 theshitshow.mn.co🗞️ SIGN UP FOR SHITSHOW NATIONGet the newsletter for community updates, healing insights & early access to workshops.➡️ Join here💁♀️ SUPPORT THE POD☕ Buy Me a Coffee – help Andrea (and her cats) eat🛍️ Shop Shitshow Merch💬 CONNECT WITH ANDREAInstagram → @adultchildpodTikTok → @adultchildpodYouTube → @adultchildpodAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
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