It's Not Normal

In this week’s episode, and with your help, I’m challenging myself to talk about parts of my life that are relatively unrelated to my trauma. Since sharing my experience with emotionally immature parents on social media, I have created an invisible box and put myself in it. From following dreams and finding a work-life balance to vanlife and tattoos, we’re covering it all.  0:00 Episode 50!! 4:55...

Have you ever found yourself being strung along by a parent, partner or friend? Intermittent reinforcement is a powerful tool that can shape not only our personality, but also our perception of the present and our beliefs for the future. In this week’s episode, we talk about breadcrumbing as a behavior in a parent-child relationship and how it fuels the development of healing fantasies and role-se...

This weekend, I took a trip to a place that I hadn’t visited in over a decade. It was healing, but also brought to the surface some complex emotions. In this week’s episode, we talk about what inner-child is, why it’s important and how we can take steps to accommodate our younger selves in adulthood.  0:00 Inner-Child Healing 1:31 Childhood Wounds 3:14 Disproportionate Reactions 7:59 Validating Ou...

In this week’s episode, I’m walking you through The Science of Stuck by Britt Frank, a book that I often reference as marking the beginning of my healing journey. From signs of unresolved trauma to what characteristics define an emotionally unskilled family, we get into it all.  Buy “The Science of Stuck” here: https://amzn.to/4faNms7 0:00 Healing our Inner Child 1:35 Positive and Negative Emotion...

Have you ever felt intense jealousy or insecurity about your friend or partner’s past? And does imagining a time in their life before you give you a sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach? In this week’s episode, we’re going to be talking about retroactive jealousy and the connection between OCD and childhood trauma. 0:00 Retroactive Jealousy 1:57 OCD 5:01 Obsessing Over the Past 9:51 Digging...

On October 6, 2023, I posted the first episode of It’s Not Normal. In this week’s episode, we celebrate one year of the podcast by revisiting some of the topics we talked about in the first few episodes with a new perspective.  0:22 One Year of The Podcast 6:54 Revisiting Hypervigilance 16:15 Self-Worth 18:42 Styles of Communication 23:01 Validating Our Trauma Responses 26:36 Thank You!

How much have your personal goals changed since realizing your trauma? Throughout my young life, my goals were very traditional. They involved my family and successes outside of myself. As I’ve started to heal, my goals have shifted and are now much more about who I am rather than what I’m doing. In this week’s episode, we talk about shifting goals, perception of family, and how it can influence y...

Being raised by emotionally manipulative parents can make even the idea of relationships seem scary. We’re kicking off Season 3 by connecting the dots between childhood trauma and the different ways we perceive and show up in relationships with friends, romantic partners and ourselves. 0:00 Season 3 1:57 Perspective Shift 2:15 Intentions 11:32 Trust 16:31 Allowing Our Authentic Selves to be Seen 2...

This week’s episode is packed with information and insights as we recap chapters 6-10 of Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by Lindsay Gibson. We touch on everything from what it’s like to be an internalizer to how to identify emotionally maturity in others.  0:00 What It’s Like to Be a Internalizer 9:03 Breaking Down and Awakening 20:32 Living Free of Roles and Fantasies 28:58 How to...

Do you feel in-touch with your authentic self? In this week’s episode, we talk about how and why being raised by an emotionally immature parent can lead us to suppress our authenticity, the importance of vulnerability in genuine connection and what we can do to allow space for self-discovery in adulthood. 0:09 Feeling In-Touch With My Authentic Self 3:09 Why We Suppress Our Authenticity 6:19 Our I...

I’ve been no-contact with my parents for a just over a year. In this week’s episode, we talk about what led me to make that decision along with some of the things I’ve learned since having the freedom to get to know myself.  0:38 What Led Me To Going No Contact 10:22 I Wrote My Parents A Letter 13:37 “But They’re Your Parents” 18:50 Embarrassment 25:08 Expecting Empathy 28:10 I Can Say ‘No’ 31:00...

Am I enough? Am I doing the right thing? Self-doubt is something that everyone experiences. Embracing self-awareness can challenge the toxic productivity mindset and allow us to act from a place of self-acceptance.  0:00 Self-Awareness for Others 5:25 Manipulating My Experience 13:02 Smear Campaigns 18:06 Social Media 22:26 People-Pleasing 24:47 Toxic Productivity 27:20 It’s A Bedtime Not A Deadli...

Navigating friendships can be challenging, especially when our foundation for connection has been conditional. Being raised by an emotionally immature parent and the resulting trauma can make developing and maintaining friendships difficult.  0:00 Childhood Friendships 4:46 Isolation and Enmeshment 7:32 Separation Anxiety 12:17 Friendship Breakups 20:18 No Boundaries 22:25 Be Patient With Yourself

In this week’s episode, we take on a complex topic - what it means to exist solely in arenas where your performance takes precedence over your personality. From a parent creating a mini-me and living vicariously through us to developing hyper characteristics as a means of survival, we get into it all.  0:00 Intro 2:04 A Moment to Myself 9:11 Comfortable with a Slower Pace 15:40 Performance Over Pe...

Discovering a work-life balance can be challenging, especially if throughout childhood you were never taught to prioritize yourself or how to set boundaries. In this week’s episode, we talk about how behaviors and trauma responses we picked up throughout childhood can manifest themselves in the workplace. 0:00 Intro 1:16 Path Design 5:18 Ralph Waldo Emerson 5:55 College Drop-Out 8:40 The Studio 16...

I’m answering your questions! In this week’s episode, we address the importance of learning to acknowledge your emotions, guilt, and generational trauma. We also take steps in understanding how to reclaim our identity and sense of self. 0:39 Q1 - Learning to Acknowledge Your Emotions 3:52 Q2 - Sending A Letter 9:40 Q3 - Guilt 14:15 Q4 - Identity 19:30 Q5 - Anger and Resentment 29:20 Q6 - Generatio...

Change can be scary. Learning to welcome change can be a challenge, especially for those of us who lacked stability throughout childhood, and subsequently gravitate towards stability and predicatbility in adulthood. In this week’s episode, we start to understand why we sometimes resist change and how we can learn to let go. 0:00 Why is Change Scary? 5:11 Permanance of Opinions 6:49 Life Changes 15...

Breaking the cycle of generational trauma and abuse is no small task, and can be made even more difficult with the loss of your support system, intentional efforts to isolate you, smear campaigns and love-bombing. We get into all of it in this week’s episode of It’s Not Normal. 0:00 The Journey of Getting There 3:29 Perspective Outside of the Closed Family System 12:14 Stepping Into the Unknown 14...

In this week’s episode, we talk about how, as you get older and start to tap into your individuality, your parents’ unhealthy behavior might intensify as you become harder to manipulate. These behaviors can be dehumanizing and challenging to navigate as we start to recognize them. 0:00 Intro 1:11 Intensifying Behavior As You Get Older 17:28 Dehumanizing 18:27 Learning From Our Mistakes 21:18 Cravi...

Self-neglect is an interesting concept and can manifest itself in our lives in a number of different ways. More often than not, if you were raised by an emotionally immature parent, these behaviors can be traced back to experiences throughout our childhood including parentification, a lack of boundaries and direct communication.  0:00 Intro 0:33 Self-Neglect 1:55 Lack of Direct Communication 4:17...

If you’re like me, you might find it challenging to refrain from explaining yourself, especially in light of controversy or disagreement. In this week’s episode we address the question, “why do we overshare?” in an attempt to better understand the behavior, what it is and where it comes from, so we can learn to let go of the discomfort that comes with disagreement and the fear of being misundersto...

I learned about separation anxiety for the first time in my early twenties. The more I researched, the more I started to realize that this behavior was just a glimpse into what I had experienced throughout my childhood. In this week’s episode, we’re talking about anxious attachment and fear of abandonment, what they are, how they’re connected and my experience with them. 0:00 About Attachment 4:58...

I had a bit of a moment. In this week’s episode, we’re talking about spontaneity, self-love and having a breakthrough. 0:00 Intro 0:45 Thursday Night Release 3:53 Spontaneity  5:18 A Sense of Responsiblity 7:57 I Had a Bit of a Moment 13:00 Forgiving Myself 13:59 Approval 17:58 Self-Love 19:06 Letting Go of Negativity 21:33 The Person I Refuse to Become 22:06 Knowing What Not To Do 23:34 Disapprov...

It can be hard to filter through the constant stream of content that’s thrown our way on social media to find creators who are in it for the right reasons. In this week’s episode we’re talking with Nicole Bendayan, a Certified Holistic Nutritionist & Women's Health Expert on a mission to educate and empower women on holistic menstrual health. Having experienced negative side effects while...

Let’s talk about siblings! Navigating a relationship with a narcissistic parent can be hard enough. What happens when there’s a younger sibling involved? In this week’s episode, we talk about everything from sibling relationships in adulthood and how your roles might change overtime to why a narcissistic parent might promote divisiveness throughout your childhood and what you can do to maintain a...