Adult Child

Andrea Ashley
  • 4.9 (1.9K)
  • Self-Improvement
  • Updated Biweekly

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.

  1. 1d ago

    246 - Finding a Trauma Therapist Who Won't Harm You: Red Flags, Self-Disclosure & What to Ask w/ Amber Trejo & Megan Walsh

    Trauma-informed is a phrase any practitioner can put on their website. But some of the people using it have never sat in a client chair themselves. Amber Trejo and Megan Walsh are licensed trauma therapists from the Midwest who are both survivors of complex trauma and on their own healing journeys. They are the co-hosts of the new podcast We Should Talk, where they get into relationships, motherhood, pop culture, and mental health without the expert hats on.This is an honest conversation about how much damage a bad practitioner can do, and what to actually ask before you hand someone your history. ✨ What this episode explores ▪️ Red Flags in a Practitioner — The specific things that should give you pause, from skewed boundaries to a therapist who has never been in therapy themselves. ▪️ Questions to Ask — What to ask in a consultation before you ever book a first session, and why the direct version of the question gets you the more useful answer. ▪️ When is Self-Disclosure Appropriate — Why a therapist sharing their own story can be the thing that lands, and the question they should be asking themselves before they open their mouth. ▪️ The Importance of Attunement — How a good practitioner tracks your breath, your face, and what you're not saying, and what it costs you when they only track your words. ▪️ When No One Talks About It —What it does to a kid when something is clearly off but your parents ignore it, and how that impacts your ability to community as an adult. ▪️ Titration in Trauma Work — Why going into your worst material every single week isn't depth, and how the touch-in-and-return rhythm keeps you from being retraumatized. Check out Omaha Steaks and use my code BEEF for a great deal: https://www.omahasteaks.com ----------------------- 🎧 If this episode resonated, you might also love: ▪️ Ep 208 | When Each Parent Leaves a Different Scar - From Attachment Wounds to Parenting Triggers, Rage & Repair w/ Amber Trejo ----------------------- ⚓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 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/privacy

    246 - Finding a Trauma Therapist Who Won't Harm You: Red Flags, Self-Disclosure & What to Ask w/ Amber Trejo & Megan Walsh

  2. 5d ago

    SHITSHOW SATURDAY #220 – 5 Kinds of Fears

    ⚓JOIN THE SHITSHOW — The Adult Child Healing Community 6 weekly Zoom support groups · Discussion boards · Peer connection 👉 theshitshow.mn.co Shitshow Saturday #127 🗞️ 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 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/privacy

    SHITSHOW SATURDAY #220 – 5 Kinds of Fears

  3. Aug 26

    245 - The Other Side of Fear: Life After the Wound Stops Being Your Identity w/ Bethany Webster

    You've spent your whole life waiting for the other shoe to drop. Nobody tells you what happens when it finally stops dropping. Bethany Webster is an expert on healing the mother wound, coach, and the author of "Discovering the Inner Mother." She recently launched a new Substack, Living Undaunted, where she writes about self-trust and what life looks like after the deep excavation work. Bethany returns to the pod to talk about what life actually looks like on the other side of the wound. This is a conversation about what nobody prepares you for: joy that feels suspicious, and ease you have to learn to tolerate. ✨ What this episode explores ▪️ When Your Mind Becomes Your Mother — Why overthinking isn't a bad habit but a caretaking system you built, and why the hypervigilance felt like the only thing keeping you safe. ▪️ When Glimmers Become Your Baseline — How you know the work is landing, and what changes when the present moment stops carrying an archive of the past inside it. ▪️ Why Ambition Drops as You Heal — What happens to drive and output when your nervous system stops needing to produce, and why creativity can survive that without the pressure. ▪️ Traumatic Fear vs. Regular Human Fear — How to tell the difference between a trauma response and the ordinary fear that comes with being alive, and why separating them clears your perception. ▪️ Life Without a Single Family Member — What no contact actually costs, the particular loneliness of having nobody to call, and what can only open up once those attachments are gon ----------------------- 🎧 If this episode resonated, you might also love: ▪️ Ep 184 - Peeling Back Layers Of The CPTSD Onion w/ Mother Wound Expert Bethany Webster ▪️ Ep 136 | Healing the Mother Wound: Why It Hurts and How We Begin to Heal with Bethany Webster ----------------------- ⚓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 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/privacy

    245 - The Other Side of Fear: Life After the Wound Stops Being Your Identity w/ Bethany Webster

  4. Aug 22

    SHITSHOW SATURDAY #219 – Nicole F.

    ⚓JOIN THE SHITSHOW — The Adult Child Healing Community 6 weekly Zoom support groups · Discussion boards · Peer connection 👉 theshitshow.mn.co Shitshow Saturday #127 🗞️ 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 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/privacy

    SHITSHOW SATURDAY #219 – Nicole F.

  5. Aug 19

    244 - What Lives in Your Shadow: A Jungian Approach to Complex Trauma w/ Hannah Fraser Moore

    Whatever you refuse to look at inside yourself comes back at you disguised as your life. Hannah Fraser Moore is a Jungian-oriented psychotherapist and writer based in the UK. She works with complex trauma, addiction, and eating disorders, and she's currently writing a book called Holy Hunger about women, instinct, and the shadow. She spent years in therapy insisting her childhood had nothing to do with the problems in her adult life. What finally got through to her was a breakup with a guy she barely knew that hit her like a death. ✨ What this episode explores ▪️ The Shadow vs. The Exile — Why the shadow holds capacities you got rid of, not just wounds you're carrying, and why that changes what retrieving them actually requires of you. ▪️ Thinking as an Attachment Figure — Why overthinking isn't a habit, it's who you got attached to when nobody else was safe, and why that makes it so terrifying to stop. ▪️ Dating Your Own Shadow — Why the person who repels you on sight and the person who pulls you in are both showing you something you disowned. ▪️ Your Dreams Know First — How the unconscious works out what you can't face yet, and why the images it keeps sending are worth taking seriously instead of interpreting to death. ▪️ The Mother You Never Had — Why chasing a version of your mother who never existed isn't delusion, and where that longing actually belongs. ----------------------- ⚓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 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/privacy

    244 - What Lives in Your Shadow: A Jungian Approach to Complex Trauma w/ Hannah Fraser Moore

  6. Aug 15

    SHITSHOW SATURDAY #218 – Turning Toward Self: Inside Safe Within

    ⚓JOIN THE SHITSHOW — The Adult Child Healing Community 6 weekly Zoom support groups · Discussion boards · Peer connection 👉 theshitshow.mn.co Shitshow Saturday #127 🗞️ 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 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/privacy

    SHITSHOW SATURDAY #218 – Turning Toward Self: Inside Safe Within

  7. Aug 12

    243 - 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 👉 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 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/privacy

    243 - The Caregiving Trap: When the Parent You're Estranged From Becomes Your Responsibility w/ Katherine St. Claire

  8. Aug 8

    SHITSHOW SATURDAY #217 – Imposter Syndrome

    ⚓JOIN THE SHITSHOW — The Adult Child Healing Community 6 weekly Zoom support groups · Discussion boards · Peer connection 👉 theshitshow.mn.co Shitshow Saturday #127 🗞️ 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 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/privacy

    SHITSHOW SATURDAY #217 – Imposter Syndrome
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4.9
out of 5
1,866 Ratings

About

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.

Information

  • Creator
    Andrea Ashley
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2026
  • Episodes
    497
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2021 Adult Child
  • Show Website
    Adult Child

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