Adult Child

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If you keep getting re-triggered by the people you’re trying to heal from, healing starts to feel impossible. This episode unpacks when taking space is the most loving thing you can do for yourself.
Dr. Sharon Martin is a psychotherapist and author specializing in helping adult children recover from difficult childhoods. She's passionate about helping adults overcome the effects of narcissistic and emotional abuse, learn to set boundaries, and develop self-worth. She writes extensively about codependency, perfectionism, and healthy relationships, including the popular blog Conquering Codependency for Psychology Today. Dr. Martin is the author of four self-help books, including The Better Boundaries Workbook and Cutting Ties with Your Parents.
✨ What this episode explores:
Estrangement as Nervous System Safety — Why no contact can be right choice when repeated interactions keep pulling you back into trauma responses.
Boundaries That Aren’t Just Walls — How healthy boundaries can function like a gate you control, letting you adjust access based on emotional safety, behavior, and what your body is telling you in real time.
The Guilt Trap and Family Conditioning — What makes going no contact feel “wrong” even when it’s necessary, and how scapegoating, obligation, and shame keep adult children stuck in roles they’ve outgrown.
Grief for the Parent You Didn’t Get — How estrangement often brings a specific kind of grief where you’re not just mourning the relationship, you’re mourning the hope that your parent will ever be able to show up differently.
Explaining Yourself vs Protecting Yourself — Why giving explanations to emotionally immature or unsafe parents can backfire
Self-Trust as the Real Recovery Skill — How healing often comes down to rebuilding trust in your own judgment so you can reassess contact over time
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⚓JOIN THE SHITSHOW — The Adult Child Healing Community
6 weekly Zoom support groups · Discussion boards · Peer connection
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Instagram → @adultchildpod
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⚓JOIN THE SHITSHOW — The Adult Child Healing Community
6 weekly Zoom support groups · Discussion boards · Peer connection
👉 theshitshow.mn.co

🗞️ SIGN UP FOR SHITSHOW NATION
Get the newsletter for community updates, healing insights & early access to workshops.
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💁‍♀️ SUPPORT THE POD
☕ Buy Me a Coffee – help Andrea (and her cats) eat
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💬 CONNECT WITH ANDREA
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True healing begins when we stop choosing between our nervous system and our inner narrative—and start listening to both.
Ruth Culver is a certified IFS practitioner and IFS constellations facilitator who has brought her own innovative contributions to the field, including the Survive and Thrive Spiral and her Drawing into Self approach. Her own trauma healing journey began when serious health issues led her to seek out hypnotherapy - first as a client, and eventually as a certified practitioner herself. She eventually found IFS and realized it offered her a compassionate framework to gently understand and integrate her parts, making it a natural fit for her healing journey.
✨ What this episode explores:
▪️The Survive & Thrive Spiral — How Ruth mapped survival states as a spiral to de-shame your reactions and show the real path from activation to shutdown to regulation.
▪️Freeze Isn’t Collapse — Why “deer-in-headlights” freeze is different from floppy shutdown, and what that distinction reveals about fragmentation and the “reservoir” of unprocessed exile feelings.
▪️Drawing Into Self — How externalizing parts through intuitive scribbling lowers overwhelm, creates instant witnessing, and helps protectors soften without forcing them to “step back” inside your body.
▪️Story Follows State — What changes when you stabilize the body enough to hear your parts clearly, so your nervous system isn’t driving the narrative while your mind tries to explain it after the fact.
▪️Multiple Parts, One Moment — How fawning, fighting, fleeing, and numbing can all cycle in the same trigger, and why mapping the whole cast (instead of picking one) can unlock the stuck “nothing works” exile underneath.
THE SURVIVE / THRIVE SPIRAL
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⚓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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💁‍♀️ SUPPORT THE POD
☕ Buy Me a Coffee – help Andrea (and her cats) eat
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💬 CONNECT WITH ANDREA
Instagram → @adultchildpod
TikTok → @adultchildpod
YouTube → @adultchildpod

SPONSORS
Check out Uncommon Goods: https://uncommongoods.com/adultchild
Check out Calm: https://calm.com/ADULTCHILD
Check out Happy Mammoth, Use Code ADULTCHILD for 15% off happymammoth.com.

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⚓JOIN THE SHITSHOW — The Adult Child Healing Community
6 weekly Zoom support groups · Discussion boards · Peer connection
👉 theshitshow.mn.co

🗞️ SIGN UP FOR SHITSHOW NATION
Get 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 ANDREA
Instagram → @adultchildpod
TikTok → @adultchildpod
YouTube → @adultchildpod

SPONSORS
Check out Uncommon Goods: https://uncommongoods.com/adultchild
Check out Happy Mammoth, Use Code ADULTCHILD for 15% off happymammoth.com.
Check out SiderAL, Use Code ADULTCHILD for 10% off https://pharmanutra-us.com/

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