- 1 hour 8 minutes243 - The Caregiving Trap: When the Parent You're Estranged From Becomes Your Responsibility w/ Katherine St. Claire
You finally go no contact after decades of abuse. Then one day the phone rings, and suddenly you're legally responsible for their entire life.
Katherine St Claire is a writer, abuse survivor, and cycle breaker who grew up in a home defined by violence, silence, and gaslighting. After four years of no contact, her father was arrested at 82 for trying to kill her mother, and within six hours she and her sister were his legal guardians.
Since then Katherine has become an advocate for adult children of dysfunctional families who end up responsible for the care of the parents who harmed them. She's building caringforabusiveparents.org a site that pulls together the legal, financial, and elder care help available to someone in this position, all in one place. It goes live in September. Until then you can find her on Instagram at @katherinestclaire_writes
-----------------------
Check out Omaha Steaks and use my code BEEF for a great deal: https://www.omahasteaks.com
-----------------------
⚓JOIN THE SHITSHOW — The Adult Child Healing Community
6 weekly Zoom support groups · Discussion boards · Peer connection
🗞️ 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
💬 CONNECT WITH ANDREA
Instagram → @adultchildpod
TikTok → @adultchildpod
YouTube → @adultchildpod
Our Sponsors:
* Check out Omaha Steaks and use my code BEEF for a great deal: https://www.omahasteaks.com
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy12 August 2026, 10:00 am - 28 minutes 42 secondsSHITSHOW SATURDAY #217 – Imposter Syndrome
⚓JOIN THE SHITSHOW — The Adult Child Healing Community
6 weekly Zoom support groups · Discussion boards · Peer connection
🗞️ 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
💬 CONNECT WITH ANDREA
Instagram → @adultchildpod
TikTok → @adultchildpod
YouTube → @adultchildpod
Our Sponsors:
* Check out Omaha Steaks and use my code BEEF for a great deal: https://www.omahasteaks.com
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy8 August 2026, 10:00 am - 50 minutes 21 seconds242 - Imposter Syndrome Through the Lens of CPTSD: Confronting the Fraud Inside
You feel like a fraud bracing for the moment everyone finally figures you out. And no amount of accomplishment or evidence ever changes that feeling that you're not who you say you are.
For those of us with complex trauma, the imposter syndrome doesn't just live in your head. It lives in your body and your nervous system. Today, we're diving deep into why you feel like such a fraud so you can stop mistaking that feeling for the truth about who you are.
✨ What this episode explores
Toxic Shame Fueled Imposter Syndrome — Why this version isn't about competence at all, but a belief that something fundamentally broken about you cancels out anything good you do.
The Golden Child of a Narcissist — How a role that has nothing to do with you makes it impossible to own your accomplishments and success.
Parentification Fueled Imposter Syndrome — How carrying adult responsibilities you should never have had to carry leads to feeling like a kid trapped in an adult body who has no idea what they're doing.
Why You Never Do the Thing — How imposter syndrome shows up as avoidance, freeze, and procrastination to keep anyone from seeing you as a fraud.
Feeling Like You Conned Everyone — How surfacing trauma can make you feel like you've deceived every person in your life, retroactively rewriting years of real connection as a lie.
Imposter Syndrome About Your Own Trauma — Why the same mechanism that makes you doubt your accomplishments makes you doubt your pain ever counted.
Imposter syndrome seems to plague us all, but for those of us with complex trauma, the imposter doesn't just live in your head. It lives in your body and your nervous system. And today, we're looking at this with a depth that helps you actually confront it. So you can stop mistaking it for the truth about you.
-----------------------
Check out Omaha Steaks and use my code BEEF for a great deal: https://www.omahasteaks.com
-----------------------
⚓JOIN THE SHITSHOW — The Adult Child Healing Community
6 weekly Zoom support groups · Discussion boards · Peer connection
🗞️ 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
💬 CONNECT WITH ANDREA
Instagram → @adultchildpod
TikTok → @adultchildpod
YouTube → @adultchildpod
Our Sponsors:
* Check out Omaha Steaks and use my code BEEF for a great deal: https://www.omahasteaks.com
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy5 August 2026, 10:00 am - 36 minutes 45 secondsSHITSHOW SATURDAY #216 – The Return of Haley
⚓JOIN THE SHITSHOW — The Adult Child Healing Community
6 weekly Zoom support groups · Discussion boards · Peer connection
🗞️ 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
💬 CONNECT WITH ANDREA
Instagram → @adultchildpod
TikTok → @adultchildpod
YouTube → @adultchildpod
Our Sponsors:
* Check out Omaha Steaks and use my code BEEF for a great deal: https://www.omahasteaks.com
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy1 August 2026, 10:00 am - 49 minutes 17 seconds241 - Inside an Emotional Flashback: Recognizing One, Surviving One & What's Underneath
Somebody doesn't text you back and suddenly you feel like you're going to die. You're not being pathetic. You're in a flashback.
Welcome to the living hell of emotional flashbacks. Your reaction never matches the situation in front of you, and even when you know that in your head, it doesn't make you feel any better. This is the single most painful symptom of CPTSD.
Today I'm taking you all the way back, from the very first emotional flashback I ever had at nine years old to the most intense one of my entire life just a few years ago. I'm not holding anything back.
✨ What this episode explores
▪️ Your Brain During a Flashback — Understanding the two separate mechanisms and childhood experiences that produce one, and why only one of them involves a memory at all.
▪️ When There's No Memory to Point To — How the small stuff repeated a thousand times encodes just as deep as one terrifying moment, so there's nothing to trace it back to and nothing to prove it "counts."
▪️ Walking a Kid Through Trauma — The exact steps a calm adult takes to stop a scary moment from wiring in for life, and why saying it out loud is what does the healing.
▪️ Recognizing a Flashback in Real Time — How to tell you're in one and not just upset, and the first move that starts pulling you back out.
▪️ Your Triggers Are Your Treasures — What the four categories of trigger reveal, including the ones you'd never suspect like success and praise, and why whatever sets you off is pointing straight at the wound.
-----------------------
🎧 If this episode resonated, you might also love:
▪️ Ep 201 | Trauma-Bonded No More: My Journey Through Shame, Regression & Finding My Way Back
▪️ SHITSHOW SATURDAY #164 | The Living Hell of Emotional Flashbacks
Check out Omaha Steaks and use my code BEEF for a great deal: https://www.omahasteaks.com
-----------------------
⚓JOIN THE SHITSHOW — The Adult Child Healing Community
6 weekly Zoom support groups · Discussion boards · Peer connection
🗞️ 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
💬 CONNECT WITH ANDREA
Instagram → @adultchildpod
TikTok → @adultchildpod
YouTube → @adultchildpod
Our Sponsors:
* Check out Omaha Steaks and use my code BEEF for a great deal: https://www.omahasteaks.com
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy30 July 2026, 10:00 am - 36 minutes 47 secondsSHITSHOW SATURDAY #215 – Things You Learned Were Normal That Never Were
⚓JOIN THE SHITSHOW — The Adult Child Healing Community
6 weekly Zoom support groups · Discussion boards · Peer connection
🗞️ 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
💬 CONNECT WITH ANDREA
Instagram → @adultchildpod
TikTok → @adultchildpod
YouTube → @adultchildpod
Our Sponsors:
* Check out Omaha Steaks and use my code BEEF for a great deal: https://www.omahasteaks.com
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy25 July 2026, 10:00 am - 1 hour 1 minute240 - Borderline or Abandoned? What Separates a Personality Disorder From Untreated Relational Trauma w/ Susan Anderson
The Abandonment Trauma Queen is back on the pod, and today we're heading into uncharted territory: borderline vs. abandonment trauma. What truly separates the two, and why the BPD label gets handed out way too easily.
Susan Anderson is a psychotherapist and a pioneer in the field of abandonment trauma, and she's spent the last three decades helping people heal. She's the author of The Abandonment Recovery Workbook (a book that truly changed my life) and Taming Your Outer Child. Having worked with thousands of people over the course of her career, she joins me to share what she's learned about telling the difference between BPD and CPTSD.
✨ What this episode explores
▪️What Actually Separates BPD From CPTSD — Why the dividing line isn't emotional intensity, but whether the pain distorts reality into a false narrative.
▪️Why Untreated Abandonment Escalates — How emotional reactivity compounds from one relationship to the next when the wound underneath is never addressed.
▪️Overthinking as an Abandonment Response — Why compulsive rumination is your brain searching for a lost attachment object, not actually solving anything.
▪️Why the Outer Child Fights Change — How the self-sabotaging part is persistent by design and actively wants to stay in charge.
▪️Self-Love as Behavior, Not Affirmation — Why the relationship with yourself is built through concrete action and written dialogue, not by deciding to love yourself.
-----------------------
🎧 If this episode resonated, you might also love:
▪️ Ep 47 — Abandonment Trauma w/ Susan Anderson
▪️ Ep 97 — The Outer Child & Abandonment Trauma w/ Susan Anderson
▪️ Ep 161 — Abandonment Trauma Expert Susan Anderson on Rejection and Equating Love with Insecurity
-----------------------
⚓JOIN THE SHITSHOW — The Adult Child Healing Community
6 weekly Zoom support groups · Discussion boards · Peer connection
🗞️ 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
💬 CONNECT WITH ANDREA
Instagram → @adultchildpod
TikTok → @adultchildpod
YouTube → @adultchildpod
Our Sponsors:
* Check out Omaha Steaks and use my code BEEF for a great deal: https://www.omahasteaks.com
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy22 July 2026, 10:00 am - 28 minutes 52 secondsSHITSHOW SATURDAY #214 – Lynda S.
⚓JOIN THE SHITSHOW — The Adult Child Healing Community
6 weekly Zoom support groups · Discussion boards · Peer connection
🗞️ 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
💬 CONNECT WITH ANDREA
Instagram → @adultchildpod
TikTok → @adultchildpod
YouTube → @adultchildpod
Our Sponsors:
* Check out Omaha Steaks and use my code BEEF for a great deal: https://www.omahasteaks.com
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy18 July 2026, 10:00 am - 1 hour 5 minutes239 - Chronically Stuck in Your Head: How Trauma-Informed Mindfulness Quiets the Overthinking Mind w/ Joe Flanders
The voice in your head won't shut up because if it did, you'd have to feel what's in your body.
Dr. Joe Flanders is a clinical psychologist based in Montreal who specializes in IFS, mindfulness, and psychedelic-assisted therapy. He's also the founder of Refuge, a community of practice built around experiential psychotherapy, and co-host of the podcast "Not Too Tight, Not Too Loose." But despite all his training and years of meditation, it was his own shortcomings as a father and desire to have a real relationship with his kids for the rest of his life that pushed Joe to do the deeper work of healing what insight alone never touched.
AI in Psychotherapy: A Risk Reduction Approach to Human Flourishing
-----------------------
⚓JOIN THE SHITSHOW — The Adult Child Healing Community
6 weekly Zoom support groups · Discussion boards · Peer connection
🗞️ 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
💬 CONNECT WITH ANDREA
Instagram → @adultchildpod
TikTok → @adultchildpod
YouTube → @adultchildpod
Our Sponsors:
* Check out Omaha Steaks and use my code BEEF for a great deal: https://www.omahasteaks.com
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy15 July 2026, 10:00 am - 37 minutes 54 secondsSHITSHOW SATURDAY #213 – The Return of Moustache Mike
Mike's first Shitshow episode 👉 SHITSHOW SATURDAY #127
⚓JOIN THE SHITSHOW — The Adult Child Healing Community
6 weekly Zoom support groups · Discussion boards · Peer connection
🗞️ 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
💬 CONNECT WITH ANDREA
Instagram → @adultchildpod
TikTok → @adultchildpod
YouTube → @adultchildpod
Our Sponsors:
* Check out Omaha Steaks and use my code BEEF for a great deal: https://www.omahasteaks.com
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy11 July 2026, 10:00 am - 1 hour 13 minutes238 - The Deathbed Reckoning: Facing Unhealed Trauma and Family Wounds at the End w/ Kat Courtney
A death doula shares what really happens between a toxic parent and their child in the parent's final moments.
Kat Courtney is a death doula and plant medicine facilitator who has sat with dozens of people in their final moments. After a childhood spent people-pleasing a father who only wanted the happy version of her, a near-death experience in her early twenties, and years of using ayahuasca to finally face the family wounds she'd normalized her whole life, she learned that the things we run from don't disappear - they wait. This is a conversation about what surfaces at the very end, when the body lets go and the truth we've avoided our entire lives finally has nowhere left to hide.
✨ What this episode explores:
▪️ When Repair Becomes Possible — Why for some people, truly healing a relationship with a parent only happens after they've died, and how to do it.
▪️ The Final Conversation — The apologies and accountability that can come from a dying parent, and why healing is still possible when they don't.
▪️ The Trauma You Avoided Your Entire Life— Why someone who spent their whole life avoiding their pain can suddenly confront it on their deathbed.
▪️ The Power of Ibogaine — Why this psychedelic stands out from others for treating addiction and trauma, and what the treatment process looks like.
▪️ How to Know if a Plant Medicine Facilitator Is Safe — Warning signs and specific questions to assess whether someone is truly qualified to hold this work.
-----------------------
⚓JOIN THE SHITSHOW — The Adult Child Healing Community
6 weekly Zoom support groups · Discussion boards · Peer connection
🗞️ 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
💬 CONNECT WITH ANDREA
Instagram → @adultchildpod
TikTok → @adultchildpod
YouTube → @adultchildpod
Our Sponsors:
* Check out Omaha Steaks and use my code BEEF for a great deal: https://www.omahasteaks.com
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy9 July 2026, 10:00 am - More Episodes? Get the App