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.
106episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
218 - Finding Your Voice Through Intimacy: Beyond Freeze, Fear, and Fawning w/ Leah Carey
Feb 1801:07:11Tap to summarizeLeah Carey is a Sex and Relationship Coach and host of the Good Girls Talk About Sex podcast. She helps thoughtful, self-aware adults who grew up in fear-based environments to stop freezing, over-explaining, and second-guessing themselves in relationships. In other words: in a world filled with confusion and fear, Leah helps sex make sense. Drawing on her own healing journey from fear and repression, she specializes in working with people from high-control childhoods like Purity Culture, narcissistic abuse, cults, and other patriarchal abuse. ✨ What this episode explores:Freeze and Fawn in Intimacy — How these survival patterns shape your sexual relationships, and what it means to rewrite them.From Transactional Love — How receiving conditional love as a child shaped your beliefs about self-worth and connection.Releasing Sexual Shame — How letting go of past repression leads to genuine self-acceptanceBoundaries Without Fear — How learning to set healthy boundaries allows you to step out of old roles and into authentic connectionsReclaiming Your Voice — How learning to express your needs transforms your relationshipsxoleahcarey.substack.comSocial media as @xoleahcarey-----------------------⚓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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Shitshow Saturday #191 - Courtney B.
Feb 1400:37:34Tap 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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217 - Good Kid, Quiet Wreckage: Relational Shame, the Silent Treatment & The War You Waged on Yourself w/ Maggie Nick
Feb 1101:17:55Tap to summarizeMaggie Nick is a trauma therapist and author of the newly published book Good Kids: Why You Suffered in Silence and How to Break the Cycle. She grew up as the good kid in a home with a personality-disordered mother - performing, complying, and quietly falling apart while making sure nobody ever saw the real her. After years of working through what she thought was the "real" trauma, she discovered that relational shame was the deepest layer underneath everything else.✨ What this episode explores:▪️Relational Shame as the Deepest Layer: How every surface-level struggle (the perfectionism, the people pleasing, the self-hatred) is just smoke from the same fire: being made to feel like the real you is fundamentally bad.▪️The "Good Kid" Was a Survival Strategy, Not a Personality: Why compliance, fawning, and never misbehaving wasn't temperament. It was your nervous system's way of staying loved and staying safe.▪️The Silent Treatment Is Emotional Violence: Why it's one of the most normalized forms of emotional abuse and what it does to a kid when love can be jerked away without warning.▪️The Fight Response Turned Inward: What happens when you never had permission to push back. That energy doesn't disappear. It becomes the vicious inner critic, the eating disorder, the relentless self-punishment.▪️The Check Engine Lights Everyone Misses: Why the kids (and adults) who look like they have it the most together are often the ones suffering the most, and what to actually look for underneath the performance.-----------------------⚓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 #190 - The Betrayal Wound
Feb 700:39:01Tap 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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216 - How Trauma Becomes Sexual Compulsion: Shame, Betrayal & Technology Addiction w/ Duane Osterlind
Feb 401:17:15Tap to summarizeDuane Osterlind is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Certified Sex Addiction Therapist – and the host of The Addicted Mind. He specializes in helping individuals and couples impacted by sexual compulsion, porn addiction, and betrayal trauma. His Shame to Resilience group program helps men who've caused sexual betrayal learn to regulate their shame so they can finally show up with the accountability, empathy, and remorse their partners need to heal. ✨ What this episode explores:▪️Technology Created a New Kind of Addiction We Don't Know How to Treat Yet — Why early exposure to high-speed internet porn rewires developing brains differently than any generation before, and how phones and games use the same mechanisms to collapse the space between impulse and action.▪️How Childhood Trauma Becomes Sexual Compulsion — The pipeline from hero/caretaker roles to dismissive attachment to using sexual arousal as the only escape from loneliness; why men especially learn to shrink their emotional lives and self-soothe through isolation.▪️How Betrayal Is About Stolen Consent — How deception and gaslighting in relationships cause legitimate post-traumatic stress; why betrayed partners aren't "stupid for not seeing it," and what it means when someone destroys trust while still deeply loving you.▪️Shame-Based Accountability Doesn't Work — Why the person who caused harm has to do their own shame work first before they can show up for their partner; how "compassionate accountability" is the only way through, and why shame can only heal when it's witnessed by others.▪️The Four Phases of Healing Betrayal — The predictable 3-5 year journey from crisis to scaffolding to safety-building to repair, and why partners need to see consistent, trustworthy behavior over time before post-traumatic growth can begin— — —⚓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 #172 - The Lies We Tell Ourselves
Oct 400:35:01Summary readyDAMN THE JOIN SHITSHOW - ADULT CHILD HEALING COMMUNITY⬇️https://theshitshow.mn.co6 weekly zoom support groups (see the full schedule here!)Support community at your fingertips with discussion boards and chat📰SIGN UP FOR SHITSHOW NATION - ADULT CHILD NEWSLETTER👩HELP A GIRL & CAT EAT🐱 www.buymeacoffee.com/adultchild🛍️SHITSHOW MERCH🛍️www.adultchildpodcast.com/shop🎙️NEW TO THE POD🎙️How I learned I was an Adult Child - The Tale of 2 BriansTHE LAUNDRY LIST - Common Characteristics of an Adult ChildFollow Andrea on socialwww.instagram.com/adultchildpodwww.tiktok.com/@adultchildpodhttps://www.youtube.com/@adultchildpodOur Sponsors:* Check out Happy Mammoth and use my code ADULTCHILD for a great deal: https://happymammoth.com* Check out PharmaNutra and use my code ADULTCHILD for a great deal: https://pharmanutra-us.comAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
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SHITSHOW SATURDAY #171 - What Breathe To Heal Broke Open Pt 2
Sep 2700:33:04Summary readyDAMN THE JOIN SHITSHOW - ADULT CHILD HEALING COMMUNITY⬇️https://theshitshow.mn.co6 weekly zoom support groups (see the full schedule here!)Support community at your fingertips with discussion boards and chat📰SIGN UP FOR SHITSHOW NATION - ADULT CHILD NEWSLETTER👩HELP A GIRL & CAT EAT🐱 www.buymeacoffee.com/adultchild🛍️SHITSHOW MERCH🛍️www.adultchildpodcast.com/shop🎙️NEW TO THE POD🎙️How I learned I was an Adult Child - The Tale of 2 BriansTHE LAUNDRY LIST - Common Characteristics of an Adult ChildFollow Andrea on socialwww.instagram.com/adultchildpodwww.tiktok.com/@adultchildpodhttps://www.youtube.com/@adultchildpodAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
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Mistaking Pain for Love: Mother Hunger, Self-Abandonment & Reprogramming the Subconscious w/ Lisa Romano
Sep 2401:05:47Summary readyWhat 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 needs for nurture and safety leave us chasing love in all the wrong places as adults.🔑 Mistaking Pain for Love – Why chaotic relationships feel familiar and safe to adult children of dysfunctional families, even when they’re toxic.🔑 The Cycle of Self-Abandonment – How people-pleasing, perfectionism, and ignoring our needs are survival strategies that keep us disconnected from ourselves.🔑 Reprogramming the Subconscious – Why awareness alone isn’t enough, and how tools like meditation, journaling, and rewiring negative self-talk can change deep patterns.🔑 Breaking the Family Denial System – How speaking the truth about your childhood creates liberation, even if it means being labeled “crazy” by your family.🔑 The Path to Self-Reclamation – Why healing requires radical self-honesty, self-compassion, and releasing the need for others’ validation.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
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SHITSHOW SATURDAY #170 - Reacting Instead of Acting (Laundry List Trait 14)
Sep 2000:45:47Summary readyDAMN THE JOIN SHITSHOW - ADULT CHILD HEALING COMMUNITY⬇️https://theshitshow.mn.co6 weekly zoom support groups (see the full schedule here!)Support community at your fingertips with discussion boards and chat📰SIGN UP FOR SHITSHOW NATION - ADULT CHILD NEWSLETTER👩HELP A GIRL & CAT EAT🐱 www.buymeacoffee.com/adultchild🛍️SHITSHOW MERCH🛍️www.adultchildpodcast.com/shop🎙️NEW TO THE POD🎙️How I learned I was an Adult Child - The Tale of 2 BriansTHE LAUNDRY LIST - Common Characteristics of an Adult ChildFollow Andrea on socialwww.instagram.com/adultchildpodwww.tiktok.com/@adultchildpodhttps://www.youtube.com/@adultchildpodAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
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SHITSHOW SATURDAY #169 - Carole F.
Sep 1300:42:00Summary readyDAMN THE JOIN SHITSHOW - ADULT CHILD HEALING COMMUNITY⬇️https://theshitshow.mn.co6 weekly zoom support groups (see the full schedule here!)Support community at your fingertips with discussion boards and chat📰SIGN UP FOR SHITSHOW NATION - ADULT CHILD NEWSLETTER👩HELP A GIRL & CAT EAT🐱 www.buymeacoffee.com/adultchild🛍️SHITSHOW MERCH🛍️www.adultchildpodcast.com/shop🎙️NEW TO THE POD🎙️How I learned I was an Adult Child - The Tale of 2 BriansTHE LAUNDRY LIST - Common Characteristics of an Adult ChildFollow Andrea on socialwww.instagram.com/adultchildpodwww.tiktok.com/@adultchildpodhttps://www.youtube.com/@adultchildpodAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
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