Our Whole Childhood with Patrick Teahan

In this episode, Patrick shares a personal story about what it can look like when long-held trauma responses begin to loosen after years of recovery work and how flashbacks can shift into quieter moments of recognition instead of distress.
Rather than focusing on symptoms alone, Patrick connects the body-level experience of trauma anniversaries, shame attacks, and emotional flashbacks to the family system that created them, including emotionally immature parenting, addiction, domestic violence, and poor boundaries.
Using a trip through Ireland as the backdrop, Patrick reflects on returning to the Ring of Kerry and Dingle Peninsula decades after a childhood visit with a narcissistic, alcoholic father and noticing a body memory that arrives without the old shame and fear. He contrasts that earlier experience with traveling alongside his son, describing what it means to feel detached from a parent’s legacy and present in your own life.
Important Takeaways for the Listener:
How trauma anniversaries can show up as subtle body memories, and how they can change after sustained healing work
Why kids often feel like accomplices to adult dysfunction, and how that fuels shame and distorted self-perception
How emotionally immature caregivers and chaotic family systems shape attachment, safety, and identity
What it means to break cycles with or without becoming a parent, and how to separate yourself from a family legacy
Why overwhelm in the current climate can activate old survival states, and how to orient back to the present
How reflective tools, including a toxic family style assessment he references, can help name what the ACE framework may miss about family dynamics
Patrick also discusses recovery themes like inner child work, repairing distorted perception, reducing shame-based identity, and building a life where you no longer represent your parents’ choices.
If you carry a sense of inherited shame, feel easily activated by the world, or are noticing your triggers changing as you heal, this episode offers a grounded example of what progress can feel like over time.
Keywords: childhood trauma, emotional flashbacks, body memories, shame attacks, trauma anniversaries, emotionally immature parents, narcissistic parent, addiction in families, intergenerational trauma, breaking cycles, inner child work, recovery
Join the Monthly Healing Community Membership

In this episode, Patrick Teahan, MSW, explores nine rarely named but deeply damaging family dynamics that quietly shape childhood trauma and follow people into adulthood.
Rather than focusing on symptoms alone, Patrick breaks down the dysfunctional family systems behind them—the unspoken rules, emotional roles, and survival patterns that distort self-worth, boundaries, and relationships.
As a follow-up to 11 Oddly Specific Childhood Trauma Issues, this episode examines how growing up in emotionally immature or unsafe families affects perception, identity, and connection. From households where feelings are ignored but secretly run everything, to families that bond through complaining instead of change, Patrick explains how these patterns condition children to self-betray, overfunction, or disappear.
Listeners will learn:
What happens when children grow up without mutually satisfying parental relationships
How scapegoating, gaslighting, and chronic blame damage self-trust
Why some families resist growth and punish success
The emotional cost of always being “the responsible one”
How gender roles and hierarchy reinforce dysfunction
Why survivors are often told to “be the better person” with abusive relatives
Patrick also discusses recovery tools, including inner child work, repairing distorted perception, boundary development, and learning to step out of dysfunctional family roles.
If you grew up feeling unseen, unsafe, or emotionally responsible for others, this episode offers language, validation, and a clearer path toward healing.
Keywords: childhood trauma, toxic family systems, emotionally immature parents, CPTSD, family dysfunction, emotional neglect, scapegoating, parentification, trauma recovery, boundaries, inner child healing
Join the Monthly Healing Community Membership

This episode explores how childhood trauma and emotionally unsafe parenting can cause us to lose touch with our original personality, the self we were born with before survival, compliance, and shame took over.
Through personal stories and clinical insight, Patrick explains how emotionally immature or abusive parents distort a child’s sense of self by mislabeling innate traits as problems. Poor emotional mirroring, lack of goodness of fit, and pressure to comply can force a child’s spark underground, leading trauma responses to be mistaken for personality well into adulthood.
Learn how many survivors grow up feeling disconnected from who they really are, surprised by positive feedback, or unsure whether their behaviors reflect their true self or trauma adaptations, and how to begin reclaiming what was lost.
Topics include:
How childhood trauma suppresses innate personality
The impact of emotional abuse, misattunement, and forced compliance
Why trauma responses often replace a true sense of self
The five core childhood personality types and how they’re shaped by family dynamics
How to begin reconnecting with your authentic identity through trauma healing
If you grew up feeling like the difficult child, the odd duck, or the misunderstood one, this episode offers clarity, validation, and a path back to yourself.
Keywords: childhood trauma, lost sense of self, emotionally immature parents, trauma recovery, inner child healing, emotional abuse, identity development, CPTSD, family of origin trauma
Join the Monthly Healing Community Membership

This episode tells the story of Thomas, a survivor who went no contact with his abusive father after a public meltdown at his wedding, and how the world around him quietly blames him for the relationship he didn’t break.
 From well-meaning coworkers saying “all families have stuff,” to relatives insisting “you’ll have to let it go,” Patrick explores why the burden to forgive and reconnect so often falls on the person who was hurt, not the person who caused the harm.
Learn how survivors like Thomas are pressured to “be the bigger person,” while abusers avoid accountability, and how to stop carrying that emotional labor yourself.
Topics include:
Why abusive parents are rarely held accountable
How relatives and in-laws minimize harm to “keep the peace”
The shame, guilt, and invisibility survivors feel when going no contact
The hidden motives behind advice like “just forgive”
How to flip the script and protect your peace
If you’ve ever been told to reconcile with someone who never took responsibility for the pain they caused, this episode offers validation, and a new way forward.
Keywords: family estrangement, toxic parents, no contact healing, emotional abuse recovery, accountability, narcissistic parent, trauma recovery, boundaries, forgiveness pressure, inner child healing
Nearly 16M kids have lost grocery benefits.
Help them get the meals they need!
Join the Monthly Healing Community Membership

This episode explores how growing up with a toxic or emotionally unavailable mother can shape a daughter’s sense of worth, identity, and boundaries, and how to finally break free.
Rather than focusing on blame, Patrick unpacks the lasting emotional damage that daughters carry into adulthood and the path toward self-trust and emotional independence.
Learn why patterns like people-pleasing, guilt, and over-responsibility aren’t flaws, they’re survival strategies that once kept you safe. Through stories, insights, and tools, Patrick guides you toward seeing your story with compassion and clarity.
Topics include:
How toxic maternal behavior damages self-perception
The “good daughter” role and its emotional consequences
Guilt, shame, and the confusion between love and obligation
Reparenting yourself and building healthy emotional boundaries
Reclaiming confidence and connection without losing yourself
You’ll leave this episode with practical tools to stop carrying emotional responsibility for others, repair your self-image, and begin building the safety your mother couldn’t provide.
Keywords: toxic mother, mother-daughter trauma, emotional abuse, inner child healing, childhood trauma recovery, boundaries, reparenting, self-worth repair, codependency, healing tools, family roles, emotional neglect 
Join the Monthly Healing Community Membership