Fragmented to Whole: Life Lessons from 12 Step Recovery

Send us Fan Mail I know in the core of my being that just because something looks bad or feels bad doesn’t mean it IS bad, at least not in the long run. This week’s episode 259 of the Fragmented to Whole Podcast is about when unexpected blessings come from bad things- turning adversity into opportunities. Support the show by becoming a Patreon member !  In this episode of the Fragmented to Whole P...

Send us Fan Mail When I started this series, I only envisioned having two parts. But as I started recording, I realized that between working at Yale and now running my own business, I had so much more to share. After all, so much of our time and energy is spent at our place of work making this a huge area of our lives where boundaries are extremely important. This week’s episode 258 of the Fragmen...

Send us Fan Mail Last week on the podcast, I shared some scenarios in which I helped some of my clients set boundaries in the workplace, helping them achieve the work-life balance they have been longing for. This week’s episode is a continuation of that as I continue to share my advice for creating balance in your workplace through boundaries. This week’s episode 257 of the Fragmented to Whole Pod...

Send us Fan Mail Many of my group and private clients come to me specifically for issues in the workplace. Interestingly enough, even when they come to me for help in other areas of their lives, they often have massive shifts in the workplace, realizing they can have the work-life balance they never thought was possible. This week’s episode 256 of the Fragmented to Whole Podcast is about how to tr...

Send us Fan Mail It will be impossible for you to walk through life with any kind of confidence and compassion if you don’t stop beating yourself up. That’s why the thought work I do every single day is hands down the most important work I do. This week’s episode 255 of the Fragmented to Whole Podcast is about how to move through life with confidence, self-love, and compassion! Support the show by...

Send us Fan Mail One of the most important things I’ve learned to do in recovery is how to have difficult conversations. My inability and unwillingness to have difficult conversations perpetuated my codependence, leading me to suffer in situations just because I was not willing to have the conversations that would resolve them. This week on episode 254 of the Fragmented to Whole Podcast I’m sharin...

Send us Fan Mail Traditionally, step 5 in 12-step recovery is where we admit to God, to ourselves, and to another person the exact nature of our own wrongs. The idea is that we get to take a look at the things we’ve been doing in our lives that are creating chaos, dysfunction and wreckage and acknowledge them. In the ACA version of the 12 steps, we instead inventory our family system, acknowledgin...

Send us Fan Mail Through recovery, I have radically changed my ways, healed my trauma, and changed my deeply entrenched patterns of behavior. By sharing my and my family’s secrets, I hope to show that dysfunction doesn’t always look the way you might think so that you might recognize patterns of your own dysfunction and begin to heal in the ways that I have healed. This week on episode 252 of the...

Send us Fan Mail We often say in recovery, “You’re as sick as your secrets.” That being said, I've decided to share my family’s secrets (as well as some of my own) as part of my journey to heal and to identify with other people so they know they’re not alone. This week on episode 251 of the Fragmented to Whole Podcast, I am spillin’ the tea on my family secrets, sharing how family dysfunction...

Send us Fan Mail There is more to addiction than the need to get drunk or high. And when Arlina Allen realized this and began to uncover the root causes of her addiction, it was then that she was able to shed the layers of her trauma and begin to heal. This week’s episode 250 of the Fragmented to Whole Podcast is about healing the root causes of addiction! Support the show by becoming a Patreon me...

Send us Fan Mail Whenever I hear clients say something along the lines of “I have to…” I like to reframe their sentence to instead say, ‘I get to…” or “I could do…”. The language change is so small, and yet the conceptual change is HUGE. This week’s episode 249 of the Fragmented to Whole Podcast is about choosing freedom: how a simple shift in language can change your life! Support the show by bec...

Send us Fan Mail The reparenting journey that I’ve been on for the last year has been nothing short of miraculous. I cannot tell you the level of healing I’ve achieved through my reparenting work. I hope that by sharing my journey and process on the podcast, other people can also find some healing. This week’s episode 248 of the Fragmented to Whole Podcast is about how I heal my inner teenager: un...

Send us Fan Mail Last week, I shared the first half of the steps I take all of my boundary clients through to build their personalized boundary system. Today, I’ll be sharing the final half of the steps so that you can create a boundary system that works for you! This week’s episode 247 of the Fragmented to Whole Podcast is part 2 of the steps to build your own personalized boundary system!  Suppo...

Send us Fan Mail I take all of my boundaries clients through a series of steps to build their personalized boundary system and I wanted to share these steps with you today. This week’s episode 246 of the Fragmented to Whole Podcast is part 1 of the steps to build your own personalized boundary system! Support the show by becoming a Patreon member !  In this episode of the Fragmented to Whole Podca...

Send us Fan Mail Sometimes people refer to self-sabotage as things like shooting themselves in the foot, not showing up for themselves, or not following through for themselves. This is incredibly common for those of us in recovery. ACA has taught me that another way to refer to self-sabotage is to call it self-abandonment. And this makes sense because as adult children, we were brought up on aband...

Send us Fan Mail When someone says something like ‘You don’t care about me’ to you and you defend it, you’re the one declaring war against them. How you respond in these scenarios determines whether you’re entering into a conflict or a conversation. This week’s episode 244 of the Fragmented to Whole Podcast is about how to effectively communicate when someone says, ‘you don’t care about me’. Suppo...

Send us Fan Mail A couple of instances have come up in my life recently where I realized how far I have come since recovery. Scenarios that used to trigger an emotional trauma response are replaced with clarity and calmness. And in times like this, I become super appreciative of my recovery. This week’s episode 243 of the Fragmented to Whole Podcast is about how I went from trauma response to mira...

Send us Fan Mail One of the many revelations I had while in recovery is that I had been trusting untrustworthy people my entire life. These people had proven to me time and time again that they were not to be trusted and when they broke my trust I would inevitably get upset over it. When I eventually learned to find my part in things, I realized I was the one at fault- for continuing to trust untr...

Send us Fan Mail It’s occurred to me recently that a huge part of 12-step recovery is changing our perceptions or the ways in which we perceive certain concepts. And when we can make these mental shifts, the way we view our circumstances or situations we find ourselves in changes drastically . This week’s episode 241 of the Fragmented to Whole Podcast is about 3 conceptual shifts learned in recove...

Send us Fan Mail Content Warning: This episode includes mentions of grooming, sexual abuse of a minor, and suicidal ideations.  If you’ve experienced abuse and hit rock bottom it can feel in that moment that you’ll never be able to get yourself out. Fortunately, there is a path out but the hard truth of the matter is that the only way out is through. The only way to get past the pain and towards a...

Send us Fan Mail When most people think of trauma, they’re thinking of the trauma that comes to those who have survived hurricanes, sexual assault, war, etc. This type of trauma is what we refer to as big T trauma but this isn’t the only type of trauma. There is another kind of trauma known as little T trauma or relational trauma that happens over time, most often in the context of a relationship....

Send us Fan Mail Many of us don't take good care of ourselves. We're completely drained, run ragged, and exhausted and yet, we still try to give to others. Instead of continually pouring from an empty cup, pour from the overflow. And the only way your cup is going to have overflow is if YOU fill it. This week’s episode 238 of the Fragmented to Whole Podcast is about why self-care is not...

Send us Fan Mail There’s a chapter in the ACA fellowship book called The Importance of Service in ACA that I refer to as the ‘stealth chapter.’ I say this because at face value it seems like it is going to be a light chapter but it is one of the heaviest and most relatable chapters in the book. For codependent people like me, service can be so tricky and that’s why I wanted to talk about my revela...

Send us Fan Mail One of the things the ACA (Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families) literature says is “We progress from hurting to healing to helping and we awaken to a sense of wholeness we never knew possible.” I can attest, this has proven to be true in my own recovery experience. This week’s episode 236 of the Fragmented to Whole Podcast is about how to go from hurting to hea...

Send us Fan Mail Content Warning: This episode includes brief mentions of abuse and other experiences that can cause trauma.  We so easily compare ourselves to the people around us. While we can admit that comparison is not helpful, it can be especially harmful when we start comparing our trauma because it keeps us from healing. This week’s episode 235 of the Fragmented to Whole Podcast is about t...