Adult Child

What 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 → @adultchildpodOur Sponsors:* Check out Time4Learning: https://www.time4learning.comAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

⚓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 → @adultchildpodOur Sponsors:* Check out Time4Learning: https://www.time4learning.comAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Doing 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 → @adultchildpodOur Sponsors:* Check out Time4Learning: https://www.time4learning.comAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

SHITSHOW 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.comOur Sponsors:* Check out Time4Learning: https://www.time4learning.comAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The 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 → @adultchildpodOur Sponsors:* Check out Time4Learning: https://www.time4learning.comAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy