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 A Plan For Life

16:49 Woodworking

25:40 Vanlife

33:03 What Drives Me

37:53 Sports

42:46 Tattoos

44:21 Clothes

49:30 Final Thoughts 

Dwell (Camper Reno): https://www.dwell.com/article/budget-breakdown-renovated-sun-valley-road-runner-trailer-path-design-e1fe2e8f

Insider: https://www.businessinsider.com/couple-spent-ten-thousand-renovating-trailer-camper-2023-4

Life Lessons From a 7,000 Bike Ride: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUTL4Op56CM

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-selves. 

0:00 Breadcrumbs Create A Power Dynamic

6:58 Future Faking and Empty Promises

11:22 Healing Fantasies

17:21 Becoming Someone Else

20:13 Developing A Role-Self

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 Our Trauma Responses

10:48 What Age Do I Feel?

16:11 Happy and Sad At the Same Time

24:51 What Can We Do?

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 Emotions

5:38 Signs of Unresolved Trauma

19:40 Trauma

22:07 Dysfunctional Families

24:04 The Emotionally Unskilled Family

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 for Information

12:46 Comparison

16:12 Where Does It Come From?

18:36 What Can We Do?

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 your sense of self.

0:54 Personal Goals

2:48 Externalizers and Traditional Goals

4:36 How I Feel Now

10:41 Perception of Family

14:08 Perception of Myself

24:35 Freedom From Expectations

Follow  @bigsiscasey  :

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

21:37 Emotional Lonliness

24:35 Fear of Abandonment

28:41 Failure and Criticism

31:06 Self-Protection + Acceptance

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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 Identify Emotionally Mature People

34:11 Getting to Know Myself as an Adult

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 Inner Experience

9:29 Controlling Our Thoughts and Feelings

12:26 Allowing Ourselves To Be Seen

20:08 Making Mistakes Is Part of Being Human

21:47 Being Vulnerable

25:40 A Question For You